Presenting the Value of Partnerships

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Partnership leaders need to be able to prioritize creating value through their partners AND effectively communicate that value internally to gain resources and buy-in from other departments. When partnership leaders are unsuccessful, it is most often due to a lack of internal alignment around goals, priorities, and resource allocation rather than any issues with their partner’s strategy and execution. 

According to the 2024 State of Partnership Leaders report, 60% of respondents indicated that the misalignment of goals was why their team underperformed. 

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From Vision to Victory: The Guide to Showcasing Partnership Value

I. Understanding Partnership Value and Company Objectives

The way to navigate this section of the guide is to identify which of the following objectives are most important to your organization and leverage these talk tracks:

A. Become A Category Leader

Being a category leader means you are not just the top company in an industry, but you have defined a new class of solutions for which you are the leading provider. Category creation requires the support of a leading ecosystem. Why is that? The section below outlines how the partner ecosystem is essential to being a category leader. 

Creating a category, and ultimately leading it, involves a series of complex steps that vary from company to company, but all include:

The first three items on the list are possible without any partner ecosystem, although partners would accelerate all of them. However, validation from the industry is only possible with partner support.

Getting Validation from the Industry via Partnerships

1. Trusted Experts

These are the consultants, advisors, systems integration experts, etc. who your customer relies on to make technology decisions and to implement them successfully. Especially in the enterprise, but at all levels of companies, they have long-standing relationships with the customer and have helped them purchase and successfully implement technology in the past. 

These are referred to as Solution Partners. You want to educate these companies on the challenges you see their customers facing, how they can use our technology to drive outcomes, and also how they can provide services on top. 

Once a solution partner has seen success in introducing your product to some customers, they will become a great influence in the market. The most successful partner ecosystems have hundreds or thousands of Solution Partners advocating for their technology to their target customers. 

2. Technology Providers

Often, when a user of a product is looking to solve a problem, the first thing they will do is check if their existing tools offer a solution. If it doesn’t, they will likely receive a recommendation from an integrated tool that solves that problem for the customer from a CSM. If the customer doesn’t ask their CSM, they may instead look at the technology provider’s integration directory or marketplace. 

The three biggest technology provider points of influence are: 

• CSMs and Sales team at tech provider
• Integration Directory or Marketplace
• Content – blog, webinars, events, etc.

These are referred to as Technology Partners. We want to partner with these companies so that when their customers ask for recommendations, they are talking about our solution. Ideally, we would like these partners to be proactively in identifying customer problems and recommending us. 

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3. Thought Leaders 

Thought leaders are influential individuals in the industry who most often produce content such as blogs, podcasts, social posts, etc. on your customer’s areas of interest. 

These are referred to as Affiliate Partners.  You want to incentivize these people to talk about your products in their content. You can do this by bringing them closer to your company via advisory boards, featuring them as speakers in your events and content, and offering affiliate commission and advertising spend on their content.

Many thought leaders offer consulting services as their primary business vs generating revenue primarily via content. If this is the case, then we would consider them a Solution Partner first. 

4. Peers

This is mostly the domain of the marketing team cultivating a customer community of advocates. 

• Creating a Thriving Customer Community: Imagine a buzzing community where every chat is full of excitement for your brand. Marketing teams aim to build this vibrant space, where customers feel valued and connected. By engaging meaningfully and understanding their needs, you turn casual buyers into devoted advocates.
• Empowering Brand Advocates: A thriving community creates brand advocates—enthusiastic customers who promote your product passionately. They don’t just buy; they recommend you to others and amplify your brand’s reputation through their genuine enthusiasm.
• Harnessing Feedback for Growth: A vibrant community also provides valuable feedback. Every comment and suggestion helps refine your product, ensuring it evolves with customer needs and strengthens your connection with them.

B. Increased Distribution and New Revenue Growth

Partnerships enable us to expand our market reach and accelerate revenue growth by leveraging partner distribution channels. Collaborating with partners allows us to access new markets, customer segments, and sales channels that we may not reach independently.

1. Relationships

Partners have existing relationships that allow them to initiate conversations with companies where a cold outreach would not be successful. 

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2. Increasing Capacity

Having 100s or 1000s of partners with teams incentivized and enabled to identify opportunities that are relevant for your company dramatically increases the top-of-funnel sales capacity of a company.

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3. Geographic Reach 

Local partnerships allow you to effectively cater to diverse languages, cultures, and market nuances, leveraging established relationships to enhance relevance and drive growth in new regions.

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4. Marketing Reach 

Working with partners can increase the reach and reduce the cost of joint marketing efforts by contributing an additional database or audience.

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5. Industries and Segments

Partners can cover industries that may need help to prioritize such as government customers or SMBs etc.

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C. Increase Operational Efficiency

An effective partnership strategy will increase productivity and reduce spending across departments. The cost to acquire and support a customer goes down, and customer retention and expansion go up. The need to build and maintain all solutions internally goes down, while the ability to capture value persists. Partnerships are truly the holy grail when it comes to scale. 

1. Sales Productivity

Sales opportunities that are influenced by a partner close at a higher rate, with a larger deal size, and often faster than those without. The trust the partner has developed with the customer increases their trust in you as a new provider, which increases the likelihood they are willing to buy your product, to initially invest more in it, and to make a decision faster. But don’t just take our word for it. 

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2. Marketing Efficiency

Partners can increase marketing reach, reduce costs by sharing budgets, and add brand validation to improve the efficacy of marketing campaigns. Any company that is looking to reduce its cost to acquire customers should be looking at how it can leverage partners to reduce costs while increasing performance. 

3. R&D Spend

For many technology companies R&D spend will make up 15-20% of their total costs, and justifiably so. So if we were to say a company could REDUCE R&D costs while INCREASING innovative new solutions it would sound crazy. Right? But this is exactly what happens when product and engineering teams lean into their ecosystem of developer partners to extend their product offerings and leverage embedded/white-label partner solutions. Partners can build the non-essential functionality customers are asking for, and the company can still experience all of the adoption, retention, and expansion benefits. 

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4. Customer Support Costs

Partners will help increase the success of customers and reduce the costs associated with supporting them. Whether the reduced costs come from outsourcing low-margin professional services to Solution Partners, the lower volumes of support requests received by partner-supported customers, or the elimination of custom development by solutions architects thanks to partner integrations – partners can greatly reduce the cost of supporting a customer while bringing customer retention and expansion up.

• Faster Onboarding: Companies that utilize Solution Partners for customer onboarding report up to a 30% reduction in time-to-value for new customers. (Source: Forrester Research)
• Better Engagement: Partner-supported customers experience up to a 40% increase in engagement metrics such as product usage and feature adoption. (Source: Gartner)
• Higher Retention Rates: Partner-supported customers demonstrate up to a 25% improvement in customer retention rates compared to those without partner support. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
• Higher Expansion Rates: Businesses with partner-supported customers see up to a 30% increase in upsell and cross-sell opportunities due to better initial implementation and ongoing support. (Source: IDC)

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II. Communicating Partnership Value to Key Stakeholders

The way to navigate this section of the guide is to identify which out of the following teams you are speaking to and leverage these talk tracks to communicate the value of your partnership organization to them:

Here are strategies and insights tailored for each stakeholder group, empowering you to effectively communicate the benefits of partnerships and secure internal alignment for collaborative success:

A. Executive Team

Objective: Gain executive support and alignment with the importance of partnerships.

Key Points to Address:

• Strategic Objectives: Align partnerships with overarching company goals (e.g., growth, market leadership).
• ROI and Strategic Impact: Showcase how partnerships can accelerate growth, enhance competitiveness, and expand market reach.
• Risk Mitigation: Address potential risks and demonstrate how partnerships mitigate these risks while leveraging opportunities.

Approach:

• Business Case: Present a compelling business case with quantitative data (e.g., projected revenue growth, market share expansion) and qualitative insights (e.g., strategic alignment, competitive advantage).
• Long-term Vision: Articulate how partnerships contribute to the long-term sustainability and scalability of the business.
• Executive Support: Seek endorsement for resources, investment, and strategic direction needed to build and manage effective partnerships.

B. Sales Team

Objective: Align partnership initiatives with sales objectives to drive revenue growth and enhance market penetration.

Key Points to Address:

• Cooperations as a Lead Source – By teaming up with the right partners, companies gain specialized knowledge, enhance flexibility, and share resources, empowering them to tackle complex challenges and manage risks effectively and confidently. This leads to more comprehensive and flexible solutions and amps up customer satisfaction and loyalty, propelling businesses to thrive in a competitive arena.
  • Partnerships represent X% of our leads but Y% of our closed won business because of our higher close rates.

• Partnerships as a Way To Say Yes To Customer Requirements – By strategically aligning with the right partners, companies can offer tailored, innovative solutions, expand their service capabilities, and swiftly address complex needs. This collaborative approach guarantees comprehensive, high-quality outcomes, enhancing customer satisfaction and enabling businesses to effectively tackle diverse demands while staying ahead in a competitive market.
  • Technology Partners who have integrations or complementary solutions can help meet the needs and requirements of a customer prospect, where our product cannot meet the criteria by itself. 
  • Solution Partners can provide additional implementation and consulting services to help companies, particularly in the enterprise, reduce the risk of not successfully implementing and adopting a new technology.

Approach:

• Sales Enablement: Provide training and resources on partner offerings, joint value propositions, and collaboration strategies.
• Incentives: Introduce incentives or commission structures tied to partnership-driven sales to motivate sales teams.
• Feedback Loop: Establish mechanisms for sales feedback to continuously optimize partner strategies and enhance customer satisfaction.

C. Marketing Team

Objective: Collaborate on partnership marketing strategies to amplify brand visibility, generate leads, and enhance market positioning.

Key Points to Address:

• Brand Amplification: Demonstrate how partnerships can amplify brand presence through joint marketing campaigns, co-branded content, and events.
• Lead Generation: Illustrate how partnerships contribute to lead generation efforts by tapping into partner networks and leveraging shared audiences.
• Localization: Leveraging partners in foreign language markets to disseminate marketing campaigns.

Approach:

• Integrated Campaigns: Plan and execute integrated marketing campaigns that leverage partner relationships to maximize reach and impact.
• Collateral and Assets: Develop co-marketing materials, case studies, and testimonials that highlight successful partnership outcomes.
• Metrics and Analytics: Establish KPIs to measure the effectiveness of partnership-driven marketing initiatives and optimize strategies accordingly.

D. Customer Success Team

Objective: Enhance customer satisfaction and retention through partnerships that add value to customer relationships.

Key Points to Address:

• Customer Experience: Explain how partnerships enhance the customer journey by offering integrated solutions and value-added services.
• Retention and Upsell Opportunities: Showcase how partnerships contribute to customer loyalty, reduce churn, and create opportunities for upselling/cross-selling.
• Support and Service Enhancements: Highlight how partnerships improve service delivery, support capabilities, and responsiveness to customer needs.

Approach:

• Customer Education: Educate customer success teams on partner offerings, benefits, and how to position partnerships as part of the customer success strategy.
• Collaborative Support: Establish joint support processes and escalation paths with partners to ensure seamless customer experiences.
• Feedback and Insights: Gather customer feedback on partnership value and incorporate insights into ongoing partnership strategies and improvements.

E. Product Team

Objective: Integrate partnerships into product development strategies to drive innovation, expand product offerings, and enhance market competitiveness.

Key Points to Address:

• Focus on highest priority customer use cases and features
• Build long-tail functionality through integration partners
• Test market interest and reach new customer personas with integrations and apps

Approach:

• Collaborative Roadmapping: Collaborate on product roadmaps that incorporate partner solutions, integrations, and joint development initiatives.
• Prototype and Pilot Programs: Execute pilot programs or prototype developments with partners to validate concepts and gather early feedback.
• User Experience and Feedback: Integrate user feedback and insights from partnerships into iterative product enhancements and feature prioritization.

How They Did It: Examples from Our Partner Experts

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