Google’s Public Sector Partner Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Are you eager to explore the fascinating world of innovative cloud capabilities and their impact on the public sector markets? Are you looking to learn how one of the big three hyperscalers took a unique approach to solve the strict compliance requirements of government security? Are you ready to tap into the opportunity to partner with Google Cloud’s innovative public-sector business? Well, whether you’re a seasoned partner executive or a passionate entrepreneur ready to tap into new opportunities, you come to the right place as I welcome Troy Bertram, the Executive Managing Director of Google Cloud’s Public Sector business. In this episode, we discuss Google’s partner-led and partner-first approach to the Public Sector, the company’s extraordinary commitment to building this business, how it uniquely reached the highest levels of compliance and security to support the most stringent government customers, and why partners need to consider Google as they build their business strategy. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming Troy Bertram.

In Google’s words

Troy Bertram, Executive Managing Director at Google Public Sector (GPS),  joined Google Cloud in 2022 to build and lead our Public Sector Partner Ecosystem team, where his teams manage the sell to, through, and with relationships with our System Integrators (SI), Reseller, Distribution channels and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) / SaaS vendors building solution on Google. He brings more than 25 years of experience from government and transformative technology companies.

Bertram joined Google from Telos Corporation, a cyber security company, where he served as Sr. Vice President of Sales and Business Development. He previously held a CRO title at Saildrone; an autonomous ocean vehicle and sensor platform company; and a general manager position at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where over eight years he built global business development and partner channel sell to, with and through teams that supported commercial enterprise, government, education and non-profit customers around the world. Before joining AWS in 2013, Bertram spent over a decade at Dell Technologies, building and leading multiple sales, services, operations, merger and acquisition, and business development teams. Bertram is a veteran of the U.S. Army, where he served as a communications officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. He earned an MBA from Saint Edwards University and a BS in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota

What You’ll Learn

• Google’s Public Sector Partner Ecosystem Mission. 2:22
  
  • Google public sector is a mission-oriented partner organization focused on partner outcomes, aligning with partners with human capital and investing in partner development.
    
  • State and local government is part of the mandate of the organization.
    
  • Google is the third dominant hyper-scalar in the space, and is excited to be leading the organization at this time.
    
  • The organization is not new from a human capital perspective. They have a great footprint in their commercial regulated industries, including insurance, energy, gaming, financial services.
    
  
  
• How did you get started in the cloud space?7:59
  
  • Troy and Vince talk about the challenges of competing in the public sector cloud market and the need for service parity.
    
  • Nine months to 12 months is a challenge to bring technology to bear to support government missions. There is always a lag and continues to be a lake when you have separate clouds built for a unique, discrete customer environment.
    
  • Five key areas of focus, mission outcomes, empowering everyone to innovate.
    
  
  
• Focusing on the user and innovation.13:05
  
  • The state of Wisconsin is focused on improving the mission of the educator, the tax examiner and the adjudicator for benefits in a timely manner.
    
  • Innovation comes from everywhere in the organization.
    
  • Innovation comes from everywhere. Good ideas are not isolated to a boardroom or senior leaders. They come from every piece of the business.
    
  • The best partnerships are partner first.
    
  
  
• Partner segmentation in government.17:19
  
  • Partner segmentation in government, regional and national systems integrators, independent software vendors, social and economic disadvantaged partners, and federal and global partners.
    
  • Partner ecosystem from a large Google partner ecosystem.
    
  • Google Cloud is the cornerstone of the answer to how to make money as a partner with Google Cloud, and the challenge is
    
  
  
• Commit to a spend dollar problem.21:06
  
  • The commit problem, committing to a spend dollar is not fiscally responsible to a three year, five year, annual fiscal cycle in government.
    
  • The public sector subscription agreement.
    
  • The best partners are those with engineering and tech skills, understanding the technology and how to apply it to partner and customer requirements.
    
  • How to get momentum with partners.
    
  
  
• Google’s strategy in generative Ai.25:23
  
  • Insight Minnesota and Deloitte are partners in Google technology to produce outcomes, giving back to the partner community.
    
  • Google is partner first, telling partner stories with customers and partner outcomes.
    
  • Google’s strategy in generative AI. The long game is making sure the answers and technology derived can really meet mission outcomes.
    
  • How Google is helping with common data exploration problems.
    
  
  
• What’s coming in the future of the company?30:23
  
  • Applying AI and what is coming in the future. They are just getting started on the problem set.
    
  • How to connect with a partner today.
    
  • The spark that got him on the path to this amazing success in his career, and why he is passionate about this customer set.
    
  • Why he’s passionate about helping veterans.
    
  
  
• Who would you invite to your dinner party?34:57
  
• Advice for partners on building their business this year.39:36
  

Google Leaders Featured on Ultimate Guide to Partnering

https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/179-precision-partnering-with-google-cloud-unlocking-a-30-billion-opportunity-for-tech-leaders/

https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/182-how-google-cloud-is-helping-isv-partners-drive-customer-success/

https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/183-how-does-google-clouds-partner-engineering-drive-the-use-of-ai-for-good/

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partner, government, google, technology, cloud, public sector, building, days, customers, business, outcomes, working, ai, mission, great, troy, ag, organization, services, hockey puck

SPEAKERS

Vince Menzione, Troy Bertram

Vince Menzione  00:04

Are you eager to explore the fascinating world of innovative cloud capabilities and their impact on the public sector markets? Are you looking to learn how one of the big three hyperscalers took a unique approach to solve for the strict compliance requirements of government security? Are you ready to tap into the opportunity to partner with Google clouds innovative public sector business? Well, whether you’re a seasoned business owner, and Alliance strategist, or a passionate entrepreneur ready to tap into new opportunities, then you come to the right place. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide department, where technology leaders come to optimize results through successful partnering. I’m Vince Menzione euros and today I welcome Troy Bertram, the Executive Managing Director of Google clouds public sector business. In this episode drawing I discuss Google’s partner led and partner first approach to the public sector, the company’s extraordinary commitment to building this business, how it uniquely reached the highest levels of compliance and security to support the most stringent government customers and why partners need to consider Google as they build their business strategy. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcome Troy Bertram. Troy, welcome to the podcast.

Troy Bertram  01:42

Thanks, Vince. It’s great to be here and excited to talk about our mission outcomes for our customers in education and government.

Vince Menzione  01:51

I am so excited to welcome you finally, as a guest and ultimate guide department. You’re the Executive Managing Director of Google’s public sector partner ecosystem. Your role is so exciting and your mandate is so important. So I thought we’d start there. Google set up this group just about a year ago. So I was hoping you could take us through the organization’s mission and your role as a separate operating unit under alphabet. And it is the only one under the alphabet Google umbrella.

Troy Bertram  02:22

We are part of Google Cloud. Thomas Kurian is our CEO and Karen de has joined us this past year to lead Google public sector. Our charter is unique in that we are mission oriented outcome to support the US government and educational institutions. My team’s mission, we’ve been added since May of last year. And it was to build a world class partner organization focused on partner outcomes. We go to market through partners 100%. It’s aligning to our partners with human capital, and investing in partner development manager, partner engineers that augment our sales and our engineering teams and builders that are building to JW c, c, and c to we which is national security, three letter intelligence agencies and Department of Defense outcomes. But that experience in building to those very stringent requirements permeates all the way down and through educational institutions like tier one r1 research institutions, or all about local school districts that are challenged through the pandemic, to deliver student outcomes or help students connect to technology in a world where cybersecurity attacks are happening daily. And yet we need continuity of government and continuity of education is state and local government also part the mandate of the organization. Yes, our sled business as we refer to it as state and local in education. And that is a single team. My peer leads that business and Brett Mitchell, and that is really where our deepest Google relationships are. While we may be new, as a business unit supporting government, especially federal government, at the cleared national security level, we’ve been in the education business for decades. So the academic institutions, all the research institutions, right that falls under let they have connection connective tissue to the government agencies,

Vince Menzione  04:37

when you start talking about things like CGS, which is Criminal Justice Information Systems, that ties federal law enforcement back to local state and local law enforcement as well. So it makes perfect sense that you brought this all together as one cohesive unit. And as you know, I’ve interviewed several Google leaders recently, in fact, we got to meet back in May at an

Troy Bertram  04:58

amazing time. piece of property on the wharf in New York City where we got a chance to connect with many of our ISVs as well,

Vince Menzione  05:07

was such a great forum. And it was striking at that time, Google made some very significant announcements around AI. And you’ve been seeing from Google that you’ve been on a tear, you’ve been playing this fast catch up, as I’ll say, the third dominant hyper scalar. And you’re no stranger to the space. So tell us why you’re excited to be leading this organization at this time.

Troy Bertram  05:32

Every one I speak with 100% is positive on Google. They want our products and our services, they’re super excited about our commitment to public sector. In we’re working to turn that positivity into help with accreditation, and driving revenue through our partners, we need to get more training, we need to get them more familiar with our products and services. Because you mentioned and we fully acknowledge it, we’re playing catch up. The great part is we’ve got amazing technology and footprint in our commercial regulated industries, whether it’s insurance, or its energy sector, or gaming or financial services, great strengths of product and services across the alphabet portfolio. Now is the time to apply that those learnings, the partnerships the technology into government in a big way. We’re also not new, from a human capital perspective, in 2013, when I was at AWS as employee 45, helping the first migrations in the first workloads in the government, it was all around what is cloud? And how do I know I’m secure? And and I really liked my servers, and I want to see the blinking lights, when can I visit your data center? And the answer was, you can’t. That’s the intent of public cloud, in security of the cloud and in the cloud. And things like gov clouds became a thing. Well, the reality is nowadays, Gov cloud isn’t needed anymore. That was built because you couldn’t get physical and logical separation, approved through FedRAMP and get an A to Google’s approach, because we could learn from those that came before us is we don’t need or have a gulf cloud, per se, up to the Aisle Five accreditation level. We got to not spend and build those large facilities. We focus time and energy on the engineering efforts to get that accreditation on our commercial cloud, which is unique. It’s novel. But it’s also one of the things that makes me so excited because we can scale differently in this second decade of government, public cloud computing. Yeah, I want to peel

Vince Menzione  07:58

back on this a little bit. Troy right. So when you were in AWS in your role, I was in Microsoft, in my role leading the public sector partner business, we were kind of bookends if you will, at that point, because Google really wasn’t in the space yet. And yeah, we were standing up Guf clouds, we stood up a gov cloud on the Microsoft side you had on AWS, let’s I’ll call it what it is. We were sort of playing catch up to you at that point. But we had to set up in these discrete data centers we had everything had to be separated. And one of the challenges that we had, you had as well. And both of those organizations still have is the catch up on the technology side, right. So tell our listeners why that’s so unique, what you’ve done at Google.

Troy Bertram  08:38

Yeah, and what we both found at either one of those other cloud providers is classification of data. Whether you’re a commercial company like a Raytheon, Lockheed, or Boeing Defense, or you’re a financial services company in the US, and also my experiences at Amazon Web Services, was that our remit there was global public sector in nature. So whether it was working with Canada, on protected B and C, or IRAP. In Australia, what’s now become sovereign cloud requirements across Europe, or the emergence of a G Cloud contract vehicle that’s Now in its ninth or 10th instantiation in the UK is global governments all at the same challenge. They want or have data sovereignty requirements. They also are governed by laws and regulations that really set the rules of the road of how government buys and partners can sell. But what we really saw was in gov cloud requirements, or in migration and movements to the cloud is commercial companies. Yours at the time in Microsoft or mine at the time in Amazon, we’re launching products and services at such a rapid rate, but not considering the security and compliance requirements for government. So you had a service parity problem, that was always something was launched at AWS reinvent. And still, today is a challenge nine months later, 12 months later, working through the accreditation, to bring that amazing technology to bear to support government missions, there was always a lag and continues to be a lake when you have separate clouds built for a unique discrete customer environment. That’s why our approach is unique. And it’s different. And it’s setting a pathway for service parity across all of the new products and services. When you build for that security paradigm in mind. It ultimately drives that organizational agility, it strengthens the brand. We think it is the long term strategy of bringing AI or transformative tech to market. It’s much beyond compute and storage. It’s about outcomes.

Vince Menzione  11:09

What you said is so telling right now we’re seeing tectonic shifts, right? The technology is evolving so quickly, right now, we can have nine months to a year of lag time as you bring out technology. So this approach is just astounding to me, as somebody in the tech sector, probably for our listeners and partners as well. You know, we also talked about the way you set up the organization. And we were just talking about your board and your sounding board on Sunday, you share a little bit about where you’ve been the last few days with your meat. Yes.

Troy Bertram  11:38

So we hosted in Austin, Texas, our quarterly board meeting, and just some amazing energy focused on our board, bringing decades and really centuries of experience in government, whether it’s a former two term governor in our state and local business, or it’s a current university president, or a four star Special Operations Command or Air Force, Space Force Commanding General, or a Surgeon General that really understands health care from the perspective of serving our veterans. And as a veteran, something that’s near and dear and passionate to my heart is how do we help not only those men and women serving in uniforms of all types, you mentioned, sieges, first responders, police force, or active duty or National Guard in when you ask about state and local government, really the tie ins to state and local start at our National Guard level. So how do we work across in pull the customer experience from our board of directors and made sure that where we’re going that first and foremost, it’s about supporting mission outcomes. It’s about empowering everyone in the organization to innovate. And it really goes to five key areas. It’s focused on the user. What do we need to do to improve the mission of that educator, or the mission of that tax examiner, or the adjudicator for benefits to make sure that their pain benefits in a timely manner? There’s a out on YouTube, you’ll find a recent quick snippet few minutes from the state of Wisconsin that says how they use Google technology to adjudicate benefits that were mountains of paper piles, that now citizens can get paid for their citizens services and benefits in days versus months. That’s delivering a Citizen Service outcome. But it’s focused on the user. It’s think 10x. How do we think about where we’re going and make technology 10x Better delivered 10x better outcomes. It’s really think that exponentially. Its launch and iterate, which is what we’re doing with partners, we’re launching, AI, we’re building we’re iterating thinking about problem solving with them, we default to an open architecture. So if the computer storage is on prem, or it’s in somebody else’s cloud, that’s fine. Let’s work with new data where it resides. This isn’t about just moving data around. It’s about using the data, harnessing making decisions. And then innovation comes everywhere in the organization. So talking with the board around what are the needs and wants of a governor in managing his or her state? Are they really fundamentally any different than the special operator out at the tactical edge? No, the mission is different. But ultimately, how do you harness technology to have better outcomes?

Vince Menzione  14:56

So you mentioned five things I focus on user think tenant next launch and iterate. Innovation was fourth

Troy Bertram  15:03

default to an open to fall to architecture, right? Everything we’re building is an open architecture. And then the innovation comes from everywhere. And it’s important to me that we always ask that question of innovation from everywhere, across our organizations, Good ideas are not isolated to a boardroom, or to senior leaders. They come from every piece of the business. Many of our commercial companies that are supporting traditionally Small, Medium Business or large enterprises, why was in New York, when we met is talking to those innovative ISVs that may not know how to work with government, right? They’re scared of the contracting process, or the routes to market? Or how do I get started, or I’ve heard about this in detail, or a site sibor, we always start. And so our job is cultivate that partnership and their technology, work with the founders work with the CEO. They’re helped through the routes to market, but also it’s connecting to contract vehicles. Because at the scene of the day, every technology company wants one thing when they come into government to know how long is it going to take? And how do I get there? Because they believe and I believe that it’s a consistent revenue stream of customers that need and want our technology. But getting to a contract vehicle, and the path to revenue of how do I make money in the cloud? Or how do I make money with Google is ultimately what every single partnership is about. So that innovation comes from everywhere, it’s tapping into innovation and non traditional pockets of government, and bringing those technologies to bear.

Vince Menzione  16:57

You know, you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that you are a partner first organization, what do you see from the best partnerships that you work with?

Troy Bertram  17:06

I’m actually going to start with answering the question on one of the most important things that we do, because every body thinks of the word partnership, and they envision something different. So it’s galvanizing on a few terms in government. And it’s really partner segmentation. We have regional national systems integrators, they’re focused on a region where they’re focused on a horizontal there may be in transportation, or they’re in education, they’re in ad tech, right, clearly defined what their mission outcomes are and who their customers are. Then there’s our ISV population, our independent software vendor SAS providers that build great tech that are looking for how do they use our partner ecosystem to accelerate those routes to market, then we have small social, economic disadvantaged partners that the government Small Business Administration, identifies as a day service disabled veteran owned small businesses, HUBZone women known historically, black college diversity areas that are routes to market and contract vehicles are very important, especially in civilian government agencies. So clearly working to curate work with those small businesses that can’t become large, right, by cap by statute, they are exactly where they want to be. And where the founders started those company, we have to curate them from a large Google partner ecosystem and give them unique support to help them grow their business. And then we’ve got the federal systems integrators and the global systems integrators, the Accenture’s, that Deloitte, the CGI is of the world or our national scale partners that have been working with our customers for decades. We know them from your Microsoft days, I know the movie, on my Dell days, it’s CD W, it sets a chai, it’s insight, but it’s us thinking about working with them differently than if I can elaborate on exactly what I mean, I think it’s the cornerstone of the answer to how do I make money as a partner with Google Cloud? And the challenge is that historically speaking, the consumption based economics of cloud have really been hard. It used to be in the days when we were selling hardware or partnering with companies that were you built your ship, you invoice and a salesperson knew exactly what their margin at a partner they were paid on, and you got paid in 40 five to 90 days from the government. And then you looked at, okay, what’s the lifecycle of that software license or that hardware license? Cloud flip that dynamics upside down in the public sector? Just 10 years ago with the award of the C two s contract vehicle. So partners had to learn along the way. But my experience globally is that government wants a solution. 80% of that bid is Ford services. It’s for human capital, it’s for come implement, run, operate something 20% is for infrastructure. But if that systems integrator that prime contractor can’t get right, what the consumption is going to be over three to five years, that’s their biggest risk is why they were reluctant to scale in government. How do you price that? How do you bid and win and manage to profitability over three to five years, there’s things called enterprise agreements or EA is right, we have that too. It’s called a commit. Problem is that just committing to a spend dollar, it’s not being fiscally responsible to a three year five year annual fiscal cycle in government. So we’ve done the public sector subscription agreement that our teams did the engineering are working to a government specifications, pass that through our distribution partners care software at TD senex, with a single SKU from a fixed price, or a duration of the contract where they can use them leverage any of our Google tech. So we innovate, we launch a new product, it comes out in our commercial regions meets government requirements, customer can use that they can innovate. We want them to, we want them to innovate new products, services outcomes, because that way our partners can expand. They can renew contracts, they can upsell, but it’s delivering what the government’s always wanted in a unique way. And that’s tell me how much this is going to cost. I need a firm fixed price board so I can budget for it.

Vince Menzione  22:10

And it sounds like you’ve simplified the process, you’ve been able to achieve that objective, which is so hard in the in the cloud space, as we both know,

Troy Bertram  22:18

we have COVID was the catalyst, because eight and local governments needed a solution. Now I need a COVID. Tracker, I need to modernize my government services because I need driver’s license motor vehicle registration, I need this implemented in two days, two weeks, how much is it going to cost me Give me a fixed dollar amount. Because I have a budget I need to know. We learned a lot through COVID. And now we can bring that to bear across all government.

Vince Menzione  22:51

So let’s dive in on the right type of partners, the best partners, the ones that you see that do the best results within your business. And this goes back to your Dell days and your AWS days, what do you see from the best of the best?

Troy Bertram  23:04

Those that have engineering? tech skills, right? It’s understanding the technology and how to apply it against either partner or customer requirements. And thinking about what pieces parts components of that solution, very few of our customers will ever have only a single piece of technology in their procurement. It will be multiple ISV solutions. So keeping it simple, across the partner landscape book, here’s what we do. Here’s the problem. This assaults, not speeds and feeds, the best partners talk about problems and outcomes. And it starts with technical expertise. But then it focuses on the sales motions. Who is the customer? What problem are we trying to solve? And then how do we get momentum starts with a single referenceable customer, if the customer will tell the story. That is the best sales motion you have, because government our taxpayer dollars are not spent on innovative, groundbreaking new technology, right? So how do we speed up that innovation cycle? We find the customers that can break down that cycle, accelerate, and then we help them tell their story. Every educational institution wants to talk about the innovation that they have for their student outcomes. It’s now law in many states state of Texas here my home state is for community colleges. It’s now a lot to report on student outcome because of the volume of federal and state money. So how do we help them do that? It’s a data problem. And then how do we find forums and off of which to help our partners tell those storaged I’m looking forward to our next conference here in a couple of weeks in San Francisco, where my panel that I’m presenting on is not about Google speeds and feeds or tech, that a customer on stage from the state of Minnesota, man, it’s awesome. You’re on stage from the state of California, talking about how they worked with partners. And in this case, Insight Minnesota and Deloitte in California, in Google technology to produce outcomes. That’s us giving back to the partner community of the best thing that Google can do is our advertising footprint our market share is telling a partner story. And I am not going to put out a press release a wind wire, or any blog in the public sector, without the reference to a partner, because we’re partner First, there’s a partner on every deal, we’re going to tell those stories with customers and partner outcomes. And that is a different way of thinking about accelerating the business.

Vince Menzione  26:05

I’m so excited to announce our continued partnership with ag one. Many of you know, I made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health. And well being over six years ago, I found athletic greens. And now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day, it covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity, and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five free ag one travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vince M. That’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vince M, check it out. So exciting. We’re going to provide links in our show notes to that session. I believe viewers can watch it right remotely, you don’t have to physically at the

Troy Bertram  27:17

start of the next partner sessions. So it should be open to all registered partners. So

Vince Menzione  27:24

generative AI, right. It’s been on the top of everyone’s mind these days. And we talked about the event in May and some of the information and also the Google IO event that took place simultaneously. Some believe that Google got a later start than the other guys. And I was at that event in New York with you, as we discussed and heard from your leaders. What is Google’s strategy in generative AI? Well, we definitely

Troy Bertram  27:48

didn’t get a late start, right? We’ve been in AI for a long time. When we think about the culture of innovation, it’s in our principles. It’s absolutely Google principals about an amazing world class commercial brand that we have bringing innovation to government. Examples of that include generative AI, and it’s really around the long game is making sure that the answers and technology derived can really meet mission outcomes. It’s one thing for you or I to go ask for a sample of a planet trip for me. It’s another for us to make, you know, very informed, long term decisions that have Canaves national or regional impact through only technology. And so when we think about the human experience, it’s the culture and procurement barriers that exist in government, that lock government adoption of Peck, how do we help break those down? So our long game is working with our federal government and our state government on AI principles, both ours and theirs, about how tech will be adopted, and then it’s finding better ways to do mission support. But we are doing that today, through applied AI and machine learning, right? Whether it’s enterprise search for government, it’s conversational AI, it’s see AI call centers, that ocean in the local language of a citizen, that English may not be a first language. How do we help with the Common Data Exploration problems of I’m searching a website, but I don’t really get the answer because it’s stagnant. It existed forever, or it’s got pointers to five other government agencies. That tech exists today to give me the answer I’m searching for without redirecting me to another site. What is Google search? That’s the extent One of Google searches every one of us. That’s where we go. Right? We’re looking for answers to Open Data Set problems. And whether it’s automated document processing, I gave the example of Wisconsin taking a mountain of data, automating it to make real time decisions, or multilingual chat capabilities that exists now, across website. That’s applying AI. What’s coming in the future, super excited of Wilkin we go with large language models. But we’re just getting started on that problem set,

Vince Menzione  30:37

some really exciting things happening in your world. And I if I’m a partner, I’m going to be pretty excited about potentially working with your organization. Try how can they more effectively work with your organization? If I’m a partner listening or watching today, what can I do to enlist in role be part of your world? Yeah,

Troy Bertram  30:56

in half, I think we should also post my work contact information, because it starts with a conversation, right? It’s that, here’s what we’re good at. Here’s what we don’t know. Here’s the addressable market, we’d like to start with. And I start every conversation with oftentimes backing up that partner conversation that starts, I want to connect with your field sellers. Okay. But let’s use a analogy to building a house. If the law means not in place, you move into that house, you transact that first transaction, and it doesn’t go well. That second, third, fifth transaction doesn’t scale. Let’s get the plumbing in place first accreditations into our partner programs, connect the contract vehicles. Then we run sales plays, we do outbound calls, then we get sales 101. At that point, that’s when we connect to regional sellers on the ground with a solution in a contract vehicle. We meet the customers together, then we market, we blog, we talk about on stage, the solution, then we get scale, we do the plumbing first. And it starts with contact us work with us aligned to a partner development manager and a partner engineer on our team so that we can get you to the appropriate technology intersections.

Vince Menzione  32:30

So let’s just shift gears here. As you know, I’m fascinated with the career journey. You’ve had an incredible career. Was there a spark that got you on the path to this amazing success that you’ve had in your career?

Troy Bertram  32:43

Yeah, I get asked this question oftentimes in mentorship sessions of how to think about a career journey in mind really was I didn’t find technology as my career path. Right? It found me. But it does go back to why I’m passionate about this customer set. And as we were talking about before we started university of Minnesota, and ROTC was my Pathak, both of my parents were educated. My sister and I graduated high school the same day, and we were both going off to college, or to Berkeley in I myself to University of Minnesota and an ROTC scholarship. It was a way to fund college. And through that experience, and some amazing mentors that had get a career to service to the US Army. One of those mentors, his name was Brian sing Bush. He has since passed away, but he was a special operator, and a sniper during Mogadishu. But I thought I wanted to be an infantry officer. And over multiple conversations and mentor ship sessions, he’s a toy. The next conflicts hopefully don’t involve humans on the ground. Right there. Need military intelligence officers, communications officers or signal officers, right. It’s going to be through the advent of technology. And he helped steer me towards the pathway that was the start of my career. I spent time as a signal officer first deployment, or really, for my first assignment is 21 years old. I’m in Korea. So I really got the perspective will greet 18 months of the global landscape and the networking architecture that ties our world together. And then at Fort Bragg. I had a career direction change jumped out of an airplane one night. The result didn’t go well ruptured discs in my back. And was that change in career direction? Why I’m passionate about helping our veterans and those servicemen and women that are transitioning. Maybe it was planned for them. Maybe it wasn’t.

Vince Menzione  34:57

So I have a favorite question. At This is what I love to ask, especially my special guests like you. You’re hosting a dinner party, and you could have this dinner party anywhere in the world, we could talk about that. And you can invite any three guests from the present, or the past, to this amazing dinner party. Who would you invite Troy? And why?

Troy Bertram  35:20

Having listened to multiple of your podcast, this is a question I thought about for a while, because I think it’s fascinating. But I’m gonna start off and say I am in sales, after all. So I’m going to try to upsell and say, three guests. It’s not enough. That’s just, that’s just the small round table. Let’s think about you know, expanding that a little bit. I want to keep it intimate. But I’m asking for six.

Vince Menzione  35:44

So all right, we’re gonna make the table larger,

Troy Bertram  35:47

we’re gonna make a table. So as we’ve talked about my history and background, I think, a hit from a military perspective, a Dwight Eisenhower, right now one of only five generals that ever reached five star and is known as a historical tactician, but he also went on to be President of the United States. On the politics side, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, distinguished gentleman, right one has an amazing legacy of preserving the union, ending slavery, creating the possibility of freedoms in the US, and Ronald Reagan for all the work pre Cold War, in changing the economy. I have to as a big sports guy, it has to be her Brooks, I got to meet Coach Brooks, as a young hockey player, I skated on the ice with him as a coach in Minnesota. We all know, I believe in miracles and the 80 Olympic team, by Sid pharmacy, setting a goal working hard, and then capitalizing on a few breaks. I mean, beating the Russians is what we all know and think about in the Olympics. That was not the gold medal game. I like to remind people all the time, that was another game to play the next day. Imagine how hard that is when the greatest accomplishment that nobody believed you could do wasn’t for the gold medal, you have to go play the next day. And you had to come from behind again, I doubt Tiger Woods as well. Not because of the legacy. I am a golfer my son’s on the high school golf team. But I’m fascinated by the PGA policy board assignment this week, right of taking a player, it’s in the latter stages of his professional career. But that is really leading a global set of golfers that either want to or desire to be PGA professionals, or today, in that big business, have a policy board and all the global implications that it has in that transition also to the Polit, the political environment, I think that will be a fascinating one to watch. And then the other two people I’d add Joe Rogan podcaster. I’d love to

Vince Menzione  38:16

have Joe Rogan here on the podcast, on a moral level, bring iCast gear with me now. So

Troy Bertram  38:22

literally, and fellow austenite, right as Jove moved to Austin, but why I think that is that the narrative changes of how technology, right, this platform that we’re on today, the ability to take journalism, and change the paradigm of how we’re delivering from paper to television, to now the power of the internet, youtube, anything I want to do or learn about, it’s now on YouTube, right? In an amazing Google property. It’s also why and how our global network was built out. It was to support all the Google and alphabet properties. And then the last one that’s near and dear to my heart. So the sixth person I’m bringing, I’m going to bring my son Tanner, because this experience is about the next generation. And I would not want him to not get to have the experience real hand from sports, military entertainment, in some of the best policy and military minds that we’ve ever had. I love that question. No. And it was a fun one to think through of curating that table. Because there’s a lot of great choices out there.

Vince Menzione  39:39

Well, you know, we gotta do Tiger Woods is down here at Jupiter, so we could host it in Jupiter, but your choice on locations we could decide and then certainly I would want to at least come by I have to help you make a bigger table so maybe you could fit it out the person. I certainly would love to be in this room. What a fascinating Congress events

Troy Bertram  39:57

look at you upsell into I love it. That’s what partnerships are about, you know, that’s what Fox leadership’s are about. It’s a given get.

Vince Menzione  40:05

So that leads, it’s right. You’ve been an amazing guy. So excited to have you share your story today, spend some time, I’m gonna have to have you back. I’m looking forward to spending more time with you in the future. But what advice do you have for our partners that wishing to build their business this year? This again, this has been a year where we’ve seen some headwinds, but it’s still the most exciting year I remember. And And again, we talked about working with your organization. But what about building their business

Troy Bertram  40:31

this year? Yeah. It is about slowing down. To speed up, we used to talk about that all the time in the military to go faster. Sometimes you need to slow down, get really concentrated, keep it simple. understand who you are, as a company, what technology you’re really great at delivering today, what your business model is, and have a vision of where you want to go. But I use a prop all the time for my teams. Last year on stage I talked about it. It’s a hockey puck, it is clearly identifiable. It’s one inch by three inches weighs six ounces, made of galvanized rubber. If you’ve never played hockey, you know what it is, you know what it’s used for? All of our programs, all of our offerings, all of the routes to market have to be as simple to identify and understand as a hockey puck. And if they are, then when we present them to customers. There’s an aha moment. I know what to do with this. I know how to buy it. I know how to measure its success and get repeatability. So it does go back to keep it simple, to go faster. And think about a hockey puck with everything we do. Because it’s identifiable, and I get how to then take and work with you as a company, or I endeavor to make my programs as simple as that hockey puck. If I don’t, my ask some partners, raise your hand, tell me, this isn’t what I need. And we’ll iterate and we’ll change and we’ll adapt.

Vince Menzione  42:14

I love this advice for any person working in the business sector. But especially working with you in your organization. Troy, so great to have you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering. I so enjoyed our time today.

Troy Bertram  42:26

Yeah, thank you very much look forward to talking to you soon in the future. And also hopefully at next here this month or at our public sector event in Washington DC in early October.

Vince Menzione  42:40

Really looking forward to it. Thank you so much joy. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Dry was just an amazing guests such an incredible public sector leader, a disabled veteran, partner and business leader at Dell, AWS and now Google Cloud. If you want to see Troy’s session at next, or attend his event, follow the link in the show notes. I want to thank you for listening and joining ultimate partner. If you liked today’s episode, please hit the subscribe button at the top of this podcast. And if you’d like to stay ahead of all the exciting announcements and excite coming to ultimate guide to partner please sign up to our newsletter at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com. And stay tuned as we have so much more planned ahead to help you achieve your greatest results. Thank you for listening. And thank you for following the ultimate guide department.