Happy Wednesday!
In 5 minutes MAX you’ll get:
→ How PandaDoc is de-risking their investment in partnerships
→ Always beat your competition with Geoffrey Moore's second book - Zone to Win
→ Why "powered by" is the best partnerships play of the year
De-risk your partnerships investment
We’re not trying to go really big right out the gate, spend a lot of money, and not know if it's going to work for the go-to-market motion we've built today.
In terms of incubating our partner program we’re starting out small, keeping it within the revenue org (but quite distinct), and making sure that we're taking a measured approach to these four pathways: agency, affiliate, ISPs, and strategic partnerships.
- Keith Rabkin, CRO at PandaDoc
Always stay ahead of your competition
Author of Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore, explains in Zone to Win that every company needs (4) zones: performance, productivity, transformation, and incubation.
Performance zone - Your core business; where you get 95%+ of your revenue.
Productivity zone - Activities that optimize all other zones, drive operational efficiency for your core business, and help you scale.
Transformation zone - Where ideas go to become part of the core business.
Incubation zone - Where ideas are grown slowly, apart from existing business. Think of this as a type of “lab” where ideas are tested and get ready to scale.
With all four zones, a company can deliver on expectations and simultaneously plan ahead for disruptions to its market.
Companies like PandaDoc don't want to be playing a defensive game when the decade of the ecosystem disrupts the B2B SaaS landscape.
That's why they're keeping partnerships in the incubation zone until they figure out how to get efficient, predictable, and scalable revenue.
We knew partnerships was a great opportunity because of the ecosystem…But we haven't figured out a way to make it scalable.
- Keith Rabkin, CRO at PandaDoc
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The next time you see “powered by,” think partnerships
When was the last time you gave any thought at all to Microsoft's Bing search engine?
If you're like me, maybe never. Until today.
Google is synonymous with search, but nearly four years after Microsoft formed a partnership with Open AI in 2019, Microsoft released Bing powered by Chat GPT.
I've been using Chat GPT for a little while now to ask all of my random questions and I've found my habits shifting.
For example, the other day I was watching TV and I couldn't figure out where the heck I had seen an actress before!
If you're like me, even though you know that it's probably some B-rated movie that you watched when you were nine years old…you have to know.
I pulled out my phone and where I would typically open Safari, I actually paused and thought to myself, I really wish I had a chat GPT app.
Of course, Google still came through and gave me the answer that I was looking for.
But it was the first time in memory that I considered even for a moment that there was a better alternative.
Now I can actually switch my default search engine to Bing on my phone and I can get a GPT result just straight from a search engine.
AI is taking the world by storm, and the cool thing to think about is how many partnerships underlie all of those new apps!
Bing, brought to you by partnerships.
Until next time,
-Jessie Shipman
And a BIG thank you to RevGenius for amplifying this podcast. I'm loving the revenue conversations happening in there! Check them out.
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