Agency: Speargrowth.com, B2B marketing, 20 employees
CEO: Ishaan Shakunt
Situation: In need of new leads. They were doing all inbound marketing. They decided, after learning about Partnerhub® ironically, to start turning on partnerships. Subsequently, partner-led events.
Result: Hundreds of leads, lots of personal thought leadership for Ishaan, and pipeline for the agency.
Partner(s) referenced: https://www.vweby.com/
Listener takeaways:
Setup checklist for a partner event
How to ensure reciprocity from the event partners
Post event strategy
Why use these virtual summit tech platforms like Airmeet and Hubilo versus a meeting room tech like Zoom
Repurposing content post-event
Links:
Situation: It’s early days at Eloqua and David Lewis sees a huge opportunity to build an agency focused on helping companies adopt marketing automation - specifically on Eloqua to start. He allies with Jill Rowley who is a top salesperson at Eloqua at the time.
Result: Together they close huge deals with Eloqua - building David’s agency while making Jill the top salesperson - then shifting focus to Marketo and adding other platforms until David’s successful exit in 2021.
Agency guest: David Lewis, Founder of DemandGen
His GTM partner: Jill Rowley, Nearbound Strategist
Companies referenced: DemandGenEloquaMarketo
Reveal
Listener takeaways:
Why David decided to launch DemandGen as a power partners
Why Jill chose to sell against “Smart Starts” internal service packages
The partner playbook they created used to succeed
How David’s partners lifted his exit
Why and how salespeople should bring partners into the deals
Why in-house service packages are a bad idea
Pre-selling software with partners
Why your solutions partners are (or should be) the insurance policy for your largest customers
Links:
Agencies: duostrategyla.com and pblcmedia.com
CEOs: Taylor Kratz, Grant McNaughton, Jon Farah
Situation: Jon needed to grow his client base, and he knew partnerships was the way to get there quickly.
Result: A successful partnership between two agencies that resulted in net new business and higher client retention.
Listener takeaways:
Why Jon went right into partnerships with larger agencies as his growth strategy
How white label vs collaborative strategic partnerships differ.
How to set up the billing relationship between partners and clients.
Finding and converting a first shared customer.
Creating a shared process to find more successes.
Why it’s important they made Jon client-facing and not
How Jon’s expertise in marketing and the tech stack enabled their early success.
What they did wrong.
Sponsors:
Situation: A high-profile customer was having a difficult digital transformation off a legacy tech stack. Carabiner and Formstack worked closely to get them through it.
Result: A successful digital transformation off of a failing tech stack onto a new reliable stack which
Carabiner group supported them in. The client was able to expand and grow after the transformation was done.
Agency: carabinergroup.com
CEO: Seamus Ruiz-Earle
Partner(s) referenced: Formstack.com
Listener takeaways:
The value of this deal in terms of revenue and other after effects.
Successful digital transformation for a large org.
How to work with partners when there is a lot at stake.
The importance of process alignment in these larger deals.
What Carabiner Group does to stay top of mind with their partners.
How they are expanding on this deal to get more like it.
How this formed their new “Cocktail of solutions” at Carabiner to bring.
Relationships formed along the way…
Links:
https://www.formstack.com/customer-story/njcaa
This episode is very special. I interviewed David Lewis in 2018 on my last podcast about his success in his agency DemandGen.
My guest, Jill Rowley, is a social selling evangelist who was one of the first employees at Salesforce. She met my David Lewis, our guest, while leading sales at Eloqua. David was one of their customers. Soon after their connection, David left his role to build a 7 figure “power partner” agency of Elequa.
In this episode, the three of us discuss:
Why david decided to launch DemandGen as a power partners
Their history with Eloqua
How Jill sold against “Smart Starts” service from elequa ($6500) and instead pushed that
The transition when they doubled-down on Marketo
The partner playbook they created used to succeed
Partner meeting strategies
How David’s partners lifted his exit
Why and how salespeople should bring partners into the deals
Why in-house service packages are a bad idea
Pre-selling software with partners
Why your solutions partnerss are (or should be) the insurance policy for your largest customers
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
When partner managers attempt to create with their strategic growth teams, it can often be an uphill battle for both sides. Misalignment, lack of understanding of the other departments objectives, processes and tribulations… And many times, it ends in failure.
This episode is all about how to overcome the roadblocks partnerships teams may face when working with their marketing and growth leads.
To help us all understand, I have found two individuals who know more about partnerships-marketing alignment than anyone.
Help us welcome Gauri Chawla, Enterprising Partnerships Leader, Public Speaker, Angel Investor, and partner of our second guest Mason Cosby, Founder of Scrappy ABM, ABM Speaker, TCK Husband, and 1X Girl Dad.
These two help us all understand:
The biggest reasons partner teams struggle to work with their growth teams
How partner teams can avoid these pitfalls of working with growth teams
Ways they can “go rogue” and start building pipeline without losing their job
Building an ABM campaign that includes partners
Efficient content creation with partners
Facilitating logical referrals with these partner campaigns
Ways partnerships people be looked at as a positive aspect of your growth teams day
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
In today’s sales climate, account executives and partnerships teams need to collaborate more than ever before to win deals.
Enter Mac Reddin, CEO of Commsor which is pivoting into sales enablement with their product Bronto.
Mac has been an outspoken contrarian this past year (follow him on LinkedIn) and is joining me today to share his views on partnerships, sales, and go-to-market.
On today’s episode, Mac and I discuss:
How Mac interprets “The people are your partners” as a strategy
Why partner people talking to partner about partnerships people doesn’t move the needle
How can partnerships people actually move the needle for their org
Community vs partners
The future of partnerships
What Mac is and would do differently with a SaaS GTM strategy for the next two years
The honest truth about partnerships as a team and process
And we end with some advice on how to fix co-selling
It get particularly good after minute 20, so hang in there… you’ll be happy you did.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Marco De Paulis began his career work at top digital agencies before joining Privy as their agency-partnerships lead. He’s now been spearheading Ryder Commerce’s partner program using little more than Google docs, sheets, and Salesforce.
In this episode, Marco and I will dig through:
Marco’s tech stack for managing Ryder Commerce’s partner program
Why he set it up the way he did
When what type of solution or process makes sense
Why some “typical” partner tech stacks and routines never make sense
And we’ll take you through his actual template for partner success.
Resources:
“How to run partnerships effectively without a software budget” - with a setup video and template links.
A free account to Partnerhub® if you are in the boat of needing a place to call partner operations home.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Today’s episode is a look into a successful agency-to-agency partnership between two top development and design agencies; Merix Studio and Wayf Digital, and their partnerships leads; Jan Kubczak and Szymon Królikowski.
This is a first for us. We typically interview tech and agency partners together, or just tech teams, but it’s very important for all of us to know more about the type of partnership between two service providers. So, here we are.
In today’s conversation we learn:
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
In this episode, I speak to Sean Kester, Partner at In Revenue - a unique new operator-immersive capital firm obsessed with enabling founders with what their Partners have learned.
I asked Sean to join me because he is a former Partnerships lead at Salesloft, Stax, and an advisor to partnerships-driven org’s like PandaDoc. So he has the ideal experience to help us understand:
What is GTM fit and how partners fit in.
Where partnerships can help with capital raises.
How Sean and In Revenue incorporate partnerships strategy with their portfolio companies.
Ecosystems-led vs community-led (i.e. DealHub in HubSpot or Qualified in Salesforce eco vs Lavendar.ai which started as a community + services, then launched their Ai product)
What must be in place before any startup launches into partnerships.
And, I ask Sean to poke holes in a Partnerships-Led GTM that we are testing with our V2 product (Partnerhub®):
Paying partnerships leaders for __ number of posts on social about the launch.
Bringing PL’s into the product by way of templates branded with their name that the users can deploy for their internal partner operations.
Matching new users with expert consultants - exclusive to vertical and type of support.
This is a type of episode I’ve been wanting to do for a while, so I hope you like it.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Links mentioned:
https://www.partnerhub.app/blog/when-is-the-ideal-time-for-a-tech-startup-to-invest-in-partnerships
https://www.linkedin.com/in/theseankester/details/experience/
Today I had one of the most interesting discussions around a topic I don’t believe is discussed enough amongst product and leadership teams early on in SaaS growth - what happens when a PLG focused SaaS org launches into partnerships with service providers to support their extensive customer base or break into new markets?
To answer this, I asked Alec Biedrzycki, Head of Partner Marketing @ Jasper.ai. Al cut his teeth in partnerships at people-driven org HubSpot. Then Al went to product-led SaaS rocket ship Airtable. Now, he’s with one of the most excited products in Ai…
But, what Al will explain in this episode is - just because the product-led strategy is working so well does not mean a partner program is going to have immediate success.
PLG products bring inherent challenges to partnering with service providers.
We’ll explain…
The differences between HubSpot’s partnership strategy and Airtable’s initial partnership strategy.
The differences between partnerships at a people-driven (marketing and sales ops) org and a product-led
Where partnerships come in for savvy product-led saas orgs.
Litmus test for timing to launch into partnerships as a fast-growing saas.
When are partnerships manager there as a CS extension and not there to generate net new revenue?
We debunk some of the main partnerships vs sales assumptions
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
In this episode, we are going to focus on a very specific partner persona - a recently-acquired enterprise-focused digital agency - to learn how an acquisition presents new challenges and opportunities in partnerships, w/ Nick Thomson from The Stable.
Today you will hear:
What were some of the things Nick did immediately after the acquisition.
How the up-market shift affected his day-to-day.
Change in technology - CRM and internal comm’s.
“Synergy deals” for The Stable.
What changed in how you deal with new inbound partner requests.
What a “great” inbound request looks like for Nick.
How has partner-sourced ____ changed since the acquisition.
When attribution becomes tricky.
KPIs you are monitoring pre and post acquisition.
Event-specific KPIs.
What Accenture thinks of partnerships as a function.
Nick’s main focus for the next 3-6 months.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Welcome back, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the last episode where Will Taylor and I chatted about the viability of a partnerships-led-only growth strategy.
I’m the luckiest podcast host again this week because I get to speak to an ecommerce thought leader who now runs a niche product and partnership offering supported by someone who cut her teeth in partnerships at Gorgias - an ecomm platform known to have a well-oiled partner program.
Coming to this episode today is Nik Sharma, CEO of Sharma Brands, HOOX, and 1180 Media. With him is the amazing Dillon Duchesne, who leads partnerships and biz dev for HOOX.
The theme of today’s episode is How CEOs need to be heavily involved and support a 1:1 partnerships strategy to ensure its success - especially early on.
Today, Nik, Dillon and I chat about:
How having a niche offering eases the partnership equation
What the GTM was like given the fact Nik operates an agency and a tech that does offer some of the same creative services as the agency (i.e. landing pages)
How HOOX positions itself with agency partnerships
“Let us pay your rent” - increasing the margins and ROI on services… not necessarily commissions as an incentive.
Why Nik uses the “Kim Kardashian red carpet experience” analogy with his partnerships strategy
How Dillon enables her partners differently now vs in her previous tech partnerships role
How Nik “paves the road” to ensure Dillon can continue driving her race car on the road behind him
Nik’s advice to CEOs on launching a partner program
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Will Taylor asked this question on LinkedIn;
Before we go into much detail about that question from my friend Will, we should first ask ourselves the question; "What does partnerships-led mean?"
Is a webinar I do with another company partner-led? Or, is that just solid efficient thought-leadership content marketing?
Is an integration a partnership? At Partnerhub®, we have integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Sendgrid.... Does that mean they are our partners?
And when I set up an affiliate tracking funnel and payout system for my product... Does that mean those bloggers who signed up and shared my link are my partners?
Now, I brought Will to the show to help me answer:
Read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/partnerships-led-growth-only-strategy-most-viable-alex-glenn/?trackingId=QD367pFTTP2ngINOu14Q%2FQ%3D%3D
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
This podcast is recorded at a perfect time for us with HubSpot and Salesforce Partner Tracks around the corner, we are working with our friends at Dealhub (represented today by channel leader Omer Fuchs, VP of Strategic Alliances) to prepare their partner track with the intent of finding and aligning with more solutions partners like our guests on this episode.
With him is Diana Gonzalez Sr. Channel Manager at RevPartners and the Robert “RevOps” Jones, the Sales Director at RevPartners.
This type of partnership is one where the agency becomes a power user and product expert using their own process optimization first, then role it out to the clients. This is a very different relationship than say Shopify has with their partners (agencies don’t run their internal sales ops on top of Shopify). Which means, the level of product and partnership synergy can either happen very quickly, or fall flat due to some internal stakeholder on the partners’ team not being fully sold on the product for their use, and therefore the senior person is now in the middle getting requests from the tech partner manager that they have no answer for since that persons’ team is not bought into using it. In short, this type of partnership almost has to be a power user first.
The big question then becomes - does this type of agency-partnership have to start with them using the product internally, and becoming a power user?
Then begs the question - does that mean you have to sell them an account? Or do you gift them one?
In either case, on this episode, we will be reviewing:
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
When your solutions partners ask and need referrals back from you in order to continue sending you referrals, here are some ways to keep that reciprocity engine going, in a manageable and scalable way.
Scenario 1: You are managing hundreds of partners and you cannot possibly feed them all.
Scenario 2: You are new or simply do not have customer access to be able to effectively intro partners to users.
In either scenario, your goal is not to try and wedge your way between AE's and Users with a partner intro... You're a partner manager - you don't have direct comm's or relationships with end users. You cannot and should not be the directly-referring party.
Instead, your goal is to become the valuable consistent "conduit" for traffic and then referrals your partners receive from your brand.
On that note, here are 5 ways to generate referrals back to your partners...
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Links mentioned:
https://www.partnerhub.app/blog/5-ways-to-generate-referrals-back-to-your-partners
https://www.particl.com/blog-posts/seoroundup
https://databox.com/partner/impact-branding-design-llc
https://smith.ai/blog/how-to-track-smith-ai-live-chat-in-google-ads-google-analytics
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6SOetAA-XEJkO-oHkBg6FtBAszuQH3nkThBiUosETw/edit
https://www.hubspot.com/resources/partner-contribution/inbound-marketing-strategy
https://www.coastalconsulting.co/resources/hubspot-salesforce-integration-course
I cannot say enough about our guest today. Barrett King, Sr. Manager - GTM Strategy, Global Partner Ecosystem at HubSpot, joins me to run through how go-to-market with solutions partners. We’ve spent some time on previous episodes (refer to the episode with Justin Graci if you like this topic) on partner GTM, but I cannot tell you the listeners we have given you enough on the subject until we hear from Barrett.
In this episode, we will highlight 3 key areas of partner GTM:
When you’re ready for partnerships
What partnerships are and will for your org
And how can you further develop that output
Are partners offense or defense
Misconception of “Affiliates” vs “Partners”
Defining personas
Attracting partners
How much of this is on sales vs marketing
What is bare bones enablement
What matters most to early partners
When and where certifications come in
What partners need in year 2
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
In this episode, I get to interview a newly-acquired agency’s founder Brandon Amoroso from Electriq, a top Shopify marketing agency, and one of his top partners, Noah Rahimzadeh who runs Partnerships at Malomo.
This episode focuses on how to make your way into the preferred tech stack of a top digital agency.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Shout outs:
https://www.okendo.io/
In today’s episode, we hear from one of the best partner-marketing leaders on the planet in Mark Kilens, and one of the most experienced partnerships people coming out of sales, Airmeet's new VP of Partnerships & Channel Sales, Rhonda Scher.
Rhonda was deep into sales before working in her first partnerships role at Hopin. Mark cut his teeth building HubSpot’s renowned partner and user training programs before running marketing at companies like Drift and now he’s CMO of Airmeet.
During our talk today, the three of us work to uncover:
This is an excellent episode to share with your marketing team or CEO.
But as usual, before we start, please hear from our amazing sponsors.
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
Logan Lyles, Head of Partnerships at Teamwork, and former VP of Revenue at a top B2B agency called Sweetfish (important context to know about him going into this), is joining us because he is having to ideat, present, gain buy-in and execute on partner marketing as we speak in his first year at Teamwork.
On this episode, Logan and I will discuss:
Another tactical episode you should listen to and maybe share with your marketing team or CEO.
But as usual, please listen to a word from our fantastic sponsors :)
Co-marketing articles mentioned in the episode:
https://www.particl.com/blog-posts/seoroundup
https://smith.ai/blog/how-to-track-smith-ai-live-chat-in-google-ads-google-analytics
Sponsors:
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.
