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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:  Reveal.co/ Partnerhub.app/

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:  Reveal.co/ Partnerhub.app/ 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. Marco’s linkedin 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:  ‍ How Jan started this partnership What makes WAYF an ideal partner for Merix How their partnership works What happens when there is a shared customer How each of them thinks to enable one another to bring more deals to the table What their leadership (they are both partner managers) expects from them to find and activate more partnerships How they mitigate the expectations (true and false expectations) from leadership Their plans to grow faster together ‍ ‍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; "Can you build a great company with a 100% partner-led approach?" 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:  Who are your "partners" and who aren't? What is "partnerships-led"?  If and when it is a viable growth strategy? 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.