Nearbound Daily #553: The Convenient Age of SaaS Is Over
People are spending too much money on GTM motions that are not producing enough revenue. That also means we’re not spending enough on GTM motions that are actually generating growth.
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PRINCIPLES
Do you score your partners?
Most partner pros I talk to have a problem with prioritization—which partners or opportunities should I lean into, which ones should I let go of?
Rob Sale (Head of Partnerships and Country Manager at Six and Flow) was chatting with Maveen Kaur (Growth Marketer at Six and Flow) and he explained that one of the most effective things he and his team do is score their partners.
Here’s the information they score:
- Do they have a program?
- How mature is the program?
- How well resourced is the program?
- What kind of focus does this company have on the program?
- Overall TAM?
- Tech stack?
- Is our roadmap aligned?
- Executive relationships?
- Account mapping—overlaps, total addressable revenue potential
They do the diligence of getting these answers early and don’t have to be surprised later on when there’s a big red flag in their partnership.
Watch the full conversation.
TACTICS
Convenient age of SaaS = over
After the Nearbound Podcast with Jacco Van Der Kooj, I went on a little hunt trying to learn more from him.
I stumbled upon two resources you might enjoy:
- Toni Hohlbein’s Substack called The Revenue Letter
- The GTM Consortium, a group of the best in GTM looking to set a new research-backed standard
Toni welcomed Jacco on his podcast to talk about the state of SaaS today.
According to [Jacco] we’re going to look back at this coming year and say it had one of the biggest impacts on our lives.
Jacco believes that SaaS at the moment is going through (at least) 4 rapid changes. And what’s worse, it’s happening at the same time, and the speed with which these changes are happening and the scale of impact they are having is beyond any comprehension.
- Technological changes
- Cultural changes
- VC industry-wide changes
- Buyer behavior changes
The golden age of SaaS is over.
Jacco believes that means two things for every SaaS company out there:
1.You need to understand the parts of the factory that work together
2. You need to understand the production lines that work (and those that don’t)
Here’s what we see: Lots of people are spending too much money on GTM motions that are not producing enough revenue. That also means we’re not spending enough on GTM motions that are actually generating growth.
Check out the podcast and The GTM Consortium, a project by Pavillion, Winning by Design, and GTM Partners.
TRENDS
Just a lil’ perspective on partnerships
Franz-Josef Schrepf put together a list of his favorite resources in partnerships for anyone looking to break into partnerships.
The list was great, but what really struck me was this comment.
In less than 4 years there has been an EXPLOSION in partner content.
I mean, even looking back 2 years ago when PartnerHacker first began, we’ve seen a huge shift in the content and opportunities available to partner professionals.
For any of you out there wondering whether partnerships is the right place to be...yes, the moment is now.
The decade of the ecosystem is here, and partner pros have the opportunity to become the heroes.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Stuff you don’t want to miss!
- April 10th—Setting up Partnerships Amongst Mission-Aligned Companies— Join Nicolas Alexander (Head of Partnerships & Policy at Thallo) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) where they will dive deep into aligning commercial terms with your company’s values for sustainable partnerships. Register 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.
You’re all caught up.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY NEARBOUND.COM
- What Top Revenue Leaders Really Think of Partnerships by Shawnie Hamer
- Nearbound Ops: Leveraging Nearbound Data and Operations to Optimize Revenue
- Mastering Nearbound Customer Success: Key Takeaways from the Nearbound Book
- The Role of Nearbound Partnerships for Customer Success by Alper Yuder
- How Nearbound Can Help Keep and Win Back Customers by Delphine Le Person and Isaac Morehouse
- Nearbound Podcast #158: Why Agency Programs are the HARDEST. The Pirate Island Problem, with Max Traylor
- Partner Up or Perish: A Review of the Nearbound Book by Antonio Caridad
See you tomorrow.
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