GoTo Channel Chief: Partnerships Are Integral To Our Success

‘A channel can be very much associated with just being transactional, but we want to have true partnerships, partnerships working together to impact this market in a positive way,’ says Michael Day, GoTo channel chief.

Michael Day is no stranger to the channel. With 20 years of experience in the industry, he’s excited for his next adventure at Boston-based web conferencing software firm GoTo as the company’s vice president of partner sales.

“I’m so excited just to see everything collaboratively put under one roof, two very clean product lines of GoTo Connect and GoTo Resolve,” Day told CRN. “And the power and the excitement of the partner community, that’s really what‘s got me going.”

The software company rebranded from LogMeIn to GoTo earlier this year after some brand identity soul searching and the launch of a new platform, GoTo Resolve, that combines support and communication solutions all in one application.

Following the recent rebrand, GoTo also announced the new GoTo Partner Network, which Day will head up by having a greater global focus and more ways for the growing ecosystem of partners to bring in more customers and increase revenue.

Day most recently spent more than five years at unified communications and collaboration (UCC) provider RingCentral. Prior to that, he was at SCRAM Systems, a leading provider of software solutions for the criminal justice and government industry, for more than 13 years.

Patrick McCue, GoTo’s former channel chief, was tapped as vice president of partner sales for LastPass, the password manager that’s being spun off as a standalone cloud security company.

CRN spoke with Day, who took on his new position in April, about taking on his new role, his vision for partnerships and how he plans to grow the new partner network.

What attracted you to GoTo?

When you think about the rebrand of what GoTo went through. That rebrand was more than just the name and the logo. You could have had 14 different products, nine different websites and three different partner programs, and the beauty of the executive team that started all of this is that we now have a very unified platform. It’s a unified platform in the traditional essence of the UCaaS. The whole other side of the house with our GoTo Resolve, I’m so excited just to see everything collaboratively put under one roof, two very clean product lines of GoTo Connect and GoTo Resolve. And the power and the excitement of the partner community, that’s really what’s got me going.

When I was announced here, I had more partners reach out than I ever thought and the first question was, ‘Tell me again, what are all the GoTo products?’ Now that we have this simplified messaging, simplified branding, they’re starting to see that there’s a whole level of value that I can provide to others that I can only do through GoTo.

What are some of the initial things you want to tackle in your new position?

One of the most important items is who are the partner managers at GoTo. Our people are going to be so integral to our success for so many reasons. After that, it’s getting out there and seeing the partners. It‘s a lot of the partners I’ve known for so many years, I just wear a different name tag now when I go and see them. It’s about understanding where are they in their journey to be trusted advisors to their customers and getting the feedback from the customer community so we can innovate the product to meet what the customers need. It‘s also about getting the feedback from the partners as well to understand where they are today and where they want to go. The biggest piece that that’s going to allow us to do is transform a channel program into a partner program. A channel can be very much associated with just being transactional, but we want to have true partnerships, partnerships working together to impact this market in a positive way.

You will also be leading the GoTo partner network. What can we see from that?

The GoTo partner network is very strong. We have over 4,000 partners participating in it actively. And it‘s global, it’s not just North America, it‘s our team in South America, it’s our team in Asia Pacific, it’s our team in Europe. It is truly a global partner program where we have areas to continue to improve upon and deliver back to partners where we are in the world and the product set that customers are asking for. There‘s not a lot of fixing, it’s really just accelerating the growth because of all the great components are there for the foundation.

What are your thoughts on all of the M&A happening in the industry?

It shows how healthy, probably healthier than ever, this global channel is. There’s some really, really smart people in the M&A world. They know when to go after a market if it’s going to be highly profitable, so I get excited to say if the investor community is paying attention to the partner world and where we are right now with UCaaS and security, it shows the validity of the market, giving us all an outstanding opportunity to take advantage of it.

What is one of the biggest challenges you’re seeing and how do you plan on overcoming that in your role?

It‘s not a challenge, but it’s an opportunity and it is this rebrand. The rebrand is to shout, ‘Why is there such a big yellow energy everywhere.’ The black and yellow colors are who we are right now. All the products that had names from the LogMeIn side and how under GoTo it’s all unified and consolidated is much easier to transact with and much easier to work with. I don’t think it’s ever challenge, I think of it as an outstanding opportunity to just shout from the mountaintops who we are and our brand and all the things that are now available to the partners through GoTo.