Empathy: The key to unlocking successful partnerships

Business partnerships can be structured around several factors — shared opportunities, complementary technologies or customer bases, long-standing personal relationships, or even sharing mutual competitors. Trust is critical, of course, but there is another element that is also important when it comes to technology partnerships, and that’s empathy.

Sometimes conflated with sympathy, which occurs when one person shares the feelings of another, with empathy you can imagine or understand how someone might feel without necessarily having those same feelings.

Understanding the MSP perspective is key

For MSPs, partnering with technology providers can be highly transactional. An MSP can become just another channel for a vendor’s products. But for these relationships to succeed, technology providers must better understand the MSP’s business, customers, and goals.

At Barracuda, recently appointed VP of worldwide partner ecosystems, Jason Beal, has made empathy an essential part of his message as he speaks to MSPs and resellers around the globe. Barracuda has made significant investments in its channel operations over the past year. Still, Beal says that trying to view the market through the eyes of MSP partners will be a crucial part of the company’s success moving forward.

As he told attendees at a recent partner meeting, “Sometimes, ISVs and OEMs in the industry can be accused of what I call 'vendor myopia’: only looking at the world from their products, their corprate priorities, or go-to-market perspectives. What I’ve seen firsthand with Barracuda is ‘partner empathy.’ It’s taking an outside-in approach to the partnerships, better understanding how Barracuda and our partners can solve problems together to help our clients succeed.”

Listen and learn from both partners and customers

That means taking time to listen to partners and customers, says Beal, and learning as much about their businesses and challenges as possible. It also involves recognizing that technology products are just one part of the total solutions channel partners are offering to solve customers’ business challenges.

“We need to learn from what our partners and their customers are saying every day. Partner empathy also means taking this outside-in perspective by putting ourselves in our partners’ shoes. It’s only by doing that we can create a win-win situation.”

Empathy is an increasingly important concept in business consulting for internal programs and customer relationship development. Companies are attempting to adopt the mantra of fish-out-of-water soccer coach Ted Lasso from the popular Apple TV series: ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ In this context, it means asking partners what they need and listening to them not because every problem represents a sales opportunity but because that understanding can create a stronger partnership. Eventually, those stronger bonds can lead to business opportunities that benefit everyone.

An outcomes-focused approach is a success multiplier

This is an approach that MSPs can also leverage with their clients. The old business model of pushing boxes or licenses has diminishing returns in the tech sectors; companies are looking for solutions to specific business challenges. Smart MSPs – ones trying to establish consultative partnerships with their customers – are taking a more outcomes-focused approach that involves understanding customer needs and goals and putting their managed services offerings into the context of the entire IT framework (including technology and services from other partners).

Barracuda has seen this strategy pay off with MSP partners. Beal notes that partners that have adopted services, consulting, and training offered by the vendor have seen a much greater multiplier on their Barracuda sales than those that did not.

For MSPs, leaning on empathy during – and after – the sales cycle can be a critical differentiator. This is especially true for customers who may be hesitant to move into new product offerings like cloud or managed security services. Lining up their current and future business needs/goals against these products or service offerings can help move the needle on closing new business. It can also help MSPs uncover new opportunities with existing customers and even help them plan new service offerings not currently part of their product suite.  

Empathy is also critical in times of change management, such as digital transformations. MSPs play an important role here in IT outsourcing, upleveling their customers’ cybersecurity postures and workforce productivity. As such, leaning in on empathy during these times as well enables the MSP to play an important role in successfully guiding the customer in change management.

“The more we understand how we can be a part of your solution, the better this partnership will be,” Beal says.