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Nearbound Daily #546: 9 Creative Ways to Showcase Your Champions

Welcome to the Nearbound Daily Newsletter—the #1 partnerships newsletter in the world keeping 7,000+ partner professionals on top of the latest industry principles, tactics, and trends. Nearbound.com is a project of Reveal.co aimed to bring about the decade of the ecosystem. Join the movement here.

PRINCIPLES

ROI > price and feature info

Buyers used to make purchase decisions based on price and features. Today they’re looking for ROI.

GTM Partners presented what they’re calling “The ROI Challenge.”

Buyers want to know that your tool or service will:

• Be easy to implement
• Show fast ROI
• Easily scale with the team,
• Enjoy good user adoption.
•  

Here’s the challenge…

According to G2’s 2023 Software Buyer Behavior Report, 47% of B2B buyers expect to see ROI within 6 months.

Yet, according to our research, 60% of companies don’t know how to show ROI at all (much less show they can deliver it in 6 months!).

The best proof? Real customer experiences.

Companies that recognize this are shifting their messaging from a focus on price, features, and functions to ROI and real examples.

And they’re using nearbound tactics to find those trusted voices and tell their stories.

To read more and see examples, click here.

TACTICS

9 creative ways to showcase champions

Your customers and partners have what your sellers don’t have.

• Credibility
• Experience
• Success Stories
• Trust

They speak the language of your buyers and have achieved your buyers’ promised land.

“Connecting customers to a partner not only helps pre-sale, it helps get customers to value faster post-sale. Salespeople don’t need to be altruists to care about customer success. Happy, successful customers are your best advocates.”
—Jill Rowley, Strategy and Evangelism at nearbound.com and Reveal

Here are a few ways you can showcase customers and partners throughout the buying journey:

Nearbound marketing

• Tell success stories often, focusing on ROI
• Create more opportunities to shout them out (events, reports, podcasts, etc.)
• On thought-leadership content, ask where you can add others’ voices
• Link to their profiles so interested prospects can DM them with questions
   

Nearbound sales

• Use use-case-specific success stories in sales calls
• Have a list of customers or partners who would be happy to talk to prospects
• Multi-thread with champions

Nearbound success

• Bring up others’ successes with specific use cases in meetings
• Create opportunities for customers to talk to other customers

For more like this, read Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy.

TRENDS

Kevin Raheja from Bitly sets the example
 

Kevin Raheja, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Bitly, shared his insight on Bitly’s marketplace.

If you’re asking yourself, "What does it look like for us to showcase partners?"

Take a page from Raheja’s book.

Shouting out partners doesn’t have to be anything formal or overly polished.

In a short LinkedIn article, he shared what Bitly’s partnerships look like, why they’ve chosen these partners, and even shouted out 11 of their partners.

Check it out here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Stuff you don’t want to miss

• TOMORROW—March 26th—The Hard Facts About Intent Data—Experts from Bombora, G2, and Inverta are joining forces to explain everything you need to know about intent data: what is it, how does it benefit your organizations, use cases, and how to combine it with predictive AI. Register here.
• March 27th—Building an Ecosystem With Intention—Join Christopher Holley (Global Director, Technology Partnerships at Commercetools) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) where they will dive into the nuances of strategic ecosystem building in the tech industry. Register here.
• March 28th—Track & Hack Your Partner Program To $25M ARR w/ Greg Portnoy, CEO at Euler—Greg Portnoy is joining Franz-Josef Schrepf to share how he built a $25M ARR partner program from scratch as the first partner at unicorn startup Attentive. Register here.
• March 28th—Official Partnership Leaders Meetup In Austin—Partnership Leaders members and non-members in partnerships from the Austin area are invited to meet up in Austin and spend an evening networking and learning. In partnership with Reveal and Impartner, we’ll be offering a specialized Partner Management Workshop for attendees prior to the networking event. Learn more here.
• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is Nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED ON NEARBOUND.COM

• What Top Revenue Leaders Really Think of Partnerships by Shawnie Hamer
• How Nearbound Can Help Keep and Win Back Customers by Delphine Le Person and Isaac Morehouse
• Howdy Partners #69: Why Fractional Partner Management? with Pat Ferdig
• Nearbound Podcast #157: 18 Months Until the End of SaaS? Jacco’s Prophecy with Jacco van der Kooij
• Partner Up or Perish: A Review of the Nearbound Book by Antonio Caridad
• Leverage AI to Build Your Partner Program by Rob Rebholz
•  

You’re all caught up.

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nearbound.com is a project of Reveal.co