The Future Is Now: Brent Fraser Of Americas at Partnerize On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
Ask for help. Most people are willing to share wisdom and guidance from their life experience. As I reflect back over the years, I have been fortunate to have some great mentors, but I could have established those relationships earlier in my career. I sometimes imagine what could have unfolded with earlier involvement and influence by some of these people.
As a part of our series about cutting-edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brent Fraser, SVP & GM, Americas at Partnerize.
Brent Fraser is an entrepreneurial leader with an emphasis on scaling revenue in Marketing Cloud / SaaS, eCommerce, Advertising Technology and Customer Engagement with expertise in SMB and Enterprise segments. With a strong balance between strategy, go-to-market execution and grit, Brent is passionate about driving results.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I started my career path in the mid to late nineties, during the era of Internet 1.0. That’s really when I first got exposure to this crazy thing called the internet. Growing up in Silicon Valley, all of my friends’ parents worked at Apple, Intel, IBM, and the like. So, when I started my career with the internet, that’s when everybody was starting to express interest in getting involved with it somehow. Back then the internet was text, static pages and AOL. That was my introduction to the digital space.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
A bit later, I joined a company called the @Home Network back in the late nineties. We had fewer than 100,000 homes in the U.S. that were connected to the internet with a high-speed broadband pipe. Basically the entire country was on dial up and we were the only company that was delivering this high-speed access. All the cable companies had invested in this company, @Home. And the dream there was providing high speed internet access, ubiquitous connectivity, and the connected home. We knew it was going to change the world. It sounded kind of cool back then for me, but, fast forwarding now to today, it actually happened.
Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
One of my big charters is retention and driving growth and expansion of our client base. We’re looking at using AI in multiple ways, focused on our install base and our internal teams that serve that install base of clients. One is capacity planning and resource management. Using AI to understand how people are spending their time. This all happens in the background, and AI identifies the gaps of where time is spent and how that is aligned to different cohorts of clients. For example, with a high margin client versus a low margin client, we might be spending four hours a day on a low margin client when we could be spending one hour a day on that same client to be more efficient.
How do you think this might change the world?
AI has emerged as the key to reliable personalization within the consumer experience. It’s all about making sure you have a significantly personalized, engaging, authentic experience for consumers who frankly no longer trust the internet. And, within our business, our part of the world — partnership marketing — it becomes about building that capability and trust factor into partner discovery while having relevancy and driving commerce. There lies the challenge and the future opportunity.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks of this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I think the broader fear with AI is the possibility of everything becoming machine to machine, without a human element to it. I think that is the scary thing. If there’s no human involvement in the value chain, things could go sideways. There is value in having somebody there to balance things out and provide context behind things. The human factor is not just a quaint idea. It’s vital to authenticity. And authenticity is vital to connection, engagement and staying power. To the business operator, engagement and staying power might mean “conversion,” but essentially, no matter the scenario, the human intuition for context matters. And it always will.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
From where I now sit, the partnership solutions and services space has evolved over the last few years primarily due to the software automation and data that has been introduced into the channel. It’s really provided a lot more scale and capabilities to take advantage and enable partnerships around the world where before it was a managed service, one-to-one dynamic. Technology has really supercharged the category and the opportunity. So, watching that super-charge effect take hold has been a palpable experience, but, because what we “do” is partnerships — it’s easy to stay mindful of the value of human contribution. I don’t know that I call this a tipping point, but it’s an a-ha that has been clear. And, I’m glad for that. It carries over, as I watch all of this evolve above and beyond the space in which my teams and I operate and serve.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
By plugging the AI into other tools like email, calendar, messenger or video tools, we’re able to get real time signals on risk and opportunities for growth and customer sentiment. We’re just starting to do this now, but we’re getting the information we need. What’s really wild is that the AI can tell you what action steps to take, one being obtaining information, which is through all your different tools. Once more people realize the impact this sort of technology can cause, it should hopefully spread to more widespread adoption.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
We’ve been doing a lot of research and testing and sharing some of the results with key partners and clients. We’re in the earlier stages of obtaining all the information but are encouraged about some of the insights we’ve gained and reactions from those we’ve shared with.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I would say my dad. My dad worked for a big global pharma company based outside of the U.S. Through him, I was basically introduced to global cultures and business practices outside the U.S. We had an exchange student stay with us from Japan and another from Switzerland. We also traveled a lot outside the country. These experiences had a significant impact on helping me realize that there was a world out there beyond my four block radius.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
In a variety of rapidly changing environments throughout my career, I’ve managed to help create customer value and repeatable revenue streams for a plethora of partners. I love building teams, relationships, new business and strategic partnerships.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
- Ask for help. Most people are willing to share wisdom and guidance from their life experience. As I reflect back over the years, I have been fortunate to have some great mentors, but I could have established those relationships earlier in my career. I sometimes imagine what could have unfolded with earlier involvement and influence by some of these people.
- People are motivated in different ways. Although I’ve been a leader on sports teams growing up, and as a coach, leading teams in business is different. “Winning” as a team in business means different things to people and often requires personalized incentives.
- Older people are just people, but older. Early in my career I was intimidated by older people at work and I wish I had the confidence to speak up and share my opinion early-on. Even the greatest guides can learn from fresh, newly emerging perspective.
- “Time Reveals.” Situations and people are not often what they initially seem. I’ve hired people who interviewed extremely well and I thought would be fantastic. I would later learn they’re not a strong performer. On the other hand, I’ve hired people who were not great during the interview process, and months later ended up being a high-impact colleague.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
“Strength balanced with humility.” Have conviction and be principled, but leave space for others. I’ve learned that rigorous and fair debate when people seek to understand and seek to be understood can often drive positive outcomes.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I have a few, actually.
- “Fear is not your enemy, but your ally.” It’s important to take risks and get out of your comfort zone. We often learn the most and are enriched when we are uncomfortable and take on new challenges.
- “Have a plan, work the plan”. Getting a simple plan on paper is a good forcing function to drive clear actions to move a project or idea forward.
- “Be Stoked.” This is not about following your passion, but rather approaching your day with a positive, make-a-difference, growth mindset.
- “Embrace change.” Nothing in nature stays the same; it either grows or decays. A related classic still said by Dad today: “Grab the bull by the horns.”
Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)
I believe there’s room for a strong challenger to Yelp with a new business model. Many of the local businesses and vendors in my town use Yelp and they’re not happy. Seems to be an opportunity for Innovation that could impact millions of consumers and small business. The reviews, feedback, and recommendations sector, broadly speaking, seems to be a growing — it’s a $10BM+ market and rising.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
https://www.linkedin.com/company/partnerize/
https://www.facebook.com/partnerize/
https://www.instagram.com/partnerize/?hl=en
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
