What is up PartnerUp!?
Reveal introduced the concept of ‘Nearbound’ at Catalyst in Miami this year, and we wanted to learn more about why and how it works.
Jo Wright joins us to talk about why sales and marketing leaders are catching on quicker than partnership leaders (what?!?), how to use second-party data to find the best future customers right next store, and the challenges of operationalizing this strategy.
Near the end, we speculate about how the Nearbound concept might spill into marketing in unique ways, and go from account info to individual info.
3 Key Takeaways
Today's key takeaways were originally outlined by Eric Sangerma
- Inbound versus Outbound versus Nearbound
Inbound and outbound channels are becoming increasingly pricey and overcrowded. Instead of going out to find good leads, Nearbound utilizes ecosystem data (through turbocharged account mapping) to find target accounts. - Leverage partners to close Nearbound deals quicker
As soon as you have your target leads, you can loop in your partners who already have existing relationships with those leads. That makes it easier to book meetings, open opportunities, and close business. - Make Them Famous
Giving to your partners, giving them spotlight, giving them attention is the marketing of the future.
If you want more, don’t fear - Jo will be speaking at plxsummit.com Nov 7-11!
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Full Transcript:
Jared Fuller 0:00
Hey what is up partner up? We're back. I think this is the first time I've ever recorded a podcast before 11am. So I have no idea how this is going to go Isaac, are you awake over there? Yeah, no, no wine involved No. No could change the whole tenor you know? Yeah, we got caffeine got caffeine but we're not partaking any libations this morning. But we're super excited to join someone that Isaiah he got the chance to meet in Miami for the partnership leaders event. Catalysts, but I had not yet Joe right from a reveal what's up, Joe? Hi. Nice to see you. It's mid afternoon here so nearly wine o'clock? No, no, I was just gonna say I, when you got up on stage at catalyst was Simon, and you had your presentation about near bound. I love words. And I love kind of like defining a category and coming up with language to put around these things. I love that so much that this is such a great just just purely from like a conceptual standpoint, just just the idea of near bound, like encapsulating kind of what you do at reveal or what you know, what reveal the business that you're in, as well as others crossbeam, etcetera, is kind of finding the overlap and customers and sharing that data. But I just thought that was such a great concept. So I wanted to kind of get into a little bit like for someone who is unfamiliar with this idea. So you're at a you're at a startup you're you're working in let's say sales or marketing something on the revenue side.
Isaac Morehouse 1:46
What what is that give me the nutshell version? What is the concept of near bound as contrasted to the kind of well known, you know, inbound and outbound? Yeah, yeah, sure. Um, so if we think about inbound and outbound they're, they're channels, which are becoming increasingly pricey, and also incredibly overcrowded.
Jo Wright 2:06
I also had, I had a stat recently, which we, we talked about at catalyst as well, but the human attention span is increased, is experiencing an 88% decline on an annual basis, which says a lot about us. I'm sorry, what I wasn't paying attention. I didn't catch that.
Exactly. But it just shows it's so much harder to advertise and lure us into products. So with this whole concept, and I think that the exciting thing here is it's it's not about reveal or other companies in the space isn't about partnerships and the opportunity that we have. And with companies becoming more and more interconnected, we're creating this new day data layer. And so in its most simple form, the audience can probably relate to account mapping. So account mapping, and the data that we data that we create through that is this more sort of this new data layer. So when we think about using this data at scale, and not necessarily on a one on one basis, like we're doing with account mapping, because it's, it's kind of working, and it's driving some revenue, but actually using that at scale is what we call near bound. And so it's utilizing ecosystem data to create leads and revenue. So in the exact same way as inbound and outbound, or standalone channels near bound as a standalone lead generating channel and it can be treated the same. Once it gets into your CRM, it doesn't have to be treated any differently, I think that's really important to, to call out as well. So it's sort of its account mapping data, turbocharged really,
Jared Fuller 3:47
if I think about that, what you just said, and I contrast the outbound and inbound.
It almost like I love the framing and the branding of that.
I think what's so interesting is that inbound and outbound data sets. So these are customer data sets. No matter what you do, if you're outbound, you're building account and contact list and you're going directly to the customer. If you're doing inbound, you're collecting account and contact information. That's you know, ebook, white paper, blog, email list, event, whatever the heck it is. And then if I think about near bound, I'm entering a third object, a third axis, you know, it's a delta. It's an XY and Z, which is the relationships of other contacts and accounts that are not the ones that you're selling to. And all of a sudden that entire funnel in how we used to measure everything starts to break down. I'm curious, in like leading that charge and explaining that to VPs of marketing VPs of sales etc. What Have you heard is the reaction to the not partner persona? Because you're because like, I've bought a countless I bought contactless I've done outbound. And if I've built inbound motions, what are the people saying the first time you say near bound, and you're explaining this concept to them? What are they saying to you,
Jo Wright 5:15
um, in general, the sales and the marketing leaders get it straight away, and potentially more so than partnerships, personas, if you think about what we're doing in partnerships, and so much of what we've done in the past has been focused on strategic partner programs and one on one relationships and going really deep into a partnership having everything from the go to market efforts, bi directional integrations, whereas if you think about, if you think about marketing, and sales leaders, they're really comfortable with this notion of enriching their data, they're really comfortable with the idea of building out target account lists. And what's really interesting is what you've you've you've picked up on is around contact, it's not necessarily near bound isn't necessarily providing new contacts. It's actually about providing you accounts. And so you have to go through a further process to enrich these, these accounts with who are the right personas that we want to be selling into, and how do we identify who those who the contacts are? So it's really different to inbound and outbound in that sense, because it's about who are the companies that buying other technologies in your ecosystem? So in general, it goes down a bit quicker and better with personas outside of partnerships, which is really interesting, and not necessarily what I would have initially expected.
Jared Fuller 6:44
I didn't expect that answer at all. Because no, no, no way no way in heck is it was that my experience of going through this the first time I was like, I see it, I see it, and then everyone else was like Quit messing with our sales force and our outreach and our all this other stuff. This is not in the account plan, we secured our double funnel for the year, you know, we're doing Topo, it's double funnel or bust. Don't bring this other data into it until we're doing account planning for next year. And it's like what? So I'm glad to hear that there's more. To be honest, Joe, actually, do you have a follow up question to that is the reason why sales and marketing personas are so much more interested and perhaps knowledgeable of the impact? Is that because of the recession? Do you think there was a shift in the last nine months from people like sales and marketing, not caring to all of a sudden caring a lot,
Jo Wright 7:29
they certainly care more, because partnerships is has always been a channel where people come to us and think that we can just switch on like the magic, the magic money tree. And so there's I think partnerships as a whole is going to get more attention. So there may be a little bit more interest in in near bound because of this. But if you think about what partnerships data actually is, and the data that we're able to create from this is almost like purchase data, isn't it across an ecosystem, it's a signal. And it's you could call it a sales intelligence signal. You can call it a partnerships intelligence signal. The fact that fact that somebody has bought technology or multiple technologies is out in the market, building out their marketing technology stack, for example. That notion of sort of intelligence and signals is what sales leaders are really comfortable with. And so the if you shift that conversation to this not being about partnerships, data, and I think that's where using near bound has been really helpful as a concept and a different word to partnerships. And you talk about sales, intelligence signals, and you talk about more, sort of take yourself out of the ecosystem, I think that's why it's resonating so well. So I think as an industry, we're going to have more attention. Because you can squeeze us a little bit more and we can produce more revenue, because that's what partnerships does. But I think our potential is so much bigger than that, as well, but it's definitely resonating very, very differently to how I certainly expected
Isaac Morehouse 9:02
you know, this funny I'm gonna I'm gonna go back in time a little bit to when I was doing fundraising at a nonprofit, major gift gifts officer whatever my title was something like that. But it's funny in in fundraising, there was always this kind of phrase, this concept that your your most likely donors. Your you know, the new prospect prospective new donors. They already are in your we didn't use the word ecosystem. They're already in your network. They know someone who's already giving, like, and they're already giving to similar organizations. And this idea was very much hammered in. And we had and again, I love this Nirvana idea. It's like your best leads are living next door, they run into your nose, right, but we had, we call them natural partners, right? It's like I was learning about partnerships. I didn't even know it but every every, you know, every donor that was in my portfolio, you know, and I'd have my spreadsheet or whatever, I'd pull it out of the database. You know, he'd have their information, whatever, we'd always have n P, np column who are the natural partners for this? And if it's a prospect, you know, you're usually looking at current donors and saying, Well, who do they, okay? They also donate to this other organization, who else donates to that organization that they're friends with, that they might be interested in the programs that we're doing, that we could go to them. And if if something like what what, you know, in the b2b world, it's so much better because everyone has a CRM, if something like that had existed, because what we had to do was we had to go through and say, All right, so I'm gonna call this donor of ours, and I'm gonna say, Hey, who do you know, and they're gonna off the top of their head, they might come up with a couple of names, but they're not going to just remember immediately. So we wouldn't have to go ahead of time and try to like, create a list of like, 10 people that we thought they might know, just based on our own trying to piece it together, right? And then you'd ask them, Do you know any of these people? Would you be willing to make an intro? I'm just imagining, if they all if all of their friends and contacts lived in a CRM, and I could say, Hey, can we sync up? Can we just can we just it's like a brain scan? Can we just see a map of everyone you know, and then I can go ask you one by one. Because like, I didn't know who they knew. And I would find out later Wait a minute, you know, this person all this time? We've been trying to get in front of them for like, a year. And they're Oh, I didn't think to tell you right so I just I love this idea. Like this is how it works anyway, but the ability the ability to it's it's like a like a brain map right to plug in to those they're there. They're hiding your best leads are hiding right next to you. And I always found this in fundraising. All the all the best prospects were connected so closely to somebody who we were already connected with. And we just didn't know it unless we deliberately went Nast. So anyway, I just like that's just like a like an exciting soapbox about where things are going with this second party data idea, this idea of near bound leads.
Jared Fuller 11:51
Well, Isaac, I don't know if anyone who listens to partner up knows this or not. But this is where we come to learn ourselves, too. So like your soapbox is always appreciated Isaac, because it helps tie together what Joe just said. And some of the thoughts that I were thinking was thinking about. There's been a handful of conversations on this pod where we've talked about like, we need a new funnel, I think one of our more more popular episodes or so we have some of the regulars on like, Alan and we had one that was called fuck the funnel. Sorry if that shocked you. But I think I can tie this all together. So a funnel is tied to what? Input and Output, right? There's in and out. So what's the new funnel? Well, I think a network is the new funnel. And a network is defined by what nodes either being near or far right funnel is inbound and outbound network is near bound. Yeah, how many hops? That that that is the visualization we've been missing is a funnel is the you know, it's inbound and outbound. Its input output, and then a network a graph. But a network really is defined by near or far relationships.
Jo Wright 12:57
Love it. I'm relating this to the times we're in. So if you think about, if you think about these sorts of signals that we can get through nearby and data, understanding who's buying technology and who's not buying technology, at the moment isn't really relative, like that's an incredibly powerful signal.
Jared Fuller 13:17
Already have a 10th Joe already have intent data, already having 10 data doesn't isn't that whenever I buy, I won't name the vendors because I like a couple of them. But whenever I buy intent data, don't I know who's buying software already?
Jo Wright 13:30
Yes. But how accurate? Is it? How real time is it? Is it directly from your from your ecosystem? And is it the most efficient way to get it? I think there's, I think the more that we can put this together. So if you've got, I love all of the work that the team over at six cents are doing. And if you think about all of
Jared Fuller 13:52
that, that's why I didn't trash talk all the vendors because I like six months to
Jo Wright 13:55
imagine if partnerships data becomes one of the signals so that I don't know how many signals that they pick up. But say that they're picking up 20 different intent signals, and partnerships. Data is one of those intent signals, which just enriches everything. It's an incredibly powerful one. But it's imagine if you take this partnership signal data and add it to everything else. It's not meant to be a one or the other. It's meant to complement and then that I think is how I think that's why sales and marketing leaders are getting it because they're really buying this. This is just another relevant signal
Jared Fuller 14:32
100% What you just kicked off another realization for me is that intent data is actually the Z axis as well. It is network data, right? It's indirect from the customer, right? It's being associated from some marketplace, or some third party, which you know, intent signals are getting increasingly harder. But here's a great example of what I would call network data. Right, which is near bound, it actually falls under the category that you're creating, which would be like G to intent data. Right? That's a little bit better, right? Like, I am looking for a new Success Platform. So I'm looking at Zendesk, or HelpScout, or Gainsight, or something like that. That's, that is a signal. That's a signal that you didn't have before that isn't inbound, it's not outbound. It's near bound. Now, you're much wiser to associate right now. Now the question is, Is it near? Or far? Right? Does that signal near or far? So if you were to go, oh, this account is now in market for our software? Right? They're now in market, what other signals can we utilize to pull that nearer to us, ie partners? And I think that's why they are catching on is because intent data broke the paradigm. I mean, how is six cents a five $6 billion company, when there's been demand base for a decade plus, right? The mandate has been around for a good chunk of time, intent data wasn't necessarily this new thing. It's very interesting is that the timing on this people went, you know, the funnel isn't producing, we have to go to network data intent was the first step. Now partner data Escrow is, I think it unlocks a whole other vector of not just Is it near far, but how much throughput is there? Like, how, how, how, what's the throughput of those connectors on those nodes,
Jo Wright 16:11
I also love the, I love the way you're sort of conceptualizing it as well, if we think about sort of on the ground and actually using it. And we're in it's very, like most simple form, we're trying to help companies create target, countless, but prioritize target, right? And really sort of be able to identify not the Who are these, but when's the right time for them as well. And you can, you can look at different sort of scores as well. So it's, it's just because so my last company braise, for example, a customer engagement platform, and we knew that when they when a customer purchased a customer data platform, that was hugely valuable information to us, because we always knew we were next in the in the purchase journey. And if we think about that at scale, and it's all about taking this really basic account mapping concept, but putting it at scale, because it's not just the customer, sorry, a company has purchased a customer data platform is what are they doing across their entire tech stack, which is in relation to you. Because if someone has just bought 10 other technologies, that is a that should sort of bump it up in terms of its lead scoring and prioritization. And you should give it more attention from your BDR or walk or the marketing team and actually start prioritizing based on this data as well, which is it's it's easy to use in action. I think that's what's important.
Isaac Morehouse 17:37
I think, what's what's powerful there, too, is that you can leverage both the kind of quantitative data, okay, they've purchased 10 items in their stack. So that's obviously a, you know, higher urgency, lead or higher higher value prospect than someone who just did one, they're much closer to what you can also look at which 10 If they purchase 10. And we don't have a close connection with any of those other companies versus Oh, three of those. We integrate with we partner closely with, let's prioritize those because yeah, it's that combination of able and willing, right, okay. They're able, they're at the point in the binder where they're able to buy our product, and then the willing, there's a higher willingness if we're closer. So just allowing that that combination. So here's my question, Joe. So you get a sales leader or marketing leader. They they buy it? They I don't mean they buy the product, they buy the concept? Yes, I'm a near bound believer, I've taken the partner pill I see it, I agree, this is great. How does that cause because I can see very easily that basically just kind of being an add on. Okay, now we have this other thing we can sort of do if we need to, we can pull this other source of data? How does that change the processes of a sales team or marketing team? How are you? How are you getting, let's say, a sales team? What are you doing to change their motion? And is that is that an uphill battle? If you're going to your tutor, AES, your STRS? And you're saying, okay, great. Now there's another step in the process. You're going to do this and then you're going to do this and then are they are they groaning? Are they saying, Oh, what is this or like, what what's happening? I want to I'm just really curious from the organizations you're talking with, because I feel like this is such a no brainer. It's so brilliant, what it what it does to improve to discover new leads and and and help you rank the quality of the leads, as you just said, but I feel like it's a little slow to change the processes for sales and marketing teams, but I'm not on the ground with them as much. So I'd love to hear from you what happens next, when someone buys it, they believe it.
Jo Wright 19:48
You just use the term like they've taken the partner pill. I don't think most of these geezers have I don't think this and seeing the opportunity makes them a partner A proactive or positive or taking a point of view, however you want to say I think there's still like everyone is so many companies are still feeling quite siloed as a partnerships team, and I don't, maybe over time, this thought and hopefully over time, this sort of help it change. But it's I think some of the wording that we're using and just general optics is helping us there will be it. This is absolutely partnership's owned data, they're the ones that are sourcing this data and managing the collection of it. But how does it change? If you try and drive too much change, I don't think it will work. I don't, most organizations, most organizations that we talk with at least. Partnerships is not the most powerful team within the organization yet, hopefully this will change. And of course, there are exceptions to the rule. But I think if we went in and tried to change how a sales organization is using data or how their outbound doing or anything that they're doing, and vice versa with marketing, I think we would fall flat on our face, quite frankly, still, even at really partner mature organizations. So the recommendations is actually that we're not changing anything, we're trying to take nearby data and slot it into already existing processes. So all we're doing is creating, providing a list of target accounts, which will convert at a higher rate, they will convert quicker, it will drive more revenue, it will be easier to book that meeting, it will be easier to open that opportunity, and then it will be easier to close that opportunity as well. So the more normal we can be, and the more that this data just goes into the system as any other target accounts would be, the better. I think and I don't think we're at a position where we can drive too much change, no need to a really good example is when you think about collaborating with a BDR organization. So this data can flow into your CRM. And you can create all of your new target accounts you can enrich enrich that too, but the right personas and email addresses, and then it can flow out to outreach or sales loft, or whatever your outstanding technology is. And tracking the conversion rate, which is one of the things that we do, and how we're using this data here at reveal if we can track the conversion rate from email sent to meeting to generating opportunities. And with this set of data, we've done exactly the same thing, it converts at a higher rate than another set of data. So we're trying to the conversations are about not changing the processes as opposed to changing them, which is also helping those conversations.
Jared Fuller 22:45
Joe, what you were saying there about target accounts and folding into an existing process versus trying to change something, I actually think we can make this really simple. And this is where I will go toe to toe with any CRO in the world, like put me up against John McMahon from the qualified sales leads invented the CRO title that invented medic, here's what I would say, argue with me on this point, that the first job of sales is nobody cares about your product. But the second job of sales, right? The second law of sales is you target accounts and you sell to people. So you said target accounts, target accounts is not good enough. Why? Because I might have 200 target accounts, I might have 50 target accounts, which accounts of those 50 and my targeting today, not this quarter, not this year, but today. So it's not just about prioritizing, targeting. It's not just about target accounts, it's something else. It's almost like, you know, if I'm a if I'm actually doing my job with sales ops, and this is why we have this PL X on is to build empathy between the job of like on partner lead sales state, the sales leader, the sales ops, Reb ops manager, whoever the heck that is. And going, we have all of this data, we have to assign accounts, we have to assign contacts, we have an SLA for number of touches per contact or per account or whatever, blah, blah, blah. But if you actually sit down in to do the job, which accounts Am I reaching out to today. And this is where you say you're near bound accounts,
Jo Wright 24:17
or near bound score, because you've got too many near bounds account to reach out to them in one day. I looked at I was looking at some data yesterday. So I looked at on average 10 to 50. But this too, within the reveal platform, you've got 10 to 15 partners, what are the and you have to assume that if you've chosen to do account mapping, they're relative. They're a company within your ecosystem. So we looked at all of our companies who had 10 to 15 accounts partners, sorry, and what was the number of new prospects? So new prospects is is one of the datasets of near bound so I unmatched data so Two companies who have bought your partner's technology. So they're, they're a customer of your partner, but they don't exist in your CRM. And this is perfect. It's perfect Greenfield data, they've already bought your partner's Cust technology, and you're not even talking to them, or any of your methods because it doesn't exist in your CRM. And the number of accounts was, on average, 50,000 to 50,000 accounts. And if you've got a really tiny Partner Program, which has only got tend to tend to 15. So if you think about doing this at scale, and who are the companies in your ecosystem, and you connect with one to 200 companies in your ecosystem, the volume of data that you're gonna get is huge. The amount of qualified prospects or leads, however you want to call it going into your CRM is huge, so it's not okay to go. I'm gonna focus on many nearby and leads today because you're going to be there for a really an exceptionally long time. But you can create start creating scores. So it's like you were saying earlier, Isaac, if I relate it to what we're doing with our data, we look at the propensity to purchase and then we're putting a different score against it. So if we're partnerships technology, if you've already purchased and are paying for a PRM, that is telling us so much, it's telling us you've got a really mature partner program is telling us that you can invest in in partnerships, technology, and the size of your team is probably of a certain size, once you've chosen to invest in a PRM. And we're going to give that a higher weighting then some of our other partnerships data. And so by creating a partnership score to exactly your point of purchasing one type of technology over another Can, can get you a different score, add in all of the things that you know about your companies and the people who buy your technology as well. And you can come up with a score now, no one's going to come up with the word right scoring algorithm immediately. But over time, if we can hone that, and really start to understand that, that's how you prioritize. And so you start to go right, I'm going to prioritize McDonald's over Burger King, or whoever you're sort of selling into, within this massive set of data. It
Jared Fuller 27:09
Joe, following up on that point, it seems to me that there's Have you heard of these companies, Cabal or CO sell or connect the dots. And what they do is interesting, I'm not sure that it's there yet. But I feel like there is that next layer. So you have this escrow of you know, your near bound accounts, and you're talking about creating, you know, a near balance score, it seems like that near bounce score needs to then extend into the relationships between these people, right. So starting to think about not just account data, but people data, and people data in terms of their strength of their relationships. So like, I was looking to connect the dots last night, by one of their investors was trying to show me about how this could have a partnerships play. And I'm like, and it's kind of there, but I did, like where it was trying to go is that you were looking through some subset of accounts, and then it was showing you your network and the strength of your relationships to that individual you're trying to get in touch with? How have you seen, you know, any of those companies, they're still young, most of them have very small number of employees, or the need in the market for producing that next layer down from account to contact. Okay, here's a better subset of accounts. Here's the score. Where does that contact or the network data for people? Maybe this is where ecosystems it's like, okay, partners, or accounts. And then this is the community data, right? The relationships between the people that live around each other?
Jo Wright 28:35
Yeah, I think incredibly valuable. But I don't I haven't personally heard of any of our customers or the people that I'm talking to having taken it that far. We enrich our we we enrich our own data through basic data enrichment tools, so that we can find the right persona, the right email address, etc. So we know who to get in contact with. But that's almost version two, isn't it?
Jared Fuller 28:59
Yes. The next the next, the next thing, what's coming next has to be knowing that Isaac and I are really close. Like, how about this? Let's assume Isaac and I didn't start partner hacker together our relationship in terms of like my ability to go to Isaac and ask him for something, or do like, hey, Isaac, have you seen this was great prior to us being co founders? Right? And there's some overlap there. Right? Like, there's information like we are part of a similar community, but my relationship with I don't know, another VP of partnerships that I've talked to a lot, you know, might have been stronger on this particular thing. There is an objective measure of like, who has stronger relationships with who and it's based on a community, but maybe that's the back half of the 2020s. Right, like we got to get through this account phase with partners and then being able to layer community data on top of it. I I imagine that ends up entering near bound the category this year, Isaac, I see you ready, ready to jump in here? Yeah. Well,
Isaac Morehouse 29:56
because I'm thinking about you know, everything you're talking about Joe with the nearby and it's very easy for me to see exactly how this works into the sales process. On the marketing side, there's so much interesting stuff that I'm imagining. So think about from just like content marketing standpoint, if I could go to a company that's non competitive with us a partner company, and I could say, hey, let's do not an account mapping, let's do a subscriber mapping. How many of your newsletter subscribers also subscribe to my newsletter, and let's see those shared subscribers. And maybe we do a special joint email newsletter to them under both of our names, maybe there's something that we can drive with that or who's who subscribes to mine and not yours, and vice versa. Maybe there's something we can do there. If we could do that with podcast listeners that that is really hard to figure out. But you start to think about social media stuff. from a content standpoint, like I want to know where those mutual overlaps are, in a way that is not that like, when you buy the enrichment data, that helps you can see a lot of different stuff. But to have that direct from another company that you're partnering with, like so. So at my previous company, we work with a lot of others in the career space, and we had big newsletter and a lot of them and we would do these like newsletter swaps. Hey, you know, you're doing an event, we're doing an event let's, and we was always really curious to figure out and you kind of get anecdotal evidence, like who, who is a part of both of these communities? And you think you get to a point or even slack communities? Hey, let's compare our Slack members. How many people are in both of our Slack communities? And are they how often are they going back? Are they in tons of slack? Like, there's some interesting stuff there and you find a lot of surprises. You think, oh, well, everybody that's in our network, for sure knows about this other network, because we talk about them all their total overlap, and you find there's all these people lurking again, they're they're the near bound people, right? Like I was in. I was in partnerships, leaders slack, just a like a week ago, and someone messaged me and said, Hey, what, what's this? They asked me about something that I posted. And then I responded. And I mentioned the pls Summit. They're like, Oh, I hadn't heard of this. And to me, that blew me away, because I had this assumption. Oh, well, if you're in partnership leaders, you know about what partner hacker is up to, because that's usually the case. But you can overlook, like these giant pools of prime, you know, prospects and leads. So anyway, I'm just kind of imagining how that goes from a marketing into the marketing layer on a much more personalized basis.
Jared Fuller 32:28
I think the the challenge for, for sales teams and marketing teams, around actioning, and operationalizing, this, this data tends to differ a lot, whenever you're thinking about engaging a person versus engaging like a unit. So for example, everything in marketing had been broken down into units. So units of advertising are pieces of content, or an event or this this external thing. But whenever you have a person working on it, it has this next level of like, I don't know if it has more implications, because you have a person working it. Whereas in marketing, it ends up in some some things and whatever. And are we really going to use near bound data to do advertising? Isaac? Probably not. I mean, maybe. I mean, it's like they, maybe that's it the awareness brand, building phase. But I feel like the best way to utilize the near bound data is not to just prioritize, but let's say it's like the topo, double funnel, like your target accounts, your advertising towards them, you're building brand, you're running all this stuff around them, you have sales reaching out to them, marketing's acting like air cover. I feel like there's something missing from like, the spirit of what partner marketing is supposed to be. It's not just about marketing towards the accounts that your partner should have relationships with, in my opinion, I feel like it's supposed to be about arming the people that have those relationships with the things to do the marketing. Right. So it's, it's, it's co marketing, right? It's not about the marketing team, doing a better job of like, Oh, here's this new data set. It's like no, I should look at that overlap that that near bound those near bound accounts is marketing nodes. I should make them famous. I should put them in my newsletters. I should invite them on my podcast. I should build media around them. I should do LinkedIn videos. I mean, look at what we're doing with PLS, we got dozens of videos where we're just we're producing videos, making people famous. We're not gonna see how we're indirectly marketing to those people. That to me is like near bound marketing near about marketing is utilizing that data and acting as if they are your co marketing partners, not targeting them themselves. And it's going to change all of marketing. I'm fully convinced and we're living proof of it. That's all we do. That's what we do a partner
Jo Wright 34:57
I think that's so interesting. The lens that We've had on this has been so sales focused, and a lot of the majority of the conversations are with sales leaders as opposed to sort of some of them with marketing. And I think that's they're interesting to take a completely different spin where we haven't gone there yet. We haven't brainstormed and sort of discussed these ideas. And it's been so, so focused on how do we help companies just drive more revenue in a very measurable manner, as opposed to how do we partner with marketing teams to actually think that what's next? So I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about the future slightly petrifying of how big this could get the opportunity that we have, but um, and all the work to do. But uh, no, it's really interesting, different way of thinking about
Jared Fuller 35:55
that has to be, there's this other macro trend, Isaac that we've seen everywhere. And Joe, I'm sure you've seen some of this online as well, is that, you know, every company should become a media company. There was a company that just launched yesterday called Audience plus, which was by the former CMO of hop in the former CMO of Gainsight, the former CMO of front app, I mean, so these are all multibillion dollar companies. So Andrews had three multibillion dollar runs his cmo in a row, and his next company, is a company to help people build media companies. And what do media companies do, they do what I just said, right there, they don't market directly to the people that they monetize, they market indirectly, to the people that they monetize, they turn, they turn the content into a product, the contents, not ancillary, like this is why b2b content sucks, is because the content is not the product. Right? I'm going to kick your ass every single time because guess what, my product is the content, I care that much. So what we're going to do is we're going to go out, and we're going to, you know, interview you and partner up Joe, and like, have this awesome conversation. And then indirectly, I'm then able to reach the accounts and the people that matter that are surrounding reveal. And as part of that conversation, that's what media companies do. And I think that is near bound marketing. It's just, it's taking a more forward approach that like, I don't know, it's really not that hard. And frankly, here's what I will say, it's a hell of a lot more fun. Like doing marketing this way near about marketing, media marketing, like in doing it in a community way. It's it's social first, like, gosh, it just makes some of the b2b marketing best practices I've been thinking of, and I've lived in in the b2b world seen. That seems scarier to me go into doing marketing, I was taught, like, this is best in class b2b marketing. I'll actually say that seems more horrifying to me now.
Isaac Morehouse 37:54
In my ideal world, marketing, all marketing does is give marketing just gives give, give, give, give, give, and make people feel amazing. And sales, they can go in and, you know, figure out the right people to go and make the ask from and close the deal. Because marketing has done all this giving. And if you do it, right, there's nothing better to help you identify and cultivate the right prospects so that you have really, really good leads that your salespeople can. But the the partnerships component here and the shared data component, it creates these new surfaces for new types of giving to your customers, but also giving to other people who are your partners, not your customers and those indirect gives it can be scary at first because you feel like you're so many steps removed from closing the deal. It's like what are we putting energy into these things that are multiple steps removed? But but take the the idea that what I was saying before about Yeah, you can build marketing campaigns on some of this partner data, not just generic campaigns. It's not like oh, okay, let's, you know, the, like I mentioned before, let's say you have two newsletters, let's say, Oh, we have 1000 people that subscribed to both of them. Let's run a Facebook ad at them. No, no. Like, hey, we have 1000 people that subscribe to your newsletter and our newsletter, let's give them something special. Let's say hey, anyone who subscribes to both of these, we're doing a special joint live q&a event with you know, whoever from newsletter a from the hustle and somebody from morning brew, and just just only for people who subscribe to both. And now you kind of create this like FOMO there's like another the third community besides those two communities, there's a shared community and it's something kind of special it's a gift to each company, but it's a gift to the customers like tailoring things around what people are doing in the ecosystem and who they're doing it with. And giving to all of those players, you know, giving them spotlight giving them attention. I think that is marketing of the future.
Jared Fuller 39:50
I see it every day. The way the world works now. The way influence works, I mean, it near bound Joe to me like influences that like input output and then throughput I've been using this analogy a lot. But influence is the thing that matters, right? Like the whole point of near bound is that you would want to go to market, right co market build more influence with the people that are nearest to you. Right? Not just because they're in some targeted countless, there's some objective, like they care about this topic. They're partners with this person, they're a part of that community, there is some association between them that implies you're more likely to get attention and drive action is because of that influence. How do you see that influence playing into that delta for where the, you know, we were kind of hoping this combo with where sales is going, but maybe where the future of marketing is going?
Jo Wright 40:40
Cool, slightly loaded. Last question. So I think there's that nearest using the term near I think it's super important. So you're identifying who is nearer to you. And that's what near bound can do is help you identify? Who is there? And that sort of very much the conversations, I think that we've, we've certainly had now, the taking that one step further. And then how are you just how are you going to apply this? To not just know it? Because there's a difference, isn't it? So the identification? And then the, what are we going to do about it? And the data is really allowing you to identify and then it's how do you wow and delight and give? I haven't heard the giving analogy from marketing and sales being the taker. I'm on the more on the sales side now. So I like to think I give a little while maybe that's my partnership side. But it's that's the next part, isn't it? We've identified who's near to you. How do you wow and delight and give something really special and the more authentic, it feels, the higher it will convert?
Jared Fuller 41:54
That's the future of marketing right there. There's I mean, it's what if kill and say on the last episode, we had Mark killings, the CMO of eremita, in a good buddy of mine, on the last episode of partner up, and what he was saying is like, Look, I've always said that 60% 60 to 80% of your marketing should not come from your voice. Right, it should come from someone else's. And I think that's very important to think about that in the future. Well, okay, just like sales, target accounts and sell the people which people, well, whose voice is not yours who uses it? And if you think it's just your customers, you you're woefully mistaken. Right? Because oftentimes, you end up with this problem, where you have early adopters, and then you have you know, the laggards in the mass market crossing the chasm is probably the best marketing book of all time, in my opinion, at least for b2b, certainly, for b2b, maybe even b2c, I don't know, it's up there. It's really up there. And what happens is, I actually read in a phenomenal thread with Paul Graham about this, because there's like differing opinions from like the goats of tech startups, Paul Graham, to like modern marketers, and they're still debating this, which is you have your early adopters, you have your customers, do you focus on messaging to them? Or do you focus on messaging to the mass market? What happens in that shift? It's a really delicate one, because if you lose your early adopters, and you pivot, you could stall out. But if you stick with a niche market and you don't grow bigger, you might just have a company that putters, I think the solution is really actually very simple. You don't be responsible for that problem. You turn those people into your marketers. So for example, let's say, I don't know we started partner partner hacker with like, b2b tech companies that are in the you know, hypergrowth range, you know, million to maybe 100 million couple 100 million in revenue. But then we're able to able to bring people like Tiffany Bova, who's Global Head of evangelism at Salesforce was the Gartner is number one analyst of all time, she really doesn't have that much to do with early stage startups. Right? She's evangelizing a $1.5 trillion dollar ecosystem. But we're going to start influencing enterprise businesses, we're going to start to influence legacy channel businesses. So we highlight those people. I think that's a very interesting way to think about you know, what it means to be near bound and crossing the chasm, even it's, it's
Isaac Morehouse 44:29
here. Here's another way, think of Jared, you look at your, you look at your early adopters, and you say, which of these have crossed the chasm themselves? So which of those now have influence in that broader market? And they will be the ones to tell the story to the broader market because they already have trust in the broader market, not us. And there's always some, there's always some I mean, I've had this with, you know, with Praxis our apprenticeship program like when we were trying to get, you know, more larger and more established leash startups to host our apprentices. The way it eventually worked was, it wasn't just from better sales efforts to go convince those companies to take on our apprentices. It was after two, three years under our belts, when some of our graduates went and got jobs there. And then they evangelize within the company. Now I work at a larger startup and I went through practice, and I'm going to build my SDR team with practicing, we had to wait for that moment to happen. We were too small to break into those places cold. But once some of our early adopters and evangelists broke into that market, they brought us with them, because we empowered them and we made them feel loved.
Jared Fuller 45:38
That's a perfect example. It's a perfect example. Because those are not customers. Right? Those weren't those weren't target accounts, because they were it's like the early believers and that can that can expand into the later stage. laggards, you know, you name it through a number of different reasons. But like, that's where you start to build influence. And I think it's so much bigger, like crossbeam reveal, like this, this opportunity. I I don't know of another analogy, or another thing happening in b2b tech right now, that is fundamentally going to change go to market forever. I really don't. I mean, I, there's lots of partner tech companies that I think are phenomenal. But I truly believe that this next thing is the thing that was missing to translate and move from a funnel for marketing and sales to a network for marketing sales, customer success and entire ecosystem. And the strategies that sales teams used of like outbound. And the strategies that marketing's teams used, inbound are going to change and marketing is going to have media communities, and sales is going to have partnerships. And the thing that was missing from the Old World to the New World is the things that you all brought to life and haven't got to use them myself. They're just like, Yeah, this is how a company should be built. I mean, Isaac, we wouldn't have jobs, we wouldn't be doing partner hacker if these inventions hadn't hadn't come into the world. Truly, honestly, I this first time I saw this in action, I was like this is going to change sales and marketing forever, and customer success. So Joe, you are in a very enviable position. Right now in terms of sales leaders that I know. And partnerships, leaders and success leaders that man, I believe in it so much. I want for a closing thought because that's a bit inspirational. So closing thought here. What's what's been the most inspiring thing that you've seen in the midst of all this chaos in the world, the 2020s have certainly been a challenging time for everyone worldwide. What's the most inspiring thing you've seen the beginnings of this movement, and that early adopters, where you're like, oh, shoot, this, this really is the future?
Jo Wright 47:50
Seeing a lot. It certainly just to touch on that why I joined reveal. It's not because of my love for account mapping. But it's the opportunity to make change and be the center of it. But what's the most inspiring and in terms of a shift? The I think it's at the moment, the conversations that we're able to have with CROs are really different to I think what we could have been having a year ago, and almost feels like the penny is dropping have partnerships is so much bigger than then I think what they what they were originally seeing as the partnerships channel, it's not a siloed standalone channel where we're absolutely integral to every single area of the business. So so the shift has started to happen. And that's not when I talk about partnerships, I don't just mean sort of the typical partner programs that we're seeing being run I very much see about see that as about this network growth, about understanding and identifying those companies near and near Bounders an entire concept how do we take data that is generated through a partnerships team and organization and really genuinely get it infiltrated into every single department and organization. And so I think the just the general shift, and the openness to having those conversations has really changed. I don't think that's probably the most inspiring thing that I've seen. That's probably just testament to my slightly drived brain at the moment. But in a lot, the general shift is incredibly exciting to be a part of that.
Jared Fuller 49:27
Well, you've you've certainly probably talked to partnerships directors, or heads or whoever or sales or marketing these whoever it is that it can be very lonely out there in a partnerships role, because you love living in the market so much but it doesn't seem like anyone in the company truly understands quite yet until you've made that shift. And you're really fighting a fight without a community behind you and it's because it might exist outside your company. You don't have the community or the buy in internally like you might be the change agents you're the the road person and And it's really hard to do that without it without the times that we live in being what they are like what we're trying to bring to the table, what reveal is bringing to the table, what the rest of the industry is bringing to the table. You know, every day, I think you're talking to more and more people that believe they can do it. Right? There's, there's a lot of people that were like, You want me to drive the shifts, I think I'm just going to collect my paycheck and keep on doing what I'm doing. Now people are going, you know, what I want to I want to take up the mantle and go drive this change and be a change agent for marketing and sales, even though they might work in that department. To me, that's a what a moment.
Jo Wright 50:38
Yeah, it was very exciting. And, and having that support. Lonely is definitely a word that I hear from partnerships teams all the time. And it's interesting when you then challenge a CRO and tell them you know, this is this is the kind of thing that partnerships say they don't feel supported by their CRO, they may deliver you 20% of your revenue, but you're not supporting them, you're not a community to them. And you're not, you're definitely not giving them the tools that they need to do to be able to drive you 40% of your revenue. And it's really interesting when you start using some of those emotive words with with CROs and and the experience that partnerships professionals are having, versus the perception of the experience that they're having are two completely different things. But there's definitely a shift is more people are willing to fight now. And it's a fun battle to fight. It's it's, you know, it's a winning battle.
Isaac Morehouse 51:28
Well, so there's no need to be lonely. Don't be lonely, you could get in the fight alongside many, many others, not just in partnerships, but even in success in sales and marketing. And in the C suite. That's what the pls Summit is about so you got to come to pls Summit. Joe is going to be there. Reveal is one of the one of the main sponsors. And that's exactly what we're trying to do is create more conversations. And so people don't feel like they're the only one common and relate to others who are fighting the same flight. And the good news is, this is where things are going. You're early. The bad news is you're early and it's hard to be early. So make it a little easier. Come Come join us at a PLS there's my plug, Jared how native was that?
Jared Fuller 52:11
That was great. And invite your counterparts. I love seeing emails come in at company name.com. And I'm like, oh, that's the head of partnerships. And then I'm also seeing oh shoot, there's the head of marketing. There's the head of sales. There's the head of success. You can invite your department friends to any individual Bay and have them build that mindshare for partner lead sales day partner lead marketing partner lead success, whatever. Joe, thank you so much for being on partner up. Partner up. We will see you all next time. Peace.Next
