A quick recap of the PhD from this week:
- Building Partner Relationships
- Quality at Scale
- Make 'Em Famous
- B2B Curb Appeal
- Build Radical Generosity
Recently published:
- PartnerUp #091 - Going-To-Market through Community with Kathleen Booth
- Sunday Stories: The Unseen Cost of Not Integrating by Aaron Olson
- Howdy Partners #16: Soft Skills
- Ask a Plumber, They Know the Secrets by Alex Hernandez
Happenings
- Partner Ecosystem Kickoff - January 17 - Let's dive into some tactics to make 2023 the best year in the history of partnerships. Don't miss this half-day event. Pre-register here.
- Amplify Summit - January 17-18 - Affiliate Insider's two-day virtual event where you can learn everything you need to start your affiliate program. Save your seat for free here!
Seven partner pleas for 2023
This year is going to be tough. But those who embrace partnerships stand a chance to make it through the fray.
Let's make this our year. Let's make this the year of partnerships.
Here are my pleas to make it happen:
1. Plea to founders
Double down on playing the long game. There's no more easy button.
The only people that are going to survive, are those people that place compound interest on all their activities.
Regard everyone as a partner. Look at your customers as people you can do more with later. Build more trust, because trust gives leverage over money and time.
2. Plea to VCs
Stop managing from the model. Gone are the days of managing from an ivory tower of intellectualism.
Winners will not be minted in 2023 by virtue of whether or not they can execute against an operating plan. Winners will be determined by whether or not they can thrive in the market.
Your message can't just be:
Market harder in 2023!
That's not good advice.
Instead, invest in portfolio services around cost-effective strategies and techniques for living in the market and partnering up. Embrace a partner led approach to your portfolio's businesses across product marketing, sales, and success.
3. Plea to product
Utilize partner integrations.
Double down on the integrations that are driving results. Find service partners and product teams that are experts in integrating your partner's technology.
Use product enablement and product marketing to help your customer success and sales teams. Get the numbers. Learn how the integrations are actually used.
Do case studies on your integrations. Drive success through partnerships with marketing and sales.
4. Plea to marketing
Stop doing market(ing) and start living in the market together.
Your content strategy should not be about your voice. Your marketing strategy should be about creating content with the market.
Trust comes from helping people reach their promised land. And no one on your marketing team has the expertise to get there.
Instead of marketing to your customers, have conversations with them.
Engage live with your customers. Do events with your partners. Highlight the people who have already been to the places your customers want to go.
5. Plea to sales
Ask yourself one question in every single deal this year:
Am I working with anyone who's been to the place where my prospect wants to go?
Find a service provider who's been to where your customer wants to go. Partner with them. They'll have already built trust because they've been to the promised land. Work to get them in the account.
6. Plea to success
Get full visibility into your integrations partner's customers. Look at your product overlap data and compare that to the account health score.
For accounts in good health, get your CS teams working with those integration partners and service partners right away. But don't stop there. Figure out what worked. Then take those lessons to the accounts that are in poor health.
7. Plea to partner professionals
Partner pros, this is our year. Let's make it happen.
I for one am willing to die on the partner hill.
Let's help every single person in the categories above accomplish something bold. Let's be daring because no one else is. Be real, but optimistic.
Things are hard out there. If you want to make it, it is imperative that you help your company through partnerships.
You have two choices:
- continue what you were doing and hope it continues to work; or
- get every department in your company to work with everyone else in the partnership ecosystem.
This is the year of partnerships; let's make it happen.
