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Today’s show featured an interview with Barb Huelskamp, Global Vice President of Channels and Alliances at SolarWinds.
Find Barb on LinkedIn.
BARB’S TIP: “Stomp out imposter syndrome. Stomp out fear. I took some fearless leaps early on that I think at this point in my career I would be a little scared to, but I did, and they paid off.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Barb, I’m very excited. We’re going to be interviewing Barb Huelskamp with SolarWinds. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Barb, as I told you, we’re launching our Partner Growth Program from the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. We actually had our 16th Annual Award Event this week. We’re doing the interview with Barb in May of 2026. We’re going to be launching the Partner Growth Program in July of 2026. Basically, what we’re looking to do, as we always do at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, is helping selling professionals become much more effective.
There are so many challenges that have happened over the last 18 months in so many different parts of the B2B and B2G marketplace and selling environment that people need new things. They need to look at their jobs differently because their customers are different. There’s been reduction in force and there’s been customers who have chosen to change. A lot of the dynamics of the channel and the ecosystem have shifted. I’m very excited.
You recently did a trip to Italy and you learn five leadership principles, which I’m very excited to delve deep into. But before we get to them, give us a little bit of an introduction. Tell the audience who you are. Did you see that Kevin James movie that came out a couple of months ago? It was called Solo Mio. Kevin James was getting married in the Tuscany region and he was stood up at the altar, not to spoil it for anybody who hasn’t seen it. But the imagery of Italy was just amazing, and the hills and the food and the vineyards. I just encourage people just to glance, just for the scenery. I’m sure you’re going to be intimating some of that as you go through your leadership principles, but just give us the introduction. Tell us who you are, and I’m very excited to delve into this.
Barb Huelskamp: I’m the vice president of our global channels and alliances here at SolarWinds. Been here just over a year and excited to learn about your Partner Growth Program because I think we’re, like many of the organizations that you mentioned, really elevating our channel organization to be strategic stakeholders and advisors to our partners. I think our teams have done a great job really leveling up to more strategic conversations on how we can help our partners, and driving great customer outcomes together, and we’ve got to do that at speed. We’ve got some great innovation on our platform. Tech is moving very fast. Customer demands are changing. AI is driving more efficiencies. Really proud of the team globally and a lot of what we’ve accomplished since I’ve been here together.
Fred Diamond: Give us a brief intro to SolarWinds for people who don’t know what your company does.
Barb Huelskamp: We are an IT monitoring, observation, and reliability platform. We help monitor everything on your network, in the cloud, devices. We were talking about some really cool use cases with the government this week with drones and other secured assets. We have a broad partner base of resellers, distributors, MSPs, GSIs, strong relationships with some of the hyperscalers as well.
Fred Diamond: Your trip to Italy. When did you go to Italy?
Barb Huelskamp: I’m back about two weeks. We spent two weeks there. It was a bucket list trip. We actually planned back in 2020 and it got canceled because of COVID. We spent some time replanning that and finally got to go this year. We started north at Milan and worked our way down all the way to the Amalfi Coast. I’ve got a wonderful friend who is a travel agent. She hooked us up with an amazing agenda that I probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out on my own, or didn’t have the time to figure out on my own. Beautiful stops, like you said, the countryside is gorgeous there, and every city has its own culture, has its own history, has its own views and beat to the town. Milan was very different than Rome, which was very different than the Amalfi Coast. Trip of a lifetime.
As we trained from city to city, we flew into Milan and then trained from city to city, I started taking notes. I just wanted to take some notes because I was making a photo book. But as I started taking some notes about the experience, I’m like, “There are some really cool business lessons in here that I want to bring forward,” because even though I took the break to just disconnect, I was making these connections quite easily to lessons learned and applying them to business.
Fred Diamond: It’s interesting. I’ve been to Italy many times, but it’s always been on business. I’ve spent a lot of time in Milan. I remember the first time I went to Milan, my boss, who sent me on a business trip, said, “By the way, Fred, it’s like the Pittsburgh of Italy.” But once you go deep into it, it obviously has all the beauty and the opera and the fashion, there’s so much to it.
Let’s get started. Your first lesson, be local globally. Give us some insights into that.
Barb Huelskamp: If you’re a global leader, you need to understand culture and expectations. That’s essential. But being in the region allows you to experience that firsthand. You better understand, you really have to get local if you’re in a global role. Italy reminded me, they move at a little bit slower pace, they appreciate the simplicity, and the lesson I brought back with me just overall was let’s make sure we don’t overcomplicate things. The mindset that we have shaping our new partner program, we kept that in mind, launching with the basics, driven by direct feedback from our partners. Then layering in the nuances, getting back to that be local globally, making sure that you adjust to the regional nuances to accommodate emerging markets.
Our program is simple at its core. We wanted to make sure we didn’t overcomplicate it in unnecessary ways. We pre-briefed and collaborated with partners in every region to make sure that we stayed ahead of what the local learnings would be, driving different benefits and requirements by geo and country group. Just being there reminded me, and I remember going back and looking at our benefits and requirements and going, “Yeah, this is what they needed in each of the geos.”
Fred Diamond: That is a great point. Even with all the globalization and the fact that you can connect with anybody over Zoom or whatever it might be, a lot of the local traditions still apply from years ago. I remember I went on a business trip in the late ‘90s to Florence and it was amazing, but we didn’t eat until 8:00 o’clock. A couple of the Americans, we were like, “Huh,” and we had a big dinner and it was like five courses and they said this is what it is. The reason I bring that up is, I went back again to Italy in like 2010-ish and dinner was served at 8:00 o’clock. There are still the local customs, but as you’re looking at implementing the programs, I love the concept of what’s going to work across the industry and globally.
Barb Huelskamp: Two- or three-hour dinners that are an experience. For me, I walk faster, probably talk too fast. I purposely slowed my gate, my walk, and went into dinner going, “This is an experience. It’s not about eating and getting out for the next table.” They cared about that experience.
Fred Diamond: Do you remember some of the food you had on the trip? You must have, because the food must have been amazing.
Barb Huelskamp: Number one, Prosecco there is unbelievable compared to what you can get in the U.S., but the burrata, I wanted to take it all home and I didn’t know how to get it home. We tried burrata in just about every city, and then we had a couple of tasting menus. There were a few things I tried, because I’m going to try anything, that I didn’t love, but overall, almost every place, large or small, it felt like mom’s homemade meal, and it was served with love. The service was incredible.
Fred Diamond: Yes, it still is like that. That’s incredible. They’re treating their businesses locally too, which goes into the next point, which is never underestimate the small merchant or the small partner. I’ve led a lot of channel teams when I worked at Apple and Compaq and companies like that. I remember, a lot of times, we would get more impact from a mom-and-pop than we might at the computer world, if you will. Give us some of your insights there.
Barb Huelskamp: What led me to thinking about this, Florence is known for their gold and their leather. I wanted a little bit of everything from every stop. We were walking around Florence looking at all of these really large leather shops. We were looking for some specific items and some specific sizes, we’re not small people, and just kept coming up empty. It all just felt the same way.
If you’ve walked around Florence, it’s not really an alleyway, but there’s lots of little narrow cobblestone roads. We walked down this one, it was just tucked away, and we turned a corner and there was this tiny shop that had exactly everything we wanted, the sizes and unique pieces. They looked to have a very small footprint, but I don’t know if they had a big warehouse in the back, but they had all the right inventory, the right sizes, sharper focus. They didn’t have a lot of the tchotchke souvenir type things, but good quality merchandise and really unique merchandise. Then some cool services like free embossing with initials and things like that on a leather bag.
The next day, we did truffle hunting with dogs in Chianti country. Tina was the dog that I got, she was the smallest youngest dog, and she stole the show. She went her own way. She and I found like four, because you get five truffles each, four or five truffles in like 15 minutes. The owner of these dogs was just shocked because mom and dad, the more tenured hunting dogs, hadn’t found one yet.
In both cases, the smaller player, the niche player delivered an outsized result through specialization. You can make that parallel to the channel. One, don’t overlook the niche partner. Don’t overlook their specialization and their subject matter expertise, because even if they’re younger, like Tina, she was younger, she brought a different lens and thought to go places the older dogs didn’t go. But in all of them, speed and quality matter. Nurture those younger partners, nurture those partners with some of those unique talents, specializations, public sector comes to mind. Not everyone can sell in public sector, and those customers are demanding some subject matter expertise.
Fred Diamond: We’re stretching this a little bit, but one of the things right now is the channel partners need to really demonstrate the added value. There’s a lot of challenges, particularly in the B2G space, where there’s been some executive directions that the customer should go directly to manufacturers, the OEMs, the vendors, if you will. How are the partners showing that they are providing true value? We just did a podcast interview with, do you know Rob Efrus?
Barb Huelskamp: I do not.
Fred Diamond: Every year at Carahsoft, he does what’s called the Rob Efrus Budget Breakfast. He is a savant in government budgeting and funding and things along those lines. But the challenge right now is the government has said, we want to go directly to the SolarWinds, the Microsofts, the Amazons, if you will. They just view the channel as transaction. As I’m thinking about your dog, the differentiation is your dog knew exactly where to go to the truffle. The old school ones, who knows what they were going through, but maybe they were taking it easy.
Barb Huelskamp: Sharper senses, innovative. I’m going to take a risk, I’m going to go over here and I found something. For me, as the customer in that experience, real value and great delivery. When you’re thinking about that differentiation, don’t underestimate the relationships you build throughout the organization. Because you’ve got a user, you’ve got layers of management, you’ve got procurement, relationships at each one of those stops along that buyer journey are critical, because their opinion of you and understanding your value from their lens matters.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great point too, is a lot of times that the smaller partners, in a lot of cases, you used the word nuance before, they might know who’s really the decision maker, why they make decisions. That might be the value that they bring to you. Also, at the customer side, is helping them understand how you as the partner brings all that together. I love that.
Barb Huelskamp: We sell technology. We are continuing to invest in the right technology and the right roadmap for our solution. But our partners bring that all together, whether it’s their services on the front end or the back end, but also, it’s rare that your technology is not integrating with another technology. It’s got to be cohesive in a customer environment. Our partners do a great job with that. They need to make sure that their government customers know that.
Fred Diamond: That’s the biggest challenge right now, Barb, I believe, is that they need to let their government customers know exactly that, and there’s been a lot of challenges to that. I’m thinking about that dog just hustling to get you those four truffles. The other thing too is, how many people were in your group with the hunt?
Barb Huelskamp: It was just me and my husband. It was a private tour. It was beautiful.
Fred Diamond: I was thinking if there was like 10 people, the older dogs are just moseying and you were getting the truffles.
Barb Huelskamp: I beat my husband. We were competing. I won.
Fred Diamond: Very good, and you had the right partner. Number three, don’t erase history documented. Give us your insights into that.
Barb Huelskamp: This one was profound for me. This one hit after I left Rome and Pompeii. We did several private tours with guides, and those guides were from the area sharing their passion and their history about the area. We saw century-old buildings, art, and sculptures, and some of them had been torn down, buried, and excavated to make way for new empires and rulers. It dawned on me, so much money and resources are now being spent to excavate, restore, and document what was lost, particularly in Pompeii. These archaeologists, they told us there’s enormous history gaps because no one was recording everything before Mount Vesuvius erupted. They have got huge gaps in documenting some history.
The lesson for me, history is data. You want to preserve that. Even if it didn’t work, what didn’t work in one environment could work in another market, another era, could work with different buyers, different timing, there are different conditions. The goal here isn’t to be haunted by the past, but make sure you don’t repeat failures, and leave a record.
I’ve been here a year, and we could look at, we’ve tried this, we’ve tried this, this worked, this didn’t. But I don’t have all of those history lessons documented, and the history lesson from a partner that’s been with us 10 years sounds a little bit different than the partner that’s been with us 10 months. Just because it didn’t work before doesn’t mean it won’t work again, but if you document what did or didn’t work, the lessons learned, there’s a richness in that for your future.
Fred Diamond: A lot of times when you’re selling technology, you have the partners who’ve been with you from day one, and then you have the new ones, but the ones who’ve been there from day one, they’ve seen your company’s history at the customer. They know all the things that have happened. They know what the customer has been using as well. The customer transaction history, the history of, like you said before, it’s almost never one technology, especially now with companies quickly coming to markets and companies adding new things, but not everybody knowing everything that you do. Every industry, every customer has complexity and you got to understand that, and you got to pay homage to it. It’s easy to say, “Well, we’re going to totally get rid of everything and upgrade.” Well, what about that system over there in Cleveland that is operated this way?
Barb Huelskamp: There’s still some beauty in the history. I say this a lot, especially with some of our partners who’ve been with us for a while, we are not the same SolarWinds we were five years ago, let alone one year ago. That doesn’t mean we have forgotten our history. I think it’s quite the opposite. I think we’ve built on our history. I think we’ve continued to layer up, from a partner program perspective, on our platform, with our people learning that lesson. That’s why I said this was a profound thought as I left Rome and Pompeii, because the strain on that area trying to excavate, they actually said, “We’ve stopped our excavation in Pompeii for cost, but we’re going to leave some of this for the next generation to discover, because of how much it’s done for us.” I thought that was so cool.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great one, which goes to the next point, which is adjust quickly and go all in. One word that we use all the time is commitment, figuring out what the plan is, then getting everybody on board. You as a channel leader, it’s a big challenge because how many partners does SolarWinds have?
Barb Huelskamp: Thousands.
Fred Diamond: Thousands. You got to get them on board, especially now. We’re doing today’s interview in May of 2026, we got to be urgent, man. With AI and everything that’s related to it, and intermediation, if you will, you got to go all in, but everyone’s got to be on board for you to go all in. Tell us more about that.
Barb Huelskamp: The example for me on this one, we were on the Amalfi Coast, it was our last stop, and we had a yacht tour planned. It was the thing I was looking forward to the most on this two-week trip. Number one favorite thing, private yacht just for us staffed for a day, and then it was canceled. The two days we were there, 20-mile-an-hour winds, choppy water, it wasn’t safe. I knew it, but I was still disappointed and I was sulking.
The staff where we were staying totally surrounded us with alternatives, and immediately, we ended up having a very different day, but it was wonderful. It was different than I planned, different than what I expected, but it was also what we needed. What I mean by that is we had two weeks of all these tours, we were averaging 10,000 to 13,000 steps a day. What we ended up doing that day was rest. We had a massage, and not 13,000 steps, and it was still beautiful enough to be outside. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to practice what I preach,” because I was also starting to bring my husband down. “I’m going to pick up my head, I’m going to stop the sulking, and I’m going to commit to this new plan.”
The business lesson, as we’ve talked about, you might not always agree with the strategic pivot, but you’ve got to commit and go all in, because honestly, half-hearted execution is worse. I’m a big believer in progress versus perfection, and that’s been a work of art for me as well, because I can be too much of a perfectionist.
Again, connecting it back to our program, we still have many things we want to do, but I think we’re kicking off at a great start and I’ve asked our team to go all in, because as you said, we’re getting our partners on board, but first I’m getting my team on board with the transition. There’s a lot to do to prepare. We talk about our CARES values, and the R in CARE for us is ready, be ready. We’re spending a lot of time right now making sure we’re ready to support our partners once we launch this. It’s going to be a good day. Just like those last two days in the Amalfi Coast, we’re going to adjust, we’re committed, and it’s going to be a sunny day.
Fred Diamond: One of the points here is that everybody’s got to be on board. A decision’s made, I’m sure a lot of data and process and debate went into, what are we going to do? But then once you make that decision, you got to be all on board. Everyone’s got to be all in. If you have an issue, you got to sound it, but then quickly shift back. Like you were saying, you were sulking because the yacht trip was canceled, darn, but then you had to quickly shift plans and get all on board with whatever the next thing is. You can’t have any confusion with the partners.
I remember leading channel teams and whenever there was a dissent from the partners and we gave into it and we weren’t behind what the company was saying, that always led to a challenge.
Barb Huelskamp: I believe in debate. I talk a lot with my team that I might have a good idea and it’s rough, but together, we’ll make it better. Debate, but then commit. I think the important thing after that, once it’s executed, is the feedback. I’m proud of our agility here at SolarWinds, because I think we listen and we can iterate and adjust pretty quick. We’re not so big that, “Well, that’s going to have to wait till next year,” but that feedback is helpful. I love other people’s ideas. I might come up with something that I think is pretty good, my team and other partners make it better, for sure.
Fred Diamond: This is great, Barb. Number five, and these are Barb’s five leadership lessons from her two-week trip to Italy. I’m going to an event tonight, but I’m thinking about going for Italian food tomorrow. The best wine is meant to be shared.
Barb Huelskamp: This is the really fun one. Obviously, everyone knows Italy is famous for its wine. It was really fun for me to learn and try new grapes. Often at the restaurant, I would say, “Here’s what I like in a wine, you pick.” What do I know about these brands? Most of the brands served aren’t available in the U.S. The one thing that became really clear, nobody sits down to a great bottle of wine alone. It’s poured at a table and the stories while you’re sharing that get richer, and you create really strong connections to the experience. It’s not just about the wine, but the whole experience.
Think about that. When you go on a trip, a conference, you’ve had a partner meeting, a hard week, a customer win, good or bad, sometimes my instinct is to just process it maybe even privately and move on, but the real value comes when you bring your team along. It was fun to take these notes, because I wanted to share these stories. Great salespeople tell great stories in front of their customers. Find stories like this to connect the dots, to convey a message to your team, to your customer.
Like my dog, Tina, I’m going to talk about that dog, Tina, and those truffles for the rest of my life. But it’s created a space for me to have personal connection with people, to laugh, use those opportunities to build your teams up, build your partners up, and create that experience, giving them the space to pour out their stories and share the richness that they can bring into your life as well, knowing about their experiences.
Fred Diamond: The Institute for Effective Professional Selling, we just had our 16th Annual Sales Excellence Awards. We give out what’s called a Lifetime Achievement Award. The recipient this year was a gentleman called Nick Michaelides who used to run Cisco Public Sector in USA. The reason I bring this up is we had a lot of Cisco people and partners at the event, and a number of them came up and told stories. The time that they helped this defense command implement a system overnight because something had to be done. The trip they made to this fort to build out this system with their partners and the memories of all those things. There are so many great memories that people who are in tech, either on the OEM side or the channel side, have with each other working together to solve a big customer problem.
Barb Huelskamp: When you have got a big partner meeting, presentation, a conference, they might not remember everything you said, but they’re going to remember the story you told. Connecting that where it’s relatable to folks in the audience, that is a great skill to have.
Fred Diamond: The Tina story, there are so many lessons to learn from all of these stories with Barb from SolarWinds. Thank you so much. I love this. I love that you documented this. If I were you, I would encourage you to write some of this down in more detail and publish it. I don’t know if your PR person, Kate, can help you with that, but I’m sure she can.
Barb Huelskamp: Yeah, she is.
Fred Diamond: Hopefully she’s listening to today’s interview. Thank you to her for getting us connected to you. Barb, this is great insight. You’ve given us a lot of things to do and think about, but give us a specific action for people listening to the show or reading the transcript, something they should do right now, an action step to take their sales career to the next level.
Barb Huelskamp: Wow. Big question. Well, if you’re early in your career, stomp out imposter syndrome, stomp out fear. I took some fearless leaps early on that I think at this point in my career, I would be a little scared to, but I did, and they paid off. Advocate for yourself and get that mentor. Folks a little bit farther along in their career, I do think it’s my responsibility at this point to help that next generation of leaders, and I want to. I want to make things easier for you. I want you to avoid the mistakes I made. Find that mentor, especially if you’re a rare woman in a leadership position, I promise you, the other women in leadership want to help you.
Fred Diamond: Thank you so much. The Institute for Effective Professional Selling, our Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership, we have our Women in Sales Leadership Forum. We also have our Emerging Leaders Program and we have our Women in Sales Leadership Elevation Conference and we’ll continue to get more information about those.
Once again, Barb from SolarWinds, thank you so much for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo