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Scaling a partner ecosystem into a revenue-generating engine requires a methodical, phased approach. It’s essential to build a strategic framework that overcomes misalignment, communicates value across teams, and drives long-term success in partnerships.
October 17, 2024
Issue #679
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PRINCIPLES
Time, time, time
Move fast and break things works for a lot of tech innovation, but it can’t be the default when it comes to nurturing relationships and building for the long term. Getting to 100% on key initiatives and functions can require that scarcest of resources, time.
This can be a tough conversation to have in an organization, especially when leadership and their teams are under pressure to deliver and/or excited about executing on a new strategy. Most of us have had the experience of putting our blood, sweat, and tears into something new and promising, only to have it shelved when it doesn’t produce the desired results in an all-too-short period of time. Crushing.
So how do you make the argument for getting enough time to build something great? Have a great plan. Very often, the people who need to give you the time aren’t going to be deeply familiar with the work required, so they need to see what success looks like and the steps or phases it will take to get there.
If even you don’t know exactly what’s involved, do as much research and learning as you can (with resources like this newsletter!), find frameworks and templates, and become the expert in structuring the road to success. you’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn more as you go, probably from mistakes, and that’s fine — as long as you’ve secured the time to make them.
TACTICS
A strategic framework to drive long-term success in partnerships
Allison Solin, VP of Alliances & Growth at CaptivateIQ, got into partnerships by accident when she was asked at a former employer to pull together a management plan for the company’s SI (System Integrator) partners. That experience taught her a lot about what it actually takes to turn a partner ecosystem into revenue, and she now has a solid framework for building and implementing a successful Ecosystem-Led Growth strategy.
“The biggest challenge to scaling partnerships is misalignment with other teams,” said Allison at Pavilion’s recent GTM Summit. “It can be really easy for everyone to have their own goals.” She gave the example (one we hear a lot from GTM leaders) of companies giving high SI quotas to partnerships while also giving high quotas to internal services, causing lots of internal conflict and competition.
Facing these challenges at multiple companies has taught Allison a lot about the importance of level-setting and communicating that partner ecosystems, and their potential for driving substantial revenue, require a phased approach, and that full maturity can take at least 18 months.
Allison uses the maturity model from Partner Path, but there are lots of resources out there for different stages of decision making (including guidance from Crossbeam and Reveal). This model describes the attributes of each stage as well as some tactics that can help you get to the next level (all to be tweaked and customized to your company’s capabilities and needs).
“Scaling is a phased approach with different attributes and challenges plus benefits at each stage,” said Allison. “This model can help your company go from novice or tolerant and get the increased scalability and sales reach to get to the holy grail of centric. Use the maturity model to align with cross functional teams and leadership, and make sure they understand it’s a journey, not one big swoop that will take a quarter to achieve.”
After describing where the company is maturity-wise, and giving examples of possible tactics, Allison presents a framework with three pillars for getting where they need to be.
Enable: “We're educating our partners. We want to create advocates, right?” said Allison. “We want them to understand our messaging, our products, how to sell, how to market, how to integrate, how to implement. I'm also educating our internal teams, because they have to understand, why are we working with these partners?”
Engage: “This is your revenue machine,” said Allison. “So I'm co-selling, I'm co-marketing and growing revenue. We're growing revenue together.”
Ensure: “This is setting your partners and customers up for post-sales success,” she says. “You want to continue to grow the relationship as well and monitor and analyze its performance.”
Of course, every company and partner ecosystem is different, so your stages, tactics, and frameworks might look different. Your initiative may have very different attributes. But if you have a roadmap, framework, and timeline to grow and scale, you just may get the time you need to create one of your company’s fastest-growing sources of revenue.
STUFF YOU CAN’T MISS
- October 22 — Successfully Presenting Your Plan
Learn from Tai Rattigan (Co-founder and COO of Partnership Leaders) how to effectively present your budget plan to key stakeholders with confidence and clarity. Save your spot here.
- October 24 — Tech Stack Summit ‘24
Join Justin Zimmerman, Tai Rattigan (Co-founder of Partnership Leaders), Kristen Kelly (Global Technology Alliances Director at Netskope), Greg Portnoy (CEO of Euler), and many more GTM leaders as they help you pick the right people, process, or tools to grow your co-sell, integration, or cloud partnerships. Save your spot here.
- November 11 - 14 — Web Summit 2024
70,000 people will gather in Lisbon, Portugal for one of the biggest tech conferences in the world, featuring speakers from leading companies across nearly every technology vertical. Book your ticket to join them here.
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