You want to drive as much revenue as possible, but more partners doesn’t necessarily equal more dollars. Develop your Ideal Partner Profile and prioritize collaboration for impact.
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PRINCIPLES
Quality over quantity in partnerships
If each of your partners can bring in leads you wouldn’t otherwise get, then the more partners you have, the better, right?
You knew where this was going. A lead is only as good as the deal it can bring in, and a high number of low-quality leads can result in wasted and mis-focused time and effort.
If you’re a GTM leader looking for new sources of pipeline, there’s a great deal of value in frontloading the work to identify the partnerships with the most potential to power up your sales motion at multiple points in the customer journey. (For a masterful example, read about how sales veteran Blaine Trainor did this at commercetools.)
Whether you work in sales, partnerships, or another go-to-market function, if you’re implementing Ecosystem-Led Growth to unlock new revenue sources, it’s critical to invest in building relationships that will bring value to your efforts over time, based on an alignment of goals, commitment, and benefits to customers.
TACTICS
The who, what, when, and why of your ideal partnerships
We recently published a story about how Kolleno reduced their time to close by a whopping 50% with ELG, and a big piece of this success was creating an Ideal Partner Profile (IPP) the way you would for a customer persona.
So how do you do that? Nelson Wang of Airtable and Partner Principles developed a framework to help you develop an IPP based on the most mutual benefit and potential revenue upside.
It’s called the 4C of Partnerships, which helps you determine your Ideal Partner Profile by understanding how these partner attributes affect your GTM strategy:
- Capacity - Company size, customer portfolio, team
- Capability - Their expertise and proven past experience, and other key partnerships
- Commitment - This has to be double-sided - same as you are interested in building the partnerships, they should also devote resources and time to making it worthwhile
- Customers - Synergies are crucial - the partner must have access to the same economic buyer that you target. If not, you have a huge hill to climb that is often insurmountable.
To quote Maja Voje, who interviewed Nelson for her Go-To-Market Strategist Podcast, “Like many things in GTM, partnerships are not set-and-forget-it. To create a long-term partnership, you need to invest in educating, onboarding, and activating your partner, and you often need to give them business first.”
For more from Nelson and Maja’s conversation about effective partnerships, visit Partner Principles.
FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
Future of Revenue survey
As a GTM leader, your experience and insights are crucial to understanding the direction of revenue strategies in our industry.
We’ve partnered with Pavilion to survey GTM leaders, and we’d love it if you could take 7 minutes to share your thoughts.
It’s completely anonymous, and you’ll get early access to the report before its official release this fall.
It’s completely anonymous, and as a thank you, you'll get early access to the report before its official release PLUS 15% off your ticket for GTM2024 (Oct 14-16 in Austin, TX) where Crossbeam CMO Alex Poulos will share the results LIVE on stage.
Share your experience here.
STUFF YOU CAN’T MISS
- TODAY September 26th — Dueling Perspectives: The Great AI SDR Debate — Join Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder and CEO of GTM Partners, and Matt Milen, Co-Founder and President of Regie.AI, as they share the real potential of AI in sales development (and its implications for your GTM strategy). Register now.
- October 1st — SalesIntel Annual Summit — SalesIntel is organizing a 100% free and virtual summit where you will find specific tracks curated for sales, marketing, and RevOps and roundtable working sessions focused on sharing actionable ways to build pipelines and achieve growth goals. Save your seat here.
- October 1st - 3rd — RevCon — RevGenius partnered with Common Room, Sigma, Avoma, The Juice, and many more to bring you a 3-day virtual conference to reunite your sales, marketing, RevOps, and CS leaders behind to learn and discuss about the future of SaaS. Save your spot here.
- October 14th - 16th — GTM2024 — Join Pavilion at The Fairmont in Austin, TX to get ahead on your 2025 GTM strategy, learn about market trends, and boost your GTM strategy. Get your ticket here.
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