LivePerson global partnerships SVP on pitching new tech to partners and the Aussie ecosystem

Rich Steeves speaks exclusively to CRN Australia about how the company now has a partner-always mindset.

The past few years and the explosion of AI has been one of the more accelerated business transformations leaders have seen in their careers.

But how do vendors sell to partners a new technology, that changes constantly and might not be something they’re familiar with?

Rich Steeves, SVP of global partnerships, LivePerson speaks to CRN Australia exclusively about how they pitch their platform and technology to partners.

He explained that the AI hype has taken the imagination of customers by storm and has challenged their businesses.

“It's fair to say that partners had to rethink their go to market, their investments and their capabilities as well,” he said.

The good news, according to Steeves is that many partners have been through these large-scale IT transformations.

“Part of it is aligning to the skills and the books that we've run in the past around whether it was the cloud migration, driving digital transformation initiatives and now AI at scale,” he said.

“It was aligning to where the technology was, where the partners were, and understanding what was it going to take to deliver real ROI for those brands as they're considering a fundamentally new technology?”

Steeves explained that they’ve finding value from their partners not only through the technology but through wholesale business transformation.

"Providing those trusted advisor skills and capabilities that customers need and that our partners are well equipped to provide,” he said.

“It's more a business operations question of what does that unlock n terms of potential value, of where your resources located? How are you going to operate differently? Are there low cost or alternative markets that you could build your contact centre in now that you've unlocked this new capability?

“Wrapping all of that around for our partners, they're, they're incredibly skilled at doing this, particularly those that have focused on consultative services led selling.”

Conversational AI bringing new opportunities for partners

Steeves is seeing conversational AI bringing in new revenue streams for partners.

He said there's two ends of the spectrum that they are seeing right now.

"Certainly a lot of new entrants into the market, because the technology accelerates the partner business model as much as the customer business model. Their ability to show impact beyond POCs can get challenged,” he said.

Steeves explained he is seeing an increase of a lot of partner-to-partner relationships.

“Where some new, particularly services led partners, are building strategic alliances with some of the larger, more influential players in the market, and then together helping to drive value at those brands,” he said.

He uses an example on how LivePerson builds partnerships and alliances.

“Similarly, Liveperson, when we think about the shape of our ecosystem, it's how do we take the thought leadership and the industry presence of like a Deloitte Digital.

“Combining that with a Helium who's uniquely qualified to solve the needs of partners in a conversational commerce or retail or marketing setting?

“Finding those combinations is what really gets interesting in this space,” he added.

Liveperson’s role in the Australian channel ecosystem

LivePerson has been in Australia for more than 15 years and they have 10 strategic partners in the country including Deloitte Digital and Tech Mahindra.

Steeves explained how LivePerson has changed within Australian ecosystem over the past year.

He said the company has moved from an opportunistic relationship in the market to a partner always mindset.

“As I came on board as Sandy Hogan, our chief revenue officer, as John Sabino, our CEO came on board. We fundamentally believe that certainly in this space and with AI that this was going to be a partner led market and opportunity, and we were going to be a partner always company,” he said.

“We fundamentally shifted the ecosystem to be partner always. It's represented as one of the top KPIs when the within the company all the way up to the board level. It's one of the top three pillars of what we're strategically aligned to in the market.”

From an opportunity standpoint in Australia,Steeves said he is seeing some of the more innovative and forward leaning AI use cases, particularly in the regulated industries are emerging.

“What we've seen over the course of the last six to nine months is the number of the projects that had started that maybe began as you know, individual POCs have proven value and are now moving into production use cases,” he said.

“Our estimate is within that space, the ability to drive to scale and adoption within the space is significantly increasing.”

He highlighted the importance of doing this with a trusted partner.

“Many of these brands have piloted a lot and got involved in a lot of POCs that rose to nowhere. When they're able to work with a partner that's able to demonstrate real impactful ROI around how many concurrent conversations can you land on the platform?

“Have you really made an impact on your CSAT, and tangibly related to the platform? Is that leading to higher customer loyalty and an impact on revenue? Can we move beyond point POCs for maybe a copilot or an agent facing AI use case, and can we create customer facing AI opportunities?”

“That's what I'm seeing in the market today, is the willingness to move past the lessons learned, doing it in a trusted and governed way, and then choosing strategic partners that are going to work with those brands on that journey,” he ended.