As we head into Q2, we’re excited to explore new partnerships and opportunities all around. We’re continuing to roll out new blogs digging into partnership best practices from our members to help you improve your strategies! We’ve also launched a new partnership concierge service to make it easier to find new partners.
Mark your calendars! Next Tuesday, we launch our Q2 spotlight series exploring the partnerships career path. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn so you don’t miss an update! We look forward to showcasing more of the incredible talent in the Partnership Leaders community!
Looking to glance rather than scroll? Here’s a preview of what’s included this month:
- Check out the new PL Concierge!
- A sneak peek at some of the latest expert insights shared on the Partnership Leaders blog.
- A quick highlight of conversations on topics like reporting metrics, the ROI of social ads for partnerships, and strategies for distinguishing partners.
- How to increase channel partner activation rates with Allbound.
- Don’t miss the round tables happening this month and next!
If you are not yet a paid member (what’s stopping you!?) you will have limited access to content below. Join us to unlock the full conversation!
Connect with Other Members & Great-fit Tech Partners!
Find Great-Fit Tech Partners
Our Partnership Leaders Tech Partner Concierge is now in beta! The service, included in your Partnership Leaders membership, is designed to connect tech partner teams together based on their go-to-market alignment and tech integration opportunity.
Take this survey to get started!
Meet Other Members 1:1
The Donut app in Slack makes it easy and fun to connect with other PL members. Be sure to join the #meeting-ground channel to start meeting people today. You never know what opportunities may result!
Increase Channel Partner Activation Rates with Allbound
You put a lot of time and effort into recruiting partners. How do you ensure they take steps to onboard, register deals, and read updated content from your company?
This guide from Allbound will help you:
- Define activation as a measurable KPI.
- Manage partner expectations during recruitment conversations.
- Evaluate the drop-off rate for each stage leading up to partner activation.
- Model partner activation strategies on your star partners.
Recent Partnerships Insights
We’ve had a surplus of talented partnership professionals on our blog recently sharing their insights on partnerships from their time in the industry.
Why is prospect education such a crucial element of the sales cycle?
“The message we send to our partners at tech companies is that if you sell them a tool that has 100 features, but they don’t know how to use 75 of them, your tool only has 25 features in their mind.”
Explore how Rebecca Nackson of Notable recommends approaching agency partnerships.
What’s important to you when considering a role?
“If you want me to manage your channel, you need to make sure you remove as much — or all — of the tension between us and sales. If we go in together, we’ll win. If you make us butt heads, we have no prospect of succeeding. Instead, it’s going to be tense, hard, and unhealthy.” Explore Sarit Chalamish’s best practices from launching a strong partner program in the middle of a global pandemic.
What are important strategies for partnering with Salesforce?
“There’s a lot of noise. Instead of boiling the ocean, you want to narrow your focus with a specific product vertical or industry to gain initial traction and build meaningful relationships with the right Salesforce teams. How do you become an expert that’s relevant right now? It starts with not just understanding your ICP, but leading with it and being able to communicate clearly the unique value you bring to Salesforce.” Explore all of Yeva Robert’s advice for going to market with Salesforce.
Best Of & Trending Topics by Channel
#partner-programs
Distinguishing Partners? “Has anyone gone through an exercise of distinguishing between enterprise clients vs channel partners? I am working on developing a program from scratch where there are existing accounts on both sides in the business but no clear line in the sand on how they are different. Would love to hear feedback on this if you have a concise way to differentiate between the two.” See how others have tackled differentiating, including taking away the ability for an agency to buy directly and use for their customers.
#marketing
ROI of Social Advertising for Partnerships “I’m curious if anyone has used paid ads on LinkedIn and Facebook as a method of generating partner program interest? If so, was it effective, lessons learned?” Explore the results professionals in our community have driven with social ads and how others feel about LinkedIn InMail outreach.
#partner-programs
Metrics to Report On “Does anyone have insights to the type of reporting partners like receiving from referral/affiliate programs? Aside from purchase/redemption data, what other insights have been provided and have proved helpful in guiding future activations or promotions?” Explore the full conversation in Slack to see what metrics members recommend sharing, such as visibility into their referral pipeline and when payments are due.
Finally, a Newsletter for Your Sales Team
Introducing Ecosystem Sales, a bi-weekly newsletter from Crossbeam that shared super-actionable insights for filling your pipeline using partnerships. Every other Tuesday you’ll get:
- Battle-tested insights. Learn from top SaaS companies and sales teams with actual numbers, no hand-wavy “success stories”.
- From the partnership experts. We’re obsessed with partner ecosystems. Let us do the research for you and your sales team.
- No walls of text. Super-skimmable and actionable tactics you can use right away.
Sign up yourself, or forward it to your sales team.
Recent Partnered Up Podcasts
- 047: Jill Rowley • previously at Salesforce, Oracle, & Marketo
- 046: Diane Krakora • CEO at PartnerPath
- 045: Mike Davis • VP of Sales at TaskRay & Founder of GTM Guides
- 044: Kit Merker • COO at Nobl9
- 043: Heather Margolis • Founder at Channel Maven & CEO at Spark Your Channel
Hear all of the Partnered Podcasts episodes
Upcoming Events
Members can now use the Eventbot in Slack to RSVP to events! Just use the dropdown to share your status — either Accept, Decline, or Maybe — and we’ll send you a calendar invite with the event link.
4/22 – Building Private Equity & Venture Capital Relationships as a Partnership Channel (Member-exclusive Round Table)
Private Equity and Venture Capital firms invest in companies with hopes to chase a successful IPO or exit. Share your experience and get others’ insights on the partnership process, benefits, and drawbacks to find out if this is the right channel for your company to pursue.
4/27 – Partner Relationship Management Product Demo: PartnerPortal.io Platform Overview (Member-exclusive Product Demo)
Partner leaders have widely leveraged PRMs in the past, but legacy options can make it a difficult investment to justify. PartnerPortal.io will provide a member-exclusive platform overview so you can see how a custom partner portal can be deployed using a self-serve PRM and what the requirements are. PartnerPortal.io will also explore what other options there are based on your needs.
4/28 – Lessons Learned from Partnering Gone Wrong (Public Webinar)
Despite the best of intentions, partnering doesn’t always work out as anticipated in the real world. Join the Partnering Experts team, to dig into real-life examples where partnering didn’t go as planned, including why technology conglomerates* ended a multi-billion partnership, how an IT and telco company mismatched service delivery, and how misaligned cultural issues created challenges in the early channel distribution efforts in the Africa and Central Asia regions.
*Actual names of the companies involved will be disclosed during the webinar
Are you interested in hosting an event or do you have topic ideas? Let us know here!
Get in On the Partnerships Fun!
If you were feeling some serious FOMO scrolling through our April update, don’t fret! You can apply to join Partnership Leaders now.
Want a weekly dose of partnerships, channel, and tech hot takes delivered to your inbox every Friday morning? Then you’ll want to sign up for PL;DR.
