Zoom’s New Channel Chief Nick Tidd On His Plan To Accelerate Business Through Partners

“ I'm not fighting for mindshare with partners. I have the mindshare, it’s just: 'What am I going to do with it?' That's the really cool part,” Zoom’s new head of global channels GTM Nick Tidd, formerly HP Poly’s global channel chief, told CRN.

Videoconferencing giant Zoom Video Communications is making good on its commitment to the channel with the addition of a longtime channel champion: Nick Tidd.

Tidd came to Zoom from HP’s global partner organization, which he joined after the company acquired Poly in 2022. Tidd was a channel leader for Poly for more than 14 years and helped oversee the successful integration of HP and Poly from a channel perspective. With his work done at HP, Tidd joined Zoom last month after admiring the platform from afar, he told CRN.

Now, the channel veteran is poised to help Zoom accelerate its growth through the channel through greater sales collaboration and a prescriptive roadmap for partner success. Tidd is a man with a plan that involves shortening the path to revenue, simplifying the partner program, and improving systems and tools. He shared that he believes there is a need for a better quoting process and faster approval cycles to enhance partner engagement, and he's also working to align the partner program to different routes to market, such as global SIs and MSPs. For the latter, he'll be working side-by-side with Zoom’s former head of global channels and alliances, now head of global strategic partnerships and alliances, Mark Jenkins.

Ahead of Zoomtopia 2024 this week, Tidd sat down with CRN to talk about his new role and his priorities for Zoom’s channel program. Here's what Tidd had to say.

What drew you to Zoom and why was now the time for the move?

Zoom has been on my radar for quite some time. In my previous role, we were both providers in the video space as well as in phones, so from a distance, [I] had always been an admirer of the platform and the opportunity was presented to me: “Hey, why don't you come and join us? Because we're looking for a channel leaders that can help us embrace the channel [and] that can help us overcome some of the stumbles that have happened in the past.” If you were to poll the Zoom partners, they'll tell you there's a couple of areas that we really need to focus on. Systems and tools being one, channel enablement being another, embracing and accelerating revenue and really taking a phenomenal platform and accelerating it -- those have all been part of my DNA for my entire career. So, it was a perfect opportunity to be able to take that skill set and apply it on a global perspective as well where we, as part of our expansion outside of North America where the business is predominantly today, need to establish a channel presence. And so, it was perfect timing where the stars were aligning where [Zoom] needed somebody who's done this before; the integration of the companies and bringing them together, but also accelerating the go to market. It’s been 35 days and we're all about listening and more listening, and there is a great foundation to build from. Going into Zoomtopia, talk about perfect timing. I've got this baseline of knowledge to take in, to validate, and to present to our partners where I’m focused.

What are your first set of priorities in your new role?

I'm really going to lay out for [partners] the pillars of [which] I'm focused. And those pillars are: shorten the path to pipeline, i.e. how can we have partners be able to self-serve? How can we build pipeline together? How can we shorten our time to revenue? The second is simplifying the partner program. Today, we have a program that tries to address everybody in one category, and yet our businesses, as I look across from our phone business to our contact center business, to our Workvivo business and the others, they're very different. And so how do you enable your roads to market? The big one that the partners have really started to say is [that we] need to deal with our systems and our tools. How we quote, how we self-serve. And then finally, channel acceleration within Zoom. It's just such a great platform. Even in my first 35 days, I've had two refreshes on the platform itself as I test this and try that; that acceleration is just tremendous. Through our partner surveys, of which we've just concluded and which we had a substantial portion of our community weigh in, I want to level set these [pillars], but also lay out a foundation and roadmap. For example, in tools, we'll lay out a four-quarter plan with them on how I want to get them to be self-sufficient in quoting, visibility to analytics, visibility in how they manage deals. We've started that journey with them already through some tools we've already launched. [Zoom has] tremendous technology, a fantastic partner community, and one that's excited to grow with us, and [leadership] is just saying: “Let's double down on this opportunity.” That's what excited me.

But what I want to be very clear to the channel is that we're not interested in share shift. There's obviously a large component of business that's direct in the United States. We want to align with how the customer wants to acquire but at the same time, as we build out the platform and we add more technologies, there's a route for the channel to participate. I'll give you an example. The channel is asking to be enabled for professional services and support services. And so, our goal is to have that as a module of the program in Q1. I'm just finishing Q3 whereby partners can participate in the delivery of services or having us deliver on their behalf and have a compensation model accordingly. Channel acceleration within Zoom is key to our success and our growth.

How specifically will you help shorten the path to revenue for partners?

Today, everything is form-based. It's a very manual process for quote creation. It's one of the biggest pain points for our partners. So, I'm going to lay out for our partners that in our Q2, I want to be able to have the ability, and will have the ability, for partner self-quoting, an engine built that allows for partners to submit, create and transact, whether that's in a direct resale motion or a two-tier motion, so that we have better visibility to pipeline, so that we're faster with approval cycles and less to and fro when it comes to approval of quotes. It is a recognized pain point in our channel and even within our own seller community. So, we're doing some major upgrades internally, starting in October, that will facilitate and culminate with us being able to present that those tools externally. And then, of course, for me, getting a greater share of wallet within our partners, getting them to sell multiple pieces of our platform -- because you're selling phones, sell workspaces, if you're selling workspaces, then you should be selling contact center -- trying to bridge and expand the portfolio. It's a natural transition as we build out the platform and we start to add features and functionality, that you start to get that cross-pollination.

How will you work with Mark Jenkins, head of global partnerships and alliances?

Specifically, with [Jenkins’] team, as he's announced the relationship with Mitel and now, we've got an AWS Marketplace initiative that's been launched in North America, we're going to continue to build those out, which is why we split this role in two, because they're very different. [Jenkins’] is going to really be focused on those global strategic partnerships, whereas I'm going to be focused on building out the programmatics supporting our existing channel and any net new channels that come to market. And we’ve got to scale faster. We've not been scaling at the level of engagement from the channel. We got some catch up to do, and I'm confident that we've got the right roadmap to do it.

Part of simplifying the partner program is aligning to the routes to market. Because within our model today, we have both a referral business and we have a resale business. We do need to look at global SIs. We do need to build out our alliances. Hence, why the announcement with Mitel is key. I do see us expanding, but at the same time, we need to make sure that we don't have share shift within channels, that it's accretive growth across the board. We also need to look at the MSP space, and how they're building tech stacks, and how we become part of that tech stack. When I look at the Workvivo channel, there's some different types of partners that I don't see in the other marketplaces. So, having our program adapt to those different types is going to be key. And so that's why, instead of trying to do one size fits all, [we need to] align to those routes, align to what they need from an enablement perspective, and what their margin profile looks like [because] it’s different across those marketplaces as well.

What do you want partners to know about Zoom right now?

I want them to know that we're committed to the channel. One of our pillars is channel acceleration within Zoom and partners have said in the partner survey: “We want to see greater sales collaboration. I want to see a better connection in the field. I want to see a better connection with your sellers.” So, obviously, you need to scale that through tools. We need to scale that through visibility to pipeline, and you need to build trust. And so, it's incumbent upon us to be able to evolve our processes and our tools to facilitate those conversations. Some of them, we've under invested in certain areas and we'll be playing catch up, but we're going to leapfrog, and that's the cool part, is that we have the ability to do that, and the company has the appetite to do that. One of the other things that attracted me to the role was: “Are you going to invest?” And it takes time, and it takes dollars, and I'd like to think that the channel has seen me do that before, and so I really view this as an integration with the channel. What tools do I need to make you successful? What programmatics do you need to be successful? And let's build them together and accelerate this growth. That's what they can expect and that's what they should demand from me.

The channel leader that says everything's done and finished; they need to go look for work somewhere else. You are never done. Those goals posts are constantly moving. I need to move it 10 yards at a time and keep moving the ball down the field. And then make sure that we're resetting it as we're going. It comes back the first point that I made, the first couple of calls I had with some of our global distributors [who said]: “Just be consistent.” When you grow this fast, you're in the heat of the moment. It may be the right decision in the moment, but you may not have thought it through. And so that's where, again, I'm not fighting for mindshare with partners. I have the mindshare, it’s just: "What am I going to do with it?" That's the really cool part.