First Time’s the Charm at Partner Summit 2019

This was my first year taking the stage at Partner Summit as the Americas Partner Organization leader, and I am so excited and honored to have shared it with our incredible partners. After such an impactful year, it was inspiring to celebrate how our partners drive, monetize, and take care of our customers. It was even more inspiring to strategize on how we plan to own our edge, and harness the power of this great ecosystem now, and into the future.

One of my biggest takeaways from this year was Chuck’s overview of our history, and what our future looks like – he said that the challenges are complex, but we are WITH our partners, and we have a huge opportunity to capture for our customers, together. Maria Martinez then carried that further – saying, “there is no future without our partners”, and that couldn’t be truer. It’s simple – partners, we just couldn’t do this without you!

During the Americas Geo Connection session, we announced three key offers* designed to help you drive transformation.

Black Belt Academy: we are offering a $1,000 incentive to the first 1,500 partner sellers and the first 1,500 partner engineers who completed the Stage 1 training and close a deal in the small/mid-size market segment before July 26, 2020.

CX: we are making a $2,500 investment to help the first 150 partners to develop their customer success practice with the right people, processes, and infrastructure to best support our customers throughout their lifecycle. Offer expires July 26, 2020.

DevNet: we have 5 DevNet applications that are ready for partners to build upon – and we are co-funding blocks of time with our Digital Solutions Integrators to help our partners develop the skills to deploy these integrated packages. Offer expires July 26, 2020.

*For more information on these offers, please consult your Partner Account Manager.

“Be the Change” is a critical component of APO’s charge for Partner Summit this year, and we announced our partnership with Global Citizen to end global gender inequality. Partners, if you haven’t yet signed up – please take a few moments to become a Global Citizen and take action over the next 9 months for your chance to win tickets, airfare, and accommodations to the 2020 Global Citizen festival in New York. This will be the biggest one yet, and your partnership is critical for the movement to end global poverty!

I want to sincerely thank all of you for attending, participating, and engaging this year. You are the reason we are successful, and YOU are the transformation. Thank you for your partnership, your drive, and your continued commitment to our combined accomplishment.

Gratitude is also not lost on all the amazing individuals that helped make this year’s event happen – this team is one for the record books!

Thanks again, everyone! Let’s make it a great year.