If partner pros are going to be the heroes of the decade of the ecosystem, they have to partner internally with sellers. Let me explain.
Be the nearbound expert
Everyone, from your C-suite to your ground-floor, needs help understanding and implementing a new motion like nearbound, which is why you’ve gotta strive to be the nearbound expert inside of your company.
You have to understand things like:
- Why nearbound GTM?
- How should I talk to other departments about nearbound?
- How does nearbound work as an overlay on GTM activities?
- What tactical things can other departments do to tap into nearbound?
Your company will only become nearbound-centric when your people feel confident they can come to you if they run into a problem or blocker.
Stay curious!
Checklist: roll out partnerships to your sales teams
If partner pros are going to be the heroes of the decade of the ecosystem, they have to partner internally with sellers.
Let me explain.
You’re probably familiar with the “partner island,” the idea that partner pros often work siloed and alone.
That was an idea that came from the transactional channel world.
It doesn’t work for nearbound partners—your non-transacting GTM partners that influence the customer lifecycle.
Nearbound partnerships are inherently collaborative because they influence other departments (think co-selling and sales) and because achieving scale with these partnerships requires the active participation of your whole team.
That’s the biggest challenge.
Your teams likely haven’t fully adopted nearbound...yet.
To help, I’ve outlined all of the information I’d prepare if I was trying to roll out partnerships to my Sales team.
Who are our partners?
- Where can your sellers find an up-to-date list of partners?
- Where can your sellers find a brief overview of your partnership? Do you have executive summaries or a concise JVP they could look over?
Why do we partner with them?
- Why is partner involvement important for our company?
- What value do they bring our customers?
- What value do they bring our company?
- What value do they bring me (the seller)?
Plays
- When should sellers use partners?
- When should sellers not use partners?
- How can sellers use partner data to unlock revenue?
- How can sellers use your CRM to find partner opportunities?
- How can sellers tap into partners for intel, intros, and influence (use these email templates)?
I’ve left links throughout the checklist so you can find more info on each topic.
It’s time for partner pros to take ownership of the pipeline, which includes fostering a healthy relationship with your Sales team.
Sales agrees with Partnerships. They know that outbound and inbound are weaker every day. But they aren’t taking advantage of it at scale yet because before they put their performance (and livelihood) on the line—they need to see it to believe it.
Simon Bouchez explained in his open letter to Partnerships from Sales,
When you start to reveal the partners who surround our buyers, tap into them when there’s a genuine need for help, and come to us [Sales] with a lifeline, that’s when you gain believers.
Good partner manager, bad partner manager
Rasheité (Radcliff) Calhoun is the Director of Channel Partnerships at AxiosHQ and an absolute force in the world of partnerships.
While she’s seen (and built) great partnerships, she’s also witnessed flat out bad partnerships.
Read the differences between good partnering and bad partnering in Rasheité’s article, Good Partner Manager, Bad Partner Manager.
A great example of ecosystem partnering: SmartBug Media
A few weeks ago, HubSpot named Smartbug their largest, deepest, and most decorated Elite partner in the world.
That’s huge news for Jen Spencer (CEO) and the SmartBug team. Congrats y’all!
Ecosystem takeaways from their success:
- Play the long game: They’ve been partners with HubSpot for years!
- Create value across the customer lifecycle: To win in any large ecosystem, you need to provide as much value as possible, identifying and filling gaps for the ecosystem partner’s customers.
- Be enjoyable to work with: The HubSpot team loves working with SmartBug. You don’t make it to a success like this without being liked!
Check out Jen Spencer’s LinkedIn announcement here.
Tap into the market at scale
Living in-market is tough, but every partner pro needs to have his/her pulse on it. Help someone stay up-to-date with the latest insights and trends. Share this Daily with a friend.
