HOW THEY DID IT! Unique stories partnerships-led sales and success.

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.

Agency: Speargrowth.com, B2B marketing, 20 employees CEO: Ishaan Shakunt Situation: In need of new leads. They were doing all inbound marketing. They decided, after learning about Partnerhub® ironically, to start turning on partnerships. Subsequently, partner-led events. Result: Hundreds of leads, lots of personal thought leadership for Ishaan, and pipeline for the agency. Partner(s) referenced: https://www.vweby.com/ Listener takeaways:  Setup checklist for a partner event How to ensure reciprocity from the event partners Post event strategy Why use these virtual summit tech platforms like Airmeet and Hubilo versus a meeting room tech like Zoom Repurposing content post-event Links:  Reveal.co/ Partnerhub.app/

Situation: It’s early days at Eloqua and David Lewis sees a huge opportunity to build an agency focused on helping companies adopt marketing automation - specifically on Eloqua to start. He allies with Jill Rowley who is a top salesperson at Eloqua at the time.  Result: Together they close huge deals with Eloqua - building David’s agency while making Jill the top salesperson - then shifting focus to Marketo and adding other platforms until David’s successful exit in 2021. Agency guest: David Lewis, Founder of DemandGen His GTM partner: Jill Rowley, Nearbound Strategist  Companies referenced: DemandGenEloquaMarketo Reveal Listener takeaways:  Why David decided to launch DemandGen as a power partners Why Jill chose to sell against “Smart Starts” internal service packages The partner playbook they created used to succeed 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 partners are (or should be) the insurance policy for your largest customers Links:  Reveal.co/ Partnerhub.app/

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.

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.

This podcast is recorded at a perfect time for us with HubSpot and Salesforce Partner Tracks around the corner, we are working with our friends at Dealhub (represented today by channel leader Omer Fuchs, VP of Strategic Alliances) to prepare their partner track with the intent of finding and aligning with more solutions partners like our guests on this episode. With him is Diana Gonzalez Sr. Channel Manager at RevPartners and the Robert “RevOps” Jones, the Sales Director at RevPartners. This type of partnership is one where the agency becomes a power user and product expert using their own process optimization first, then role it out to the clients. This is a very different relationship than say Shopify has with their partners (agencies don’t run their internal sales ops on top of Shopify). Which means, the level of product and partnership synergy can either happen very quickly, or fall flat due to some internal stakeholder on the partners’ team not being fully sold on the product for their use, and therefore the senior person is now in the middle getting requests from the tech partner manager that they have no answer for since that persons’ team is not bought into using it. In short, this type of partnership almost has to be a power user first. The big question then becomes - does this type of agency-partnership have to start with them using the product internally, and becoming a power user? Then begs the question - does that mean you have to sell them an account? Or do you gift them one? In either case, on this episode, we will be reviewing: Intros (related to services, partners)... Ideal partnerships you both look for… What about your partnership is unique or exciting… Both perceptions… What type of partnership is this expected to be… The levels of enablement RevPartners expects from their partners… GTM plans… When partnerships break in general… What you both are doing to ensure this partnership is successful… Anecdotes from both sides… Ways both sides can better enable their partners to succeed… Sponsors: Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

I cannot say enough about our guest today. Barrett King, Sr. Manager - GTM Strategy, Global Partner Ecosystem at HubSpot, joins me to run through how go-to-market with solutions partners. We’ve spent some time on previous episodes (refer to the episode with Justin Graci if you like this topic) on partner GTM, but I cannot tell you the listeners we have given you enough on the subject until we hear from Barrett. In this episode, we will highlight 3 key areas of partner GTM: Inception of a partner program When you’re ready for partnerships What partnerships are and will for your org And how can you further develop that output Are partners offense or defense Misconception of “Affiliates” vs “Partners” Discovery of partners Defining personas Attracting partners How much of this is on sales vs marketing Enablement What is bare bones enablement What matters most to early partners When and where certifications come in What partners need in year 2 Sponsors: Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍

Logan Lyles, Head of Partnerships at Teamwork, and former VP of Revenue at a top B2B agency called Sweetfish (important context to know about him going into this), is joining us because he is having to ideat, present, gain buy-in and execute on partner marketing as we speak in his first year at Teamwork. On this episode, Logan and I will discuss: How to get partner marketing approved and executed What’s the benefit of doing a content collaboration with *potential* partners (not just existing ones)? How to convince your bosses you should include non-signed partner prospects in the content. How to present your co-marketing ideas to your marketing team in a way that makes them want to support you. What pitfalls Logan hit early in his Teamwork partnerships days while attempting to execute this strategy. Quick ways to create content with partners outside of the typical co-promoted webinar playbook. And, we’ll touch on tools to use if you’re a team of one starting out without a partner marketing manager and getting scrappy in the early days. Another tactical episode you should listen to and maybe share with your marketing team or CEO. But as usual, please listen to a word from our fantastic sponsors :) Co-marketing articles mentioned in the episode: https://www.particl.com/blog-posts/seoroundup https://smith.ai/blog/how-to-track-smith-ai-live-chat-in-google-ads-google-analytics Sponsors: Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Today I definitely looked out for my audience and turned lemons into Lemonade.  I had a podcast scheduled with Mark Kilens, CMO of Airmeet, and his new VP of Channel....  But, I forgot to invite his VP of Channel. Idiot move.    This was Mark and my first ever call so we started to chat about his background and when we got onto the topic of his experience with HubSpot (Mark was VP of HubSpot Academy - the most successful SaaS academy and certification program ever), I realized how valuable his insight would be on some pain points related to training and certification programs our audience have asked me about.  So, I asked if he wouldn't mind using the 30 minutes we had left to take us through his experience and advice for setting up a saas training and certification program. It turned out to be one of the more insightful conversations I've had in a long time.    Marks tips:    Educational content should live under marketing.   Start without an LMS - you may never need it.   The owner of the academy should be passionate.   Make it free.  If you need help, go to these guys: https://www.saasacademyadvisors.com/transformational-education-register   Best education hits on all three of these:  Blooms Taxonomy   Why - articulate the why. Sales piece. Outcome.  How - from a non-product standpoint.  What - tools involved, you use with the how. Examples.  "Why" = problem, "what" is the solution, "how" are the features.  https://www.valamis.com/hub/blooms-taxonomy  Sponsors:   Reveal - A free account mapping solution. Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. ‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍

Hey there partnerships people! Welcome back to another episode of Make Them Famous - where you hear from two sides of the partnerships equation. Today, I am interviewing Jason Anderson, Chief Operating Officer of Andzen - an ecommerce lifecycle marketing agency partnered with JustUno, Klaviyo, Loyalty Lion, and Shopify… Joining Jason is Derek Booth, Director of Strategic Partnerships at JustUno. These two are long time user-first partners, but Derek has taken over there account and managed it for about a year now during one of the most important times to maintain close relationships with those great ecommerce partners. How their partnership came to be - it’s something not enough teams do in practice What tech teams can do to spot more potential partners are in their user-base How JustUno incentivizes CS and Sales teams to get more agency-service partner info from the user while on calls We hear some of Jason’s favorite partnerships routines and incentives What Jason attributes Andzen’s referral frequency success to Where do time, product and scalability play into the equation Jason gives us a few examples of when second-rate products won their partnership How to execute with product-led partnerships strategy The power of co-marketing Jason’s top 5 incentives to start or keep partners And just for fun, Jason rates tech partner incentives (outside of product quality): Co-marketing and co-selling Training and certifications Communication In-region support Getting product team members to get on calls with partners Commissions Resources: Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. Reveal - A free account mapping solution. ‍Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Welcome back partnerships people! Alex Glenn here, your host of Make Them Famous - the only podcast bringing you true insights from both sides of the partnership equation. Today’s episodes comes to you because of a linkedin post from the founder of a top ecommerce agency stressing the importance of incentivizing partners for retention - not just referrals. I’m privileged to be able to interview Adam Pearce, CEO of Blend Commerce, and his co-founder and CVO Peter Gardner who posted to linkedin and caught my attention. These two operate a killer fast-growing Shopify Plus agency focused on customer experience design with notable partners - Klaviyo, Octane Ai, and Gorgias. Peter and Adam receive 6-10 partnership requests per day. So, we aim this episode on finding out what they will reply and spend valuable resources on, as well as: The genesis of their current best partnerships What about those make them the best If you cannot bring referrals, what can you bring that’s valuable How Adam and Peter interpret a new tech outreach for partnership from cold outreach What’s critical for tech teams to understand when reaching out to a new agency Why they doubled down on Shopify Plus certification recently What resource allocations went into that, a similar Difference between a low-referral-frequency thought leader expert implementation agency and a high-referral shop that does a ton of quick business and can be a pure referral partner Value of going deeper into an accreditation / certification with a tech platform Risks included for the agency when deciding When to sign contracts, and when you should A must listen for any partner team having trouble with outreach or enablement of service provider partners... Resources: Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. Reveal - A free account mapping solution. ‍Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍ ‍

Today is another version of this podcast where we get to hear from two long-time partners and uncover what they are doing to ensure ROI from their partnership. With me is one of my favorite partnerships managers Nic Romaya, Head of Partnerships at Recart, and his partner Daniel Budai of Budai Media - a retention marketing agency in Europe. We go deep into the weeds on these topics: Determining “Partnerships Market Fit”. Finding your first partner. Developing first partner into a case study, to build a partner program around. How the CEO of Recart developed the first few partnerships himself. Recart’s unique cash upfront incentive model. Nic’s experience with commissions incentives to agencies for their partnerships teams vs their CEO. Why Daniel see’s most “partnerships” calls as a waste of his time. What can partner managers to do ensure the agency owner wants to get on a next call. This is another actionable boots-on-the-ground strategy pod for you all. But before we start this episode, let’s hear about 3 products which work to enable your program to scale. ‍ Resources: Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts. Reveal - A free account mapping solution. ‍Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships. ‍ ‍