The Nearbound Daily is now officially the ELG Insider Daily!
Welcome to the ELG Insider Daily—the #1 newsletter in the world keeping thousands of GTM professionals on top of the latest Ecosystem-Led principles, tactics, and trends. Join the movement here.
PRINCIPLES
Good things take time
Building strong partnerships, much like nurturing a thriving ecosystem, takes time and dedication.
Relationships (of any type) aren't born overnight; they require careful cultivation, mutual understanding, and trust.
Even when your partners are eager to collaborate—whether it's providing warm introductions, sharing sales intelligence, or organizing joint events—achieving a seamless synergy can take weeks of coordination.
However, once these relationships are established, the results are incredibly rewarding.
The shared opportunities and combined strengths lead to greater successes that are well worth the initial investment of time and effort.
TACTICS
5 steps for using ecosystem data shorten your sales cycles by 44%
Selling into enterprise accounts can be a slog. Sales cycles are long and there are many stakeholders involved.
When selling to enterprise accounts, warm intros can be helpful. But what can really make the difference is having (and sharing) sales intelligence at the right time — this can result in 10x higher close rates.
To help Everflow shorten their enterprise sales cycles by 44% (from 9 months to 5), Ed Ceballos, VP of Partner Ecosystem, followed 5 steps:
Step #1: Configure Crossbeam and HubSpot integration
Ed set up Crossbeam to automatically create contact lists in HubSpot based on associated company email domains, and he ensured that new overlaps in Crossbeam reports sync with the corresponding HubSpot contact lists.
Step #2: Build and sync partner reports
Ed and his team created Crossbeam reports to identify which of their open opportunities were also partners' customers.
Use these reports to initiate conversations with partners, leveraging shared insights to boost collaboration.
Step #3: Populate custom properties in HubSpot
For every partner, Ed added a custom property field on the company object in HubSpot.
Once done, he implemented a workflow to populate these custom properties with the appropriate Crossbeam population name when new contacts are added to synced lists.
Step #4: Utilize ecosystem data in dashboards and campaigns
The key to helping their Sales team close deals faster was to make ecosystem data available in HubSpot so their Sales team could easily access it without needing to log into Crossbeam.
To keep the data actionable, Ed and his team built performance dashboards and reports in HubSpot using ecosystem data to monitor key metrics like partner referrals, conversion rates, and pipeline overlaps.
Step #5: Coordinate and track partner assistance requests
Ed enabled his reps to request help from partners by tagging the "Request help from partner" field on the company object in HubSpot.
Tracking these requests using Crossbeam reports, helped to facilitate introductions and collaboration between his sales reps and their counterparts at his partner companies.
The sales cycle was reduced thanks to insights gained from these collaborations, such as identifying key decision-makers, streamlining legal reviews, and expediting contract negotiations.
Learn how to streamline your sales cycle with ecosystem data here.
FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
The pulling force of partners
The role of partners has changed.
They stopped being a pushing force where GTM teams were reactive to ecosystem data. Now, GTM teams are proactive. Using the ELG strategy, they are pulling in data from partners to close bigger deals faster.
And just as Claudine Lagerholm (SVP, Channels & Ecosystems Advisory and Programs at Insight Partners) said:
“We are seeing more integration between direct sales and partners, especially in the enterprise segment, where partner influence plays an important role, and the term "partner influence" is often heavily debated.”
Check out her LinkedIn post to read her entire POV on the new way GTM teams are leveraging partners.
UPCOMING EVENTS
What the Crossbeam x Reveal merger means GTM leaders
Last call to join us today, at 8:00 am PT / 5:00 pm CET as Bob Moore, Simon Bouchez, and Sophie Buonassisi deep dive into what the Reveal and Crossbeam merger means for the future of go-to-market and Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG).
Stuff you don't want to miss!
- July 19th — Nearbound Podcast THE LIVE FINALE — Join Isaac Morehouse, Jared Fuller, Bob Moore, and Simon Bouchez as they discuss the future of B2B, the partnerships industry, and the crazy history between PartnerHacker, Crossbeam, Reveal, Nearbound.com and the destiny of Ecosystem-Led Growth. Join here.
- July 18th — Extend HubSpot with G2 and 6sense: How B2B SaaS Companies Can Leverage Account-Based Strategies to Win—Tiphaine Amblard (HubSpot), Rachel Gianfredi (G2), Stephen Lackey (SmartBug Media), Jeff Wagner (6sense), and Jonathan Burg (New Breed) how you can better leverage the G2 and 6sense integrations to optimize your ABM strategy. Register here.
- July 31st — Partner Sourced Summit ’24: Bob Moore (Crossbeam), Justin Zimmerman (PartnerWebinar), Rob Rebholz (Superglue), Greg Portnoy (Eulerapp), Cody Sunkel (PartnerFleet), Asher Mathew (Partnership Leaders), Katie Landaal (ZoomInfo), Lizzie Chapman (Nextroll), Alexis Bonavota (G2), and many more, will share tactical ways they use to drive partner-sourced revenue. Register here.
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See you tomorrow
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