267 – The 1% Club: Elastic’s First Secrets to Partner of the Year Status

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA

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Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast.

This was a fan favorite as I was joined by former Microsoft executive and current Elastic leader, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, as she reveals the strategies behind achieving pinnacle success as a Microsoft partner. Learn how Elastic consistently earns “Partner of the Year” awards by prioritizing technology innovation, fostering deep engineering alignment, and ensuring maniacal focus across all functional teams. Alyssa shares invaluable insights on gaining executive buy-in, establishing clear communication “swim lanes,” and leveraging data to drive impactful decisions. Discover the importance of consistent engagement, human relationships in partnering, and why adaptability is the new IQ in today’s rapidly changing market.

Key Takeaways:

• Achieving “ultimate partner” status requires a deep understanding of how to congruently apply principles across all aspects of the business.
• Executive commitment is paramount; the entire leadership team must be on board and actively driving the alliance strategy.
• Aligning functional teams (build, go-to-market, sell) with their Microsoft counterparts through dedicated points of contact ensures effective feedback and execution.
• Leading with technology and embedding innovation is the “secret sauce” for winning partnerships, going beyond traditional co-selling to integrate roadmaps and push for new functionalities.
• Resource allocation must align with strategic focus; sometimes trade-offs are necessary to maintain intensity on critical hyperscaler relationships.
• Data-driven decision-making and continuous analysis of performance are crucial for adaptability and predicting market shifts, allowing leaders to defend and explain their strategies to leadership.

If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership, this is your community.

At Ultimate Partner®, we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

https://youtu.be/DgzjeaUiYM8?si=fScjJ-a3QaZlMMh0

Key Tags:

.Microsoft partner, Elastic, ultimate partner, partner of the year, cloud go-to-market, alliance strategy, executive commitment, technology innovation, engineering alignment, co-selling, go-to-market, influence strategy, partner resources, adaptability, data-driven decisions, human relationships, BRS, QBR, EBC, channel leadership.

https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo

Transcription:

[00:00:00] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months.

[00:00:16] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts,

[00:00:22] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together.

Managed services will be one and a half times larger

[00:00:28] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models.

[00:00:34] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose?

Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.

[00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus.

Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this fireside chat with Eissa Fitzpatrick, the partner leader for Elastic, an award-winning partner, brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So we always talk about like the pinnacle of success, like how do you get to be the top Microsoft partner?

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