Thomas Mancuso

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If they are integrating to your platform through Zapier, then you should be doing the same with their platform, find ways to create reciprocal value with data exchange, and start the partnership conversation with real substance. Dig in with customers who are using these integrations and find out what value they get out of them and capitalize on that value statement. Margot has it right, get the partner into your ecosystem, IF it benefits you or the customer. BUT if the value is the same, the integration method doesn't really matter to the GTM partnership opportunity.

Thinking they need budget to make progress on projects. If you have a job, and there isn’t a budget, then, you are the budget. Figure out ways to drive revenue without authorization or funds allocation.

Send them a case study on your most performant partner who is the most similar to them. Ask them if they want to get on the program you have that partner on. If they don’t respond, send them a cancelation notice and stop spending time or energy on that relationship.

Automate it, - Use something like PartnerPage, - Educate your Client org teams on: * How to direct customers to those resources * Why partners add value for customers.

* Service partners offer a great opportunity with Integration partners in two areas:
 1. Augmenting the set up of tough legacy integrations. 
 2. Gaining utility from the integration directly in the product, and expanding the value customers get from the integration. 
 Bonus: Building Integrations for you to Integration Partners who don’t have interest or resources.

We use in app prompts on the areas of the product where the integration partners add value. For example: Add a CTA on the payment reports page linking to the integration marketplace with accounting integrations. Consider looking at integrations as a three stage journey: Access > Utility > Value Access - is BOTH the installation process, ideally 5-10 seconds, AND the Marketplace listing. [Marketplaces are ad listings for the integrations, not the end result, if its painful to install an integration no one will use them] Utility - the data exchanged between the systems and the usage in your app for that data. [Example: Contact sync from Hubspot, automated shipping updates via your app] Utility can be prescribed by you to the customer, and should be part of the expectation set by the integration listing in your marketplace. Value - This is the best part, but don't jump to this without solving the first two. This can be assumed by you, but should be explored directly with customers using the integration. Learn the real world value from your customers using integrations and share those value props on the marketplace and other materials, use both qualitative and quantitative customer examples. [Example: App assumes shipping updates will lower support tickets asking for shipping status, and end consumers will be happier. Customer value could add: Shipping updates trigger review requests for the consumer after shipment has been delivered. Resulting in 10% less support tickets, and 20% more reviews on customer's site/google listing/etc. ] You can STOP here and market all of this without the source system [Integration Partner]. OR you can take the Value stage one step further, and create a reciprocal value prop for the source system. [Example: Your app sends the Shipping Status back into Hubspot to enrich that system and provide value for the customer stakeholders living in that system making Hubspot stickier for the support/sales teams using it daily.] If you get this piece right the blog posts, webinars, and marketing activities you ask for the partner to engage on will have content on Their value with the integration as well as yours. Then you get genuine leads from the partner's customer base.

This is a great time to trial Affiliates, the smaller and more passionate the better. Don't go for the big companies just because they have a larger reach, they likely wont match your passion. Look for Affiliates that fit your ideal customer profile. If you can find affiliates that use your product, or can share examples of value with real experience even better.

Ask your Implementation and Support teams on what they see most often as blockers to completing an integration, make sure your partners can handle these situations, or better yet solve them completely. Make sure that the work you want partners to do is appealing to them and they get value out of the work. New implementations and support going to your partners should be labeled as opportunities for the partner to grow their business, not differed work for your teams.