Pigment launched its formal partner program in January 2023. And in just one year, they were able to achieve some incredible results: 

• Partner-attached deals had a 5-10% increased win rate than deals without partners
• 16% of new logos won were partner-sourced
• 40% of closed-won deals had a partner attached 
• 80% of deployment deals had a partner attached
• At the end of Q2, they were at a 31% partner attach rate for co-sell deals. They implemented Reveal at the beginning of Q3 and ended Q4 with a 64% partner attach rate. 

How did they get to value so quickly?

By creating internal structures, PartnerOps workflows, and GTM strategies that include a nearbound overlay. 

We sat down with Wendy Wen, Global Partner Operations at Pigment, to learn more. 

Let’s take a deeper look.

Nearbound is not a zero-sum game 

When it comes to outbound, inbound, and nearbound, we have to stop thinking about it in a “video killed the radio star” kinda mindset. 

Nearbound is not about ending outbound or inbound.  

As much as we all would’ve loved for inbound to end outbound (who doesn’t love a demo request more than a cold call lead?), it augmented it instead. It diversified our revenue mix and brought more plays to the repertoire of reps for building and accelerating pipeline.

This evolution is exactly how Wendy and her team view their partnership strategy. They are leveraging every tool at their disposal to build seamless and mutually beneficial workflows between them and their partners, as well as internally. 

In other words, they’ve created a powerful and unique nearbound overlay that makes partnerships a part of not just every GTM department, but also a key function in their inbound and outbound strategies. 

What is a nearbound overlay?

In Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy, Jared Fuller, Chief Ecosystem Officer at Reveal, shares that, to build a true nearbound culture, you have to establish the Nearbound Rhythm of Business (RoB) by overlaying and weaving nearbound into the cadences and rituals of your business—every year, quarter, month, week, and day for every department—to drive your company culture. He explains:  

“Nearbound layers on to every department, but it must be orchestrated by the partnerships team. That means, more than any other role, partner leaders have to learn and understand the rhythms and cadences of the company and each department. To effectively run nearbound plays, partner managers need to be dancing to the same beat as the rest of the org.“

The role of PartnerOps in the nearbound overlay 

As the Global PartnerOps leader, Wendy is situated at the heart of the nearbound overlay. Not only is their Partner team nestled under the Head of Sales, but Wendy’s position is situated in RevOps, creating direct alignment between Partnership, Revenue, and operational activities. Wendy explains of Pigment’s internal structure: 

“I roll up to our Head of RevOps and I have a direct line to our Head of Partnerships. That’s the structure that we have for all of our Ops functions here: we have MarketingOps, CSOps, and Business Systems all rolling up to our Head of RevOps. And then we have a dotted line supporting all the functional leads. I think it works really well because we have visibility to all of the functions and projects that we’re working on. We are all very well aligned and well-versed on what we need in Salesforce. For example, how do we maintain data hygiene and clear-cut attribution when we get opportunities from partners?” 

Why Reveal?

Because transparency and alignment are cornerstones of Pigment’s team structure, when they decided to start their partnership program in January 2023, Wendy and her team knew they needed a platform that would not only help simplify interactions with partners, but also amplify the rhythms and motions of Sales, Marketing, and CS teams, too. 

“Our main goal was to make sure that we found the right focus for strategic partners and implementation consulting partners. My focus from day 1 has been making sure we have the right data and transparency for our team at Pigment to know which partners should be supporting us, who’s doing well, and where we should focus our time, as well as making sure our partners have the right transparency because we want to see them as an extension of Pigment.”

To accomplish this, Pigment had 3 major pain points they needed to address right away: 

• The spreadsheet nightmare: Partner Managers were fighting daily with keeping data shared by partners via spreadsheets clean and up to date.  
• Channel conflict: Partners were always fighting about who should be given opportunities. This problem was magnified by the fact that PMs were often working off of outdated spreadsheets.  
• Creating workflows with partners: The Partner team wanted to make it easy to receive and share data with partners, which meant they needed a tool that any partner could use.  

“We evaluated Crossbeam, Reveal, and one other tool. Reveal stood out because of the ease of use, the user interface, and how easy it is to set up. If we’re going to mandate that all of our partners get on it, we don’t want a tool that’s confusing to use and that they can’t actually leverage. Also, everyone on the Reveal team was super open to getting feedback, making updates, and continuously adding new features and functionality for different use cases.” 

Onboarding Consultant & System Integrator (SI) Partners onto Reveal

Pigment’s partner program is multifaceted, but is made up in large part of consultant and SI partnerships—two categories of partnerships that have traditionally been difficult to connect with on tools like Reveal due to their CRM structures and company objectives. 

Wendy and her team knew that, for Reveal to become the lynchpin in their nearbound overlay, they needed to structure the use of the platform as an incentive to these types of partners. 

They did this in 4 key ways: 

1. They’re open to offline account mapping. 

Wendy and her team utilize Reveal’s offline account mapping capabilities as an alternative to data sharing through the partner’s CRM. This gives the partner peace of mind knowing that they can still reap the benefits of account mapping on Reveal without needing to connect their CRM. 

2. They prioritize partners who connect on Reveal. 

They make it clear to partners from the very beginning that they will consider partners on Reveal for opportunities before they look at those who aren’t connected. This incentivizes consultants and SIs to share their data. 

“What we say to partners is that we are going to first look at the partners who have set up Reveal to see who we want to bring in to help co-sell on an opportunity together. That ultimately leads to that partner also implementing at that customer should we win the opportunity together.”

3. They share intel with their partners connected on Reveal. 

Pigment partners on Reveal automatically receive powerful nearbound intel that Wendy and her team pull from various sources, such as G2 and Zoominfo. 

“We use intent data we’ve collected and Reveal’s overlap data to generate an insights email that gets sent on a biweekly basis to partners that have connected on Reveal. Partners can use these insights as they talk to their existing clients to recommend and source opportunities into Pigment as well. This has helped encourage our Consulting Partners to get on, and it’s been the same for our Tech Partners. It’s become a key part of our pitch to them.”

We will dive deeper into this (very cool) use case in the next section.

4. They stay consistent. 

Pigment’s PAMs work with top-tier partners biweekly to maintain the relationships, discuss opportunities, and ensure that data is constantly being cleaned and updated in both the CRM and Reveal. 

The G2 use case: Inbound, outbound, nearbound 

Pigment’s nearbound overlay internally—including within their Growth team—has allowed them to create a unique nearbound strategy that combines the power of the ecosystem with the strengths of inbound and outbound.  

Here’s how it works: 

• Pigment pulls targeted intent data from inbound activities completed by prospects. 
• They use Reveal to cross-reference the inbound data to nearbound data, finding which of their prospects are already customers of their partners. 
• Pigment sends a bi-weekly insights email directly to their partners sharing the information and how they can leverage it in their outbound messaging. 
• Once the partners have actioned the nearbound data, they register and collaborate on the opportunities back in Reveal. 

“We have a Growth team that generates a lot of insights for every single prospect account that we have. This includes things like visits to our G2 page and website, or a new LinkedIn hire for a specific target profile. We then use Reveal to see—based on data pulled and the overlap that exists—the customers of our partner who are prospects of ours. Then we give them intel. For example, ‘Someone at this company visited our G2 page five times last week. Maybe it’s a signal that you should reach out’…We send these bi-weekly insight emails on Mondays and Wednesdays, and there’s a significant trend of when opportunities leads are registered by Partners to when those emails are sent.” 

How the nearbound overlay empowers Sales & Marketing 

In addition to providing key intel and revenue opportunities to partners, Wendy has seen their nearbound overlay strategy benefit Pigment’s Sales and Marketing teams immensely. 

Sales team 

The Pigment Partner team has empowered BDRs and AEs to leverage partners on specific deals through Reveal’s Get Intro feature directly in Salesforce and Slack, while also maintaining complete control of how those relationships are utilized.

Wendy explains: 

“We have notifications in a specific Slack channel for when new opportunities are opened or there are new overlaps. It’s very intuitive for everyone involved—BDRs and AEs can just click and ask for an intro and Partner Managers (PMs) can decide how to respond. We use a ‘Request an Intro’ form in Slack because we want a bit more context for the Sales team’s requests. For example, what kind of conversations they have already had with this account? Why do they want the intro to the partner? What benefits are they hoping for? This helps the PM have more focus on how to use our partners based on certain overlaps. This has been especially powerful for our Tech partners.” 

“On the Consulting side, we focus on equality. When an AE is working on an account and there has not been a partner attached, we look to the Reveal data to see if there if there’s a partner already working with that account. We use that information to recommend the right partner to work there first. If multiple partners are working it, we ask for additional context from our partners before we make a decision. Without the Reveal data, we would be asking every single partner that we work with versus only going to the select few that already have a relationship with that given account.”

Marketing team

Pigment’s Marketing team leverages Reveal to ensure that they get the most out of co-marketed events. Wendy shares: 

“Our field marketing team wants to host certain types of events. We pull the account overlaps from Reveal and we aggregate by industry, segment, and geo-location. Then we take that as the view to see which partner we should be pulling into certain events we want to host. So, it’s at the very top of the funnel and if they do end up deciding to work with a partner, then we pull a target account list based on Reveal’s data for both the event and to hand to our Sales team.”

The results

It’s worth repeating that, by creating a nearbound overlay in their company, Pigment accomplished: 

• A 5-10% increased win rate on partner-attached deals 
• Partner-sourced accounted for 16% of Pigment’s new logo revenue in the first year of their partner program
• 40% of closed-won co-sell deals had a partner attached 
• 80% of deployment deals had a partner attached
• A 33% increase in partners attached to co-sell deals after implementing Reveal

Bonus: Wendy’s advice to those starting on Reveal 

If you’re considering executing a nearbound strategy in Reveal, Wendy has some sound advice for you: 

• Make Reveal a requirement 
• Make it easy for your partners 
• Show them how it will improve their lives

“We see Reveal as a holistic tool and have included it as part of our onboarding requirements with partners. We explain that it’s no different than sharing a spreadsheet with us, only now that data sharing is automated, timely, and accurate—and they still keep control of their data. Make sure you’re showing your partners what life will look like for them on Reveal, how much easier it will be if they connect with you, and how much time and resources they’ll save.”

Want to learn more about how to execute nearbound in Reveal? Book a call with our team.