Nearbound Daily #427: Products & platforms in the nearbound era 👨💻
What do products look like in the Nearbound Era?
Alexis Petrichos, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Ecosystem Marketing at Chili Piper, is speaking at the Summit!
Alexis is a master of technology partnerships.
What do products look like in the Nearbound Era?
Some of the most successful tech companies are platforms. They enable value creation and exchange between many different parties. Connecting customers to the thing they want can be even more powerful than providing the thing they want.
Whether or not your product is technically a platform, if you obsess over customer value instead of your product being the thing that delivers it, you expand your growth opportunities.
When you start with the customer’s needs, you begin to see more clearly how working in and building an ecosystem of other companies and products is the best path to value.
The platform revolution is simultaneous with the rise of the Who Economy. These trends are a result of the increasing importance of network effects and trust. In the old pipeline model, businesses made something and sold it to customers. They controlled the narrative. Customers were downstream of the producers. Services flow down, money flows up.
The platform model, on the other hand, empowers both consumers and producers with tools and resources so they can interact and exchange with each other.
Listen to more than your customers
Active listening is one of the most important skills GTM teams can have when it comes to building a successful product. How else are you going to hear the story your buyers are telling?
There are some very well-known active listening techniques—like being present, asking open-ended questions, and reflecting what has been stated back to the speaker—that are often used to improve customer experience.
But with nearbound, you need to do more than just listen to your customers. You also need to listen to who your customers listen to.
Here’s how to start. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What other companies are they working with?
- What integrations are they asking for?
- What integrations are they NOT using?
- Who are the voices that are influential on them?
Take active listening to the next level by also listening to the trusted nodes that surround your customer.
Chili Piper’s red carpet service
Chili Piper recently rolled out a partner integration initiative called Concierge Everywhere that embodies nearbound and active listening to provide a truly unique product experience.
Alexis Petrichos shares the Chili Piper started by allowing companies to convert the leads that fill out their contact forms to a booked meeting instantly, through their tool Form Concierge. This allowed them to zero the gap between the hand raise and an actual demo being booked.
But then, they kept listening. They quickly realized that leads don’t always come from their customers’ websites. They also come from:
- Review sites like G2
- In-app from freemium tiers or free trials with tools like Chameleon
- Listings in partner marketplaces facilitated by Partner Fleet
- Chats with bots like Ada before filling out a form, and
- Booking a meeting after accepting a gift from Snappy
Chili Piper built integrations with each of these platforms to highlight "the unique partner integrations you can use to reduce buyer friction and drive revenue through different channels."
Now, that’s what we call a spicy use of nearbound product. 🌶️
Stuff you don’t want to miss!
- Join the official Nearbound Summit community brought to you by Partnership Leaders — Partnership leaders’ goal is to connect people interested in learning about partnerships around the world.
- Oct 11th, 10 AM EST —Women in Alliances Summit— Join the FREE global summit featuring speakers like Jay McBain, Tina Gravel, Christine Bongard, Allison Munro, and more. They’ll touch on AI’s impact on the ecosystem, how partnerships are changing, and tips to boost your career.
- Oct 11th, 2 PM EST —Building a Partnership Strategy— Join Cari Kesten (Former Director, Global Strategy & Partnerships Lead at Spotify) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) as they share key elements of a successful partnerships strategy and more.
- Oct 12th, 11:30 AM EST —Direct is Dying— Join two CMOs, Isaac Morehouse of Reveal and Pete Rawlinson of Allbound, for a 30-minute discussion diving into the implications of a pivot from direct to partner-led demand generation.
- October 18th —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 1): How to Fix Your Broken Partner Program— Learn how to fix the root cause of your partner program’s biggest challenges.
- October 25th —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 2): How to Prioritize the RIGHT Partners— Learn how to make sure you’re investing your (limited) resources in partners that will generate a meaningful.
- November 1st —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 3): How to Get Executive Buy-In for Partnerships— Learn how to secure resources & support from key stakeholders that are critical to partnership success.
- November 6th-9th —Nearbound Summit 2023—The future of GTM is Nearbound. Join us for the biggest-ever remote experience in GTM where B2B leaders across departments unite to share how they’re winning with Nearbound strategies and tactics.
- April 19th-20th –SaaS Connect 2023– It’s that time of year again! Get your spot early for the 11th annual partnership conference in San Francisco, hosted by Cloud Software Association.
Product Day at The Nearbound Summit
Join Alexis, Karen Ng, Connor Jeffers, and more at the Nearbound Summit.
