Podium Director Of Product Partnerships, Thomas Mancusoon Partner Enablement

Not focusing on how to scale integrations, think about who is building, it can be both you and/or your partners, and ensure that your API has the endpoints you need to enable the customer utility required for the partnership to have a "better together" value prop. Review the health and activity of your integrations and double down on integrations that customers find useful, think from a customer workflow mindset, "what does this type of integration do for our customers?" and look to expand partners based on who can also deliver that type of workflow. Tech Partners are best at expanding the value of your product for your customers. Also don't forget to set up bi-directional data feeds, integration partners deal in the currency of data, make sure that goes both ways to ensure a great partnership.

Some basic building blocks are: -API documentation -Partner signup page -Dev Ecosystem [sandbox, docs, dev support channel] -Marketing, revenue share expectations upfront. -Streamlined legal process Don't sleep on the value of a really smooth legal process. Partner contracts can be time-consuming and painful, but if you set expectations upfront, on things like redlining, non-negotiable terms, and turnaround time, you will maintain good partnership velocity.

Depends on what you are enabling your partners to do. If its leads and sales, then... you should be seeing leads and sales. Some subtle indicators that your enablement program can be improved: - Leads are not closing at a rate equal or better to your organic leads. - Customer churn is outsized on your partner led customer base. - Leads start and diminish to zero over time. - Customer support cases are outsized on your partner led customers.

1. Service/consulting partners - We host our top partners in our booth at the conferences that align with their industry. - Host an "experts" directory where Sales and customers can send partners leads. - Offer Referral bonuses for leads coming into our sales teams. Do not require spiff or rev share on leads we send to partners. 2. Technology Partners - We host an integration marketplace, and offer top partners priority listing. - We call out integration partners in our product where the partner adds value for the customer. - Offer rev share to partners on integrated locations. - Run all of the typical co-marketing projects -webinars, blog posts, etc.

Shadow! Have partners shadow your sales teams when they are pitching prospects. Then Have the partner pitch you on your own product. Then Shadow your partners when they are pitching your product to their prospects. Finally Have the partner "teach" one of your sales reps how to pitch the product. You can build all of the training, and one pagers you want, but the best way is shadowing, it keeps everyone accountable to doing the work, and you will quickly find invested partners and partners who are not invested. Another PLUS, it will decrease the 'channel conflict' with your sales teams.

Basically your sales training + implementation training docs. Not an exhaustive list... but here are some good tools: - Product feature deep dive - Customer Case studies with the Value of your product front and center - Competitor Battle Cards - Implementation SOPs - Incentive plans for the partner - Point of contact list for escalations with the right purpose and department

Don't separate the two cohorts, [you, partner, customer,] create a triangle of which value is produced. The Value that a partnership can offer to you AND your partner includes: - Happy customers realizing additional ROI by using both products/services. [read retention and growth impact] - Sharing customers and prospects between the partners with the goal of helping as many customers achieved that same ROI. [growth impact] The Value of the partnership to the Customer/Prospect - Realizing additional ROI by using both products/services. [better business outcomes, or customer delight] Having a consolidated vision on this will help to align internal teams, inspire natural desire from prospects and customers, and drive more partners to your platform.

This is a much debated topic, which varies by industry. But what we have seen in our SMB B2B market is that collaboration at conferences/expos/trade shows have the biggest short term impact for lead gen. The next best would be cross selling blitz calling between the two partner's customer bases. Make sure to have a short clean partnership value prop, and have both partner and company sales teams on the calls together prospecting. Webinars are not very impactful, for anyone, customer, partner, company.