#35 Gautam Bharti: How A Product Background Can Help Your Role as an Alliance Professional

Gautam Bharti is the Director of Global Strategic Alliances at Trend Micro where he manages the strategic alliance with Microsoft.  He collaborates to create better co-selling opportunities and optimize the partner ecosystem. Gautam (GB for short) has an amazing product background that allows him to see things from a perspective that many others in his position at other companies just aren’t able to see.

Building a strong ecosystem with other alliances partners means enabling all partners to be successful together. Being a good partner is essential to their DNA at Trend Micro; it’s just a part of who they are.

We spoke with GB at Microsoft Inspire about how he ended up at Trend Micro, his product background, and joint go to market strategies.

The Switch to Trend Micro

GB was with Microsoft for a number of years, and he just recently joined the Trend Micro team.  A big reason why GB joined Trend Micro is that they have a people-centric culture.  In addition, GB possessed a well-rounded understanding of the space that Trend micro operates in and how all of their various pieces fit together.  

He obviously had a great deal of experience with Microsoft and deep relationships there, but more than that, he was an expert in how Microsoft jointly goes to market and this specific partner ecosystem.  

Product Background

GB believes his background has been essential to his success at Trend Micro.  He’s always focused on having a really good relationship with the engineering department because it gives him a deep and holistic understanding of the whole process of bringing a new product to market from beginning to end.

This has been critical in how well Microsoft works with Trend Micro.  It helps to expand the table and bring other partners into the success story.  When partners take the time to understand each other as well as all components of their own internal teams (not neglecting to engineer in favor of sales and marketing), a healthy ecosystem is formed.

Trend Micro is focused on the idea of “you need to give in order to get”.  By respecting their own teams and the teams of their partners, they are participating in creating an ecosystem of joint success.  GB believes in the old adage that a rising tide lifts all boats, and his background has helped him see that.

Joint Go to Market Success

Currently, Trend Micro is in the process of launching new bundles together with their partners.  These are wholly integrated solutions with multiple partners that live on Microsoft’s Azure platform.  They are specifically aiming these new bundles to customers in the healthcare industry.  

This is a large integration, but leveraging partners in the ecosystem via bundling is a big play that is leading Trend Micro to joint go to market success.

One of the most challenging elements of being an alliance professional is that it is almost like running your own business within your company.  These partnerships often accompany every aspect of running a business by yourself.  You have to focus on marketing your product well, enabling your salespeople, developing the right product, and much more.  

In many ways, it’s more challenging than running just a single business because, in reality, you are doing business across a few different companies each with their own culture and way of getting the thing done. GB knows that in order to be successful as a partner, you really need to start thinking outside yourself.  

Start asking questions like: How can we help our partner?  How can we create a synergy between our business units? How can we start thinking more from an “outside in” perspective rather than an “inside out” perspective?  

You have to be in your partner’s shoes, not just thinking “what do we want” but rather “what do our partners want”?  Your success is tied to the partner’s success.  Being so partner focused is how GB and team have seen success.

Above all else, Trend Micro believes it is critical that that keep the focus on partners.  The world is moving more and more toward partner ecosystems, so how can GB help enable partners in the Microsoft ecosystem?  If he is able to do that, Trend Micro will continue to become more and more valuable to Microsoft in their strategic relationship.

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This episode is part of the Alliance Aces Roadshow. Watch the video interview on Facebook.

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