PartnerUp #093 - 7 Pleas for 2023

Last year, I made 7 predictions for the year ahead. This year, I'm making 7 pleas:

  • A plea to VCs
  • A plea to Founders
  • A plea to Product
  • A plea to Marketing
  • A plea to Sales
  • A plea to Success
  • And most importantly, a plea to Partnerships

Check 'em out, and be sure to join us on January 17 for Partner Ecosystem Kickoff with PartnerStack! REGISTER HERE.

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Full transcript:

Isaac Morehouse  0:11
Jared my man, so what about his

Jared Fuller  0:14
partner up?

Isaac Morehouse  0:15
Oh, yeah, we gotta gotta get that in there. Gotta get that in there. One of my favorite all time partner up episodes, was your seven predict? Was it seven predictions? Yeah, five, seven, your seven predictions for 2022 at the end of last year. And that was right before I joined you as a co host. And that was why I think that was the first episode I ever listened to when you were like, you gotta check out this podcast, we got to do this thing. So I loved it. I think it was prescient, I think if anybody goes back and looks at it, they'll see that you were you were calling some things, you were helping to bring about some of those things as well. So maybe it's an unfair advantage. But what are you going to do this year? That's what I want to know what big, big predictions you're gonna make.

Jared Fuller  0:59
I've seen a couple of things out there. And really what I want to do is I don't want to do predictions this year. I want to do, please. So I got seven partner, please, for 2023. So there's some alliteration there for you.

Isaac Morehouse  1:10
Please, please. Give me the please, please. It rhymes to like a plea for 23. You know, to good goes with the year. So okay, so seven? Is this an arbitrary? Because I'm thinking when I'm thinking of please, that Jared is gonna make I'm thinking about the pls idea of every department. So we got five, sorta, where do you get seven from? Who are you pleased to?

Jared Fuller  1:35
Alright, I'll do a quick overview. And then we'll do a rapid fire session of those seven, please. So I have a plea to founders. I have a fleet of VCs, I have a fleet of product. I have a fleet of marketing. I have a fleet of sales. I have a fleet of success. And then I have a plea to the partner professionals the oh geez, the people that are primarily listening this pod partner up day in day out and hanging with as a partner, Hacker

Isaac Morehouse  1:55
2023. Jared, what is your plea to founders

Jared Fuller  2:00
play the long game, like double down on playing the long game. This is my plea to founders in 2023. The only people that are going to survive in 2023 are the ones that place compound interest in all of their activities. Here's what I mean by that. I've said before, in partner hacker daily 200 is one of my favorite sayings, that trust comes from helping people reach the promised land, right? their promised land, meaning the more you work with someone, the better off you're going to be because presumably, if you're getting better, right, if you're continuing to work with someone, you're in a better state than you were in the past, otherwise, you stop working with them. So think of your business as a founder, who can I surround my company with that I can continue to build compound value with and accumulate not just transact. So that's my plea to founders in 2023. Think about your ecosystem first and living in market.

Isaac Morehouse  2:54
I got to ask you one question on that play. Because I'm sure a lot of founders are thinking, it's easy for you to say play the long game. This is 2023. The market is tough. It's contracted, I have to play the short game, Jared, I have to look at quarterly I gotta get there is

Jared Fuller  3:11
no short game. There is no short game. There is no short game in 2023 2024, you will die. You might be like I can survive for a quarter or six months. But I promise. I mean, when the smartest investors in the world, the the richest people in the world are saying you need to have enough runway to get to q1 2025. You're not going to get there by hacking your way through leads, and things like that. Now, you can't hack your way to relationships, right partner hacking is not about like, just hacking my way to leads. No, it's about hacking your way to relationships to where you can actually grow a community and ecosystem, the partner network as fast as possible. So doesn't mean go slow. It means think about am I putting effort into something that will drive value for me in a year and two years? If not, you better have that lens on as well, because you won't make it to q1 2025. So with that being said, that's why I think every founder, every partner professional, if you're working with early stage founder, you need to go to partner kickoff.com Because we have January 17, the kickoff event that we all want in partnerships. So go to partner kickoff.com We'll see you January 17.

Isaac Morehouse  4:19
All right, play number two, what is your play in 2023 to venture capitalists who are often leading, leading the charge in terms of defining strategies that companies kind of, they kind of set the beat in a way that people sort of dance to when it comes to what VCs want VCs are on boards, founders departments that kind of tears down. So what's your plea to those VCs this year?

Jared Fuller  4:45
My plea to VCs is stop managing from the model. The age of ivory tower intellectualism, where you can sit behind a keyboard and tell the CFO tell the CEO okay, go make these numbers work with less than duh, as table stakes, my plea to VCs in 2023 is stop managing from the model and thinking that by designing something inside of your companies or port COEs walls, that that's going to affect the market, the market is always going to win in 2023. It's never been more true. So winners in 2020, so you're gonna be minted or whether or not not whether or not they can execute against an operating plan, they're gonna be minted by whether or not they can thrive in the market, they can live in the markets, that they can co create content, and make their customers famous not Market to Market with their sellers. They're not trying to push their product on people, they're trying to help, by working with the people who've already helped their customers in the same thing on the success in the same thing on the product side. So stop managing from the model, get out of your ivory towers, until your pork coast to live in market and stop going to market, the market is going to kick their ass. So that's why you should VCs come to partner kickoff.com to learn how to tell your podcasts how to do this the right way and 2023

Isaac Morehouse  6:06
I'm sensing a theme. Alright, let's get on to the next play. We've we've had a plea to founders, we've had a plea to venture capitalists. What's your plea to product? The product leaders and product organizations in 2023?

Jared Fuller  6:24
My plea for product organizations in 2023 is it's very simple. Lean into integrations. And when I say lean into integrations, like there's some table stakes here that are really easy. Who's integrate? Who are your joint customers with your integration partners in your ecosystem? Who are they? Okay, great. Do you have visibility as a product org into which of those integrations are active? So let's say you have some overlap of 1000 accounts that are joint customers of you, and your integration ecosystem? How many of those integrations are activated? Right? So you might have a subset of one, you know, integration partner where you have 250 joint customers. But let's say Do you know, of those 250? How many are integrated Wait is that data has that made it all its way into CRM. So that way a CSM could take a look and go, Oh, this account has HubSpot. But the integration is not activated, that data needs to be leveled up. So as a product org, you shouldn't be thinking about, Oh, I need to ship this great new feature, you're not going to be generating more demand from your product in 2023. I promise. You're not generating more demand because you launched a feature it will bless doesn't matter. If you can't make the customers you already have wildly successful in the workflows and the places they already live as a product org, you don't have a product Oregon 2025 has gone, right? Because that means you got a leaky bucket. So you need to take ownership of the people that are actually there, get on the phone, talk to them and understand, okay, this person is not using this integration this accounts not? Is it the integration that's broken, or is that the workflow is there something about their business that they need to change, and then partner very tightly with your success org and product ors, you need to lead this charge. So partner pros, work with your product team to find out that overlap data, see who's activated on the integration side, that's not and then help build that playbook with the product org to affect customer success, drive gross retention, drive upsells, and then expand to turn your integrations into a first class feature, name them, it's one of the things we did a drift, we didn't just launch an integration with Marketo. We called it conversational ABM, we launched it on the main stage of Adobe Summit. That's how first class your integrations need to be in 2023. So go get it and join us January 17. At partner kickoff.com, we're going to teach you a lot more about how to do that.

Isaac Morehouse  8:51
And I'm going to add a little sub plea to those product orgs. When you're doing these integrations, marketing is your friend work with marketing, you get not one, but two marketing teams at your disposal. If you do it, right, that integration is being rolled out and CO marketed by both companies to increase the number of people that are activated using it that you can then hand off to customer success, etc. All right. What is your plan in 2023? Jared? Jared Fuller, to marketing leaders and marketing departments.

Jared Fuller  9:25
Well, that was a great segue. Isaac, I have to say so my plea in 2023 to marketing is stop doing marketing and start living in the market together at the partner lead summit that we had last year, so pls summit.com, we awarded peekaboo Data Box partner led startup of the year. Why did we do that? We did that because Peekapoo to the Data Box team that with five people they interviewed over 10,000 people for their content, quoted them made them famous. That's co creation of content use did not have 12345 content people who've never done the job that your customers are trying to do. Let me say that again, if you sell to a CIO, you sell to a CRO you sell those CMO, I promise your content marketers have never held that title, because they will not be your goddamn content marketers. Like, I don't understand how we got in this world where we think we can outsource the ingenuity and the insight to people that have never had the job. Smart people realize, hey, I don't need to be the thought leader here, I need to go make the other thought leaders famous, I'm gonna build that stablished trust with them. So when you live in market together, you're creating content with dozens, hundreds, you're creating conversations out in the market, where you're precipitating that you're the central node that's establishing those pathways for more communication and more conversations. And at the end of the day, all roads lead back to you. But don't think of it is how much content we can we create and push out on the market. No, you need to be thinking about the market and how many connections you can make and conversations you can create. So that's my plea to marketing and 2023 Stop doing marketing and start living in the market together. And that's why I want to see you at partner kickoff.com. January 17.

Isaac Morehouse  11:11
I like to think of it as as a marketer, your job is not to be the genius. Your job is to tease the genius out of people that they didn't know they had refined it and put it on display. And that's that's really customers partners influencers. That's it. So, partner kickoff.com We're gonna dive into how to do that in 2023. At a world class level, Jared Fuller, for some reason, adding your last name, I feel like this is more of a it's a big it's a bigger deal. You know, what's your plea to sales teams and sales leaders in 2023?

Jared Fuller  11:47
My plea to salespeople in 2023 is very simple. I want you to ask yourself one question I want every seller, whenever director sales, VP of sales and CROs to be asking one question at any given a counter deal? Am I working with someone, anyone who's been to the place that I'm promising my product will help bring my customer to right? In other words, trust comes from helping people reach their promised land? Is there anyone in my account team that has been to the place that my customer is trying to go? If if that answer is no, you're not winning the deal. period, full stop in it's so simple to do. So step one could be as simple as bringing a customer to that conversation. Now. There's no compound interest from a customer. Right, that's, that's a debit, not a credit. So when it's a customer, you're asking for a favor, you're expending some of your social capital. So let's say you're a great a great VP of sales, you get a customer to show up with you go, Hey, we have used this solution, it did help us with XYZ, we do endorse it, blah, blah, blah, you can't bring them to your entire 3050 100 Hundreds of person sales team every time, right. But guess what you can do, you can do better discovery and understand who are the service partners, the tech partners, the other vendors that are already doing business around that customer. And let's say it's a CIO, and that you've they've, they've helped them with some security thing. And that's a specific service partner that has that expertise. But your solution may be able to help get them there faster. The point is, if they've been paying that service partner for a year, two years, three years, guess what, they've already been helping that customer reached their promised land, by virtue of them already having a contractual relationship. So you have to assume that that business because of that relationship is in a better state today than it was when they started. And then it will be in a better state in a year or two years. So my point is, ask yourself this one question. Are you selling with anyone like that in that account? That has been to the places where your customers want to go, because if not, you're doing old world sales, you're doing stuff that was I don't care if it's challenger, I don't care if it's whatever methodology, bring people into the account that have been to the places your customers want to go. So that's my plea to you sellers in 2023. And we'd love to see a partner kickoff.com, January 17, where we're going to be unpacking that and giving the kickoff event that really all the partner pros and people that want to do better together. That's where they're going to be.

Isaac Morehouse  14:31
You're gonna, you're gonna have you're going to be ahead of the crowd and learning before it goes fully mainstream, how to work your ecosystem, to go sell together to tap into those people, as you're mentioned. That's, that's honestly Jared, what excites me about 2023 is like, the moment is here, and it's not yet at the same time. And so for those who are recognize the moments here, there's this first mover advantage, there's this ability to say I'm gonna Get out in front of market together, sell together, serve together, right? I'm going to learn these tactics first. And I'm going to take the lead and be it via, you know, example for everybody in the industry, because it hasn't, hasn't spread to everybody yet. So that's a great, great opportunity, whatever org, you're in, come to partner kickoff.com and learn how to do it in 2023. Okay, let's talk success. All right, success orgs success leaders, what is your plea to them in 2023,

Jared Fuller  15:28
my plea in 2023, for success leaders. Simply this, I'm going to tie it back to my plea on the product org, what you need to do is you need to get into that data and understand not just what areas of the product you're using, is that you need to create more stickiness. And that's, that's an overused term. So you want to use stickiness, you need to create more nodes, which gives you more surface area to work with other companies that are helping your, your customer right now, what does that mean? If you as a VP MCs, or even a CS person, you have a book of accounts that might be 50 100, or you're managing 5000 10,000 at the C suite as a CCO you need to get that integration data on which integrations are being utilized, which integrations are not, and then on a per account level, right? Make it an initiative to understand what standing in the way of that delta between partner overlap. So these are customers of yours customers of your integration partners. And the ones that are not activated, right, so there'll be some delta 10% to 90%, you'd be surprised, then you need to go talk to not the people that are not activated. You need to go talk to the people that are activated, what's working, what's great, what's, what can be replicated across accounts. And then here's where it gets really good. Okay, your CSM, guess what you're not, you're not the thing, that you're teaching your customers how to be, you're not the CMO, you're not the CRO, you're not the CCO, you're not the CIO, right. But here's what you can do, you can go partner with the service partners to help them drive that change inside of that account. So get the integration data, lean into the customers that are doing it, well. Turn that into a playbook services partner with your professional services org and go, Hey, actually, this is like a multi week process to really get this cooking with this other integration. And there's a lot of content or services or legwork or change management that needs to take place. Try to package that up. In go give that to your service partners and unleash them on your customer base where those integrations aren't activated it at a base level. This is where you can also toss the ball, the marketing, hey, help us out with this product marketing a little bit, right this little guide on how to do this. And you need a full on assault on the people that have integrations that are driving value for your core customers, but they're not activated, and to use your service partners to make that happen. So that's my plea to success people in 2023. Go serve together, figure out the place to make these integrations and these nodes more sticky on this network. And then come to partner kickoff.com, January 17, where we're going to have the kickoff event around how to do everything better together.

Isaac Morehouse  18:09
I'm glad you called out the sticky stickiness phrase because you know I'm a stickler attended for the kind of language. It's so common for companies, for companies to use language that's all about them. And it's not language that the customer would use for themselves. Customers don't want to be stuck. Customers want to be served. Customers don't want to be stuck. They want to be stable. Right stickiness implies I'm trying to get away and you won't let me I'm stuck in this web. Right stickiness is like bad bad countries put walls up to keep people in good countries don't need to because people don't want to go anywhere. So don't think about trying to stick your customers where they don't want to be and make it too hard for them to leave. Think about creating an environment by surrounding them with an ecosystem with partners that they don't even think about leaving you don't have to put any sticky glue on them because they're not getting up to leave totally. Look at that little girl. Oh, my player

Jared Fuller  19:04
three has entered the game.

Isaac Morehouse  19:08
The game done changed. All right, Jared. We're gonna we're gonna round this out with our core audience right here, partnership people. What is your plea to partnerships people in 23?

Jared Fuller  19:21
All right. My plea to partner professionals in 2023 is very simple. It's your year to go all in. It's your it's your year. If you were a partner hacker or partner up podcast fan from us last year. Maybe we got you curious. You were like you know what, maybe partnerships is a place where I want to build my career. And then maybe we got you a little courageous to start talking and having more hard conversations. One of my favorite phrases Isaac is hard choices. Easy life. That also translates to hard conversations easy life. Right? So maybe you started to have some hard conversations with your management team, etc. This is the A year where you need to have conviction. So move from Curiosity, to courage to conviction. This is your year, if you don't have conviction this year, we saw what happened last year, some of our friends, some of the best partner pros, I know they got white. And it had nothing to do with their capability to perform or their companies. It was just carte blanche cutting. Totally. I hate to use the word unfair, but it felt a little unfair. So you need to have the conviction this year to go put your neck on the line to say I'll live I'll die on this hill for this business. But guess what you have to do? You have to do the same. So in my six other predictions, I said, Here's what founders need to do. Here's what VCs need to do. Here's what product people need to do. Here's what sellers need to do. Here's what marketers need to do. Here's what success people need to do, partner person, my plea for you in 2023 is to go help all those other people do better together. That's my plea. Don't make it about you make it about those six other personas go help the founders, the VCs, the sellers, the marketers, the service people, the product, people, not just do their thing, where they're selling or marketing or serving, but where they're doing each of those things together, market together, sell together, serve together. That's how you're going to have a 2023 that you remember, because you're helping so many people. Isn't that the partner ethos in the first place to help all of those people. It absolutely is. So stand tall. Put your shoulders back. This isn't about some wild optimism that everything's going to be great. It's gonna be dang hard. But if you have the conviction to go do it and stand tall, stand proud and die on that hill. You're going to be the partner professional. That makes a difference in 2023. So we will see you at partner kickoff.com January 27. January 17. It's going to be a blast. Oh, by the way, this is Sophia. newest partner the filler fam. Oh,

Isaac Morehouse  21:54
I love it. Partner. kickoff.com. January 17 be there. Let's do this right?

Jared Fuller  22:00
Absolutely. That was that was a blast of the rapid fire quick episode. We got the seventh partner please for 2023 We will see you all partner kickoff.com I'm super excited for 2023 It's gonna be a blast. Isaac. Fun little minisode we've got our seventh partner please.

Isaac Morehouse  22:19
Please please for 20 threes with the cheese we got I don't know there's something going in there. Get some flow.

Jared Fuller  22:26
We're gonna get Isaacson's and his hairy Mac impressions up in here any minute now. All right, folks. Well peace out. We will see you all next time. See you Sophie

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