Nearbound Daily #588: 💰 High Versus Low ROI Partnering
Partnerships consume time, resources, and effort. They require negotiation, integration, collaborative marketing, and often extensive onboarding and enablement. Low ROI partnerships happen when partner pros solve minor issues.
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PRINCIPLES
High versus low ROI partnering
Partnerships consume time, resources, and effort. They require negotiation, integration, collaborative marketing, and often extensive onboarding and enablement.
Low ROI partnerships happen when partner pros solve minor issues.
These partner pros:
❌ Are not sure where to begin.
❌ Don't understand the company's ICP
❌ Are attempting to look busy.
High ROI partnerships happen when partner pros seek to understand and solve major customer problems.
These partner pros:
✅ Understand the company's customer.
✅ Have built an IPP.
✅ Know what kinds of activities will impact customer outcomes.
TACTICS
How to recruit partners more effectively
When you first step into the partner recruitment role, it's common to feel overwhelmed.
Thoughts like:
- I don't even know where to start.
- Just sign the GSIs! We want GSIs.
- There are a ton of inbound partner applications. Let's sign them all.
- Let's outbound and recruit partners of our competitors! They'll definitely want to work with us.
These thoughts can cloud your judgment.
Instead, Nelson Wang (Founder of Partner Principles) encourages that you take a step back and consider a more strategic approach.
Here’s how to ensure you’re recruiting the right partners:
- Interview your customers. Understand their needs deeply.
- Learn the customer journey. Map out their experiences and identify key touchpoints.
- Identify their pain and where specific partner types can help. Determine the areas where partners can add the most value.
- Once you have this understanding, you can build an ideal partner profile that aligns with your company's strategic goals and customer needs.
If you need a more in-depth session on how to do partner recruiting or want the templates Nelson uses to do better partner recruiting, we have great news for you.
Nelson is hosting a live, free 1-hour live event called "From Recruitment to Revenue: How to Turn Your Ideal Partner Into ARR" with Reveal's Will Taylor (Head of Nearbound Partnerships at Reveal) and Allbound's Margaret Adam (Head of Product Marketing at Allbound) on May 23rd at 9:30 AM PST / 12:30 PM EST. Sign up here.
Register here.
FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
Back to basics: What is a partnership?
Maybe other GTM teams misunderstand partnerships because partner pros don't have a singular definition themselves.
Franz-Josef Schrepf (Strategic Partnerships at StreamYard) put it like this,
"I've seen people use the term for everything:
🏎️ McLaren's F1 team wants us to sponsor them?
🔌 Sales email from a niche Brazilian payment provider?
💸 Customer who asks to "partner" aka wants a discount?"
When everything's a partnership, it's difficult to explain the nearbound overlay.
Here's the definition of partnerships Franz shared.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments here.
UPCOMING EVENTS
- TOMORROW—May 23rd—From Recruitment to Revenue: How to Turn Your Ideal Partner into ARR—Join Will Taylor (Head of Nearbound Partnerships at Reveal), Nelson Wang (Founder of Partner Principles), and Margaret Adam (Head of Product Marketing at Allbound) to learn how to recruit partners that win new revenue for their companies, and retain current revenue by driving value to customers. Register here.
- May 29th—Roles on a Partnerships Team—Join Antonio Hidalgo (Senior Director of the Channel Programs at Megaport) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) where they will dive deep into the various roles crucial to building a successful partnerships ecosystem. Register here.
- May 30th—Driving Revenue Through Technology Partners—Learn from Kelly Sarabyn (Head of Product Partnerships Advocacy and Enablement at HubSpot), Asher Matthew (CEO at Partnership Leaders), and Robbie Ptaszynski (Director of Strategic Pursuits and Priority ISV Co-sell at Microsoft) as they discuss the revenue impact partnerships teams can have and evolving from re-selling to co-selling. 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.
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See you tomorrow
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