Skip to main content
HOW THEY DID IT! Unique stories partnerships-led sales and success.

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

By Alex Glenn

This is a derivative of our popular "Make Them Famous" podcast about partner enablement. Only this time, I wanted to take a journalistic approach to uncover unique stories between partners. You will hear parts of the story being told in an interview I had with the guest. Then, you will hear my co-host Chris and I break down the key learnings of the story and provide more context or anecdotes from our experience running agencies and working with partner teams.
Each episode will have:
1. A story involving partners.
2. What resulted.
3. Key learnings.

Sponsors:

Reveal.co/
Partnerhub.app/
Available on
Apple Podcasts Logo
Google Podcasts Logo
Overcast Logo
RadioPublic Logo
Spotify Logo
Currently playing episode

Growing Channel Revenue by Connecting Agency Partners w/ Cory Snyder

HOW THEY DID IT! Unique stories partnerships-led sales and success.Jan 11, 2020

00:00
28:27
How a top enterprise salesperson and agency went to market together successfully w/ Jill Rowley and David Lewis

How a top enterprise salesperson and agency went to market together successfully w/ Jill Rowley and David Lewis

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/


Mar 13, 202401:31:12
How they won a larger client together - Duo Strategy and PBLC Media

How they won a larger client together - Duo Strategy and PBLC Media

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/


Feb 10, 202449:15
A very large rep-driven deal that led to Carabiner Group's “Cocktail of solutions” with their partner Formstack

A very large rep-driven deal that led to Carabiner Group's “Cocktail of solutions” with their partner Formstack

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


Feb 02, 202456:36
How the #1 Eloqua salesperson + the #1 Marketo service partner = GTM perfection

How the #1 Eloqua salesperson + the #1 Marketo service partner = GTM perfection

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.

Dec 08, 202301:12:08
Get scrappy with Growth and Partnerships alignment - with Gauri Chawla and Mason Cosby

Get scrappy with Growth and Partnerships alignment - with Gauri Chawla and Mason Cosby

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.

Nov 22, 202352:56
What the young CEO of a $50M startup thinks about sales and partnerships w/ Mac Reddin of Commsor

What the young CEO of a $50M startup thinks about sales and partnerships w/ Mac Reddin of Commsor

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.

Oct 02, 202353:23
Efficient partner operations w/ Marco De Paulis

Efficient partner operations w/ Marco De Paulis

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.

Sep 22, 202350:04
How partnerships work between top agencies

How partnerships work between top agencies

Today’s episode is a look into a successful agency-to-agency partnership between two top development and design agencies; Merix Studio and Wayf Digital, and their partnerships leads; Jan Kubczak and Szymon Królikowski.

This is a first for us. We typically interview tech and agency partners together, or just tech teams, but it’s very important for all of us to know more about the type of partnership between two service providers. So, here we are.

In today’s conversation we learn: 

  • How Jan started this partnership
  • What makes WAYF an ideal partner for Merix
  • How their partnership works
  • What happens when there is a shared customer
  • How each of them thinks to enable one another to bring more deals to the table
  • What their leadership (they are both partner managers) expects from them to find and activate more partnerships
  • How they mitigate the expectations (true and false expectations) from leadership
  • Their plans to grow faster together

Sponsors:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Jul 29, 202342:50
Partnerships timing and GTM - a conversation with VC Sean Kester

Partnerships timing and GTM - a conversation with VC Sean Kester

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®):

  1. Paying partnerships leaders for __ number of posts on social about the launch. 

  2. Bringing PL’s into the product by way of templates branded with their name that the users can deploy for their internal partner operations. 

  3. 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/

Jul 05, 202347:31
What happens when a Product-Led org launches a solutions partner program…

What happens when a Product-Led org launches a solutions partner program…


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.

May 22, 202301:00:12
Partnerships learnings from Nick Thompson of The Stable - recently aqcuired by Accenture

Partnerships learnings from Nick Thompson of The Stable - recently aqcuired by Accenture

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.

May 02, 202339:29
How SaaS CEO’s can nurture and support a 1:1 partnerships strategy w/ Nik Sharma and Dillon Duchesne

How SaaS CEO’s can nurture and support a 1:1 partnerships strategy w/ Nik Sharma and Dillon Duchesne

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.

Apr 04, 202338:28
What is "Partnerships-Led," and it's it viable on it's own?

What is "Partnerships-Led," and it's it viable on it's own?

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: 

  1. Who are your "partners" and who aren't?
  2. What is "partnerships-led"? 
  3. 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.

Mar 15, 202346:45
Enabling power-user partners W/ RevPartners and Dealhub

Enabling power-user partners W/ RevPartners and Dealhub

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.

Feb 14, 202358:44
5 ways to give referrals back to your partners!

5 ways to give referrals back to your partners!

When your solutions partners ask and need referrals back from you in order to continue sending you referrals, here are some ways to keep that reciprocity engine going, in a manageable and scalable way.

Scenario 1: You are managing hundreds of partners and you cannot possibly feed them all.

Scenario 2: You are new or simply do not have customer access to be able to effectively intro partners to users.

In either scenario, your goal is not to try and wedge your way between AE's and Users with a partner intro... You're a partner manager - you don't have direct comm's or relationships with end users. You cannot and should not be the directly-referring party.

Instead, your goal is to become the valuable consistent "conduit" for traffic and then referrals your partners receive from your brand.

On that note, here are 5 ways to generate referrals back to your partners...


Sponsors:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.


Links mentioned:
https://www.partnerhub.app/blog/5-ways-to-generate-referrals-back-to-your-partners
https://www.particl.com/blog-posts/seoroundup
https://databox.com/partner/impact-branding-design-llc
https://smith.ai/blog/how-to-track-smith-ai-live-chat-in-google-ads-google-analytics
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6SOetAA-XEJkO-oHkBg6FtBAszuQH3nkThBiUosETw/edit
https://www.hubspot.com/resources/partner-contribution/inbound-marketing-strategy
https://www.coastalconsulting.co/resources/hubspot-salesforce-integration-course

Feb 01, 202335:13
Partner GTM with Barrett King from HubSpot

Partner GTM with Barrett King from HubSpot

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.

Jan 09, 202350:23
How to get into the preferred tech stack of a top digital agency w/ Malomo & Electric

How to get into the preferred tech stack of a top digital agency w/ Malomo & Electric

In this episode, I get to interview a newly-acquired agency’s founder Brandon Amoroso from Electriq, a top Shopify marketing agency, and one of his top partners, Noah Rahimzadeh who runs Partnerships at Malomo.

This episode focuses on how to make your way into the preferred tech stack of a top digital agency.

  • Learning about this retention-focused ecomm agency persona
  • How Malomo got into that stack
  • What made this partnership take off so quickly
  • How Noah found the low hanging fruit initially at Malomo
  • How Electric packages partners into a preferred stack
  • Brandon’s experience with cold emails from tech - what he see’s and thinks
  • How Noah goes-to-market quickly with partners
  • How Brandon uses account mapping Co-selling
  • What Noah does to ensure he’s not forgetting about his current partners

Sponsors:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Shout outs:

https://www.windsor.io/

https://www.superfiliate.com/

https://www.okendo.io/

Dec 20, 202241:55
Let's talk about marketing-partnerships alignment w/ Mark Kilens and Rhonda Scher

Let's talk about marketing-partnerships alignment w/ Mark Kilens and Rhonda Scher

In today’s episode, we hear from one of the best partner-marketing leaders on the planet in Mark Kilens, and one of the most experienced partnerships people coming out of sales, Airmeet's new VP of Partnerships & Channel Sales, Rhonda Scher.

Rhonda was deep into sales before working in her first partnerships role at Hopin. Mark cut his teeth building HubSpot’s renowned partner and user training programs before running marketing at companies like Drift and now he’s CMO of Airmeet.

During our talk today, the three of us work to uncover:

  • What partnerships mean to Mark, Rhonda and Airmeet
  • The importance of partnerships for both Mark and Rhonda in their careers and objectives at Airmeet
  • How partnerships lends itself to Marks core growth framework
  • Types of partners Rhonda is working with
  • How Rhonda puts together marketing requests
  • What Mark needs from partnerships to treat a request from the partnerships team like an opportunity and not an obligation
  • What can stop the partnership effort in its track if the partner person doesn’t plan ahead
  • How to take your tech integrations partnerships hat off while dealing with solutions partnerships
  • What happens next after marketing approves a collaboration with partnerships
  • KPIs they share and see as the next

This is an excellent episode to share with your marketing team or CEO.

But as usual, before we start, please hear from our amazing sponsors.


Sponsors:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Dec 05, 202243:45
Partner marketing 102 with Logan Lyles from Teamwork

Partner marketing 102 with Logan Lyles from Teamwork

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.

Nov 17, 202254:22
The what, why and how of building an Academy for your SaaS w/ Mark Kilens

The what, why and how of building an Academy for your SaaS w/ Mark Kilens

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.

Oct 28, 202238:32
Ecosystem development w/ Stripe and partner Aptitude 8 / A8 Labs

Ecosystem development w/ Stripe and partner Aptitude 8 / A8 Labs

Today, my guests are Tim Tsao, Head of Partner Programs at Stripe, and Connor Jeffers, Founder + CEO at Aptitude 8 and A8 Labs.

I get to speak to these two at a very unique stage in both of their businesses.

Aptitude8 launched A8 Labs recently to create products to bridge technical gaps between two products or inside HubSpot specifically.

Stripe has gone all in on ecosystem development.

A little about Stripe’s size for those who aren’t familiar:

  • 11 yo. Financial infra, from payments. $640B volume, up 60% yoy.
  • 500M API calls daily, 10K per second
  • And over 100 people on their partnerships team alone!

The two are 6 months invested in their very strong partnership - Aptitude 8 being a solutions partner of Stripe while A8 Labs is simultaneously an ecosystem partner of Stripe.

Very cool stuff to get into…

  • How Stripe won the commitment from Connor to become an early partner of theirs
  • What role do solutions partners play in Stripe’s ecosystem
  • How stripe buckets partner types
  • This unique partner type of service providers who are also ISVs
  • The challenge for Tim and the team to sell the ecosystem play internally
  • What it means to enable a partner to build a product that solves a pain point vs building a feature to solve it
  • How Connor envisions the Stripe partnership to bring in 30% of their gross revenue next year
  • How Tim’s partner program will enable Connor to hit that goal
  • And we end with some advice on certifications - to ensure ROI

This episode will be great for CEO’s, CRO’s, solutions partners, agencies deciding whether or not to build products… or any partnership team involved in an ecosystem strategy…


Resources:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Oct 06, 202255:33
Staying the preferred vendor for a top digital agency w/ Andzen & Justuno

Staying the preferred vendor for a top digital agency w/ Andzen & Justuno

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):

  1. Co-marketing and co-selling
  2. Training and certifications
  3. Communication
  4. In-region support
  5. Getting product team members to get on calls with partners
  6. Commissions


Resources:

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships.


Sep 18, 202201:08:04
How to attract and retain top digital agency solutions partners w/ Blend Commerce

How to attract and retain top digital agency solutions partners w/ Blend Commerce

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.

Sep 07, 202255:51
How to find and enable partner your first partners, w/ Recart and Budai Media

How to find and enable partner your first partners, w/ Recart and Budai Media

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.

Aug 09, 202246:59
How to GTM with strategic marketing agencies - Simon Data & Power Digital

How to GTM with strategic marketing agencies - Simon Data & Power Digital

How do you find, activate and enable your top-tier GTM agency partners?

That’s the million-dollar question for robust platforms like Simon Data. To find out, I asked their new, but successful VP of Partnerships Sharice Siegel to the podcast along with one of her new GTM agency partners - Alex Bauer, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Power Digital.

Listen to this episode if you are after what we call “Power Partners” - those you GTM with and who build strong service offerings on top of your solution.

The three of us discuss:

  • Core pillars of a CDP’s partner program
  • Where agencies fit into their strategy
  • How to quickly bucket partners by key value opportunity
  • Points to understand around Power Digital’s agency persona
  • How Simon Data develops persona’s ideal for GTM strategy
  • Finding those agencies who sell to CMO’s
  • When and why Alex ignores most “partnerships” outreach messages
  • What Alex / Power Digital prepares with their chosen GTM partners

Resources: 

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Jul 21, 202254:06
When to build an affiliate program how to enable SaaS affiliates w/ Dustin Howes

When to build an affiliate program how to enable SaaS affiliates w/ Dustin Howes

I’m thrilled to have an affiliate marketing expert join me today. Dustin Howes is a 12-year affiliate marketing veteran. The former Head of Affiliates at WP Engine (which has one of the largest affiliate programs for any saas company), Dustin is going to provide us with what we need to know today in order to understand, qualify ourselves, and begin to set up an “Affiliate” program - not to be confused with an “expert” or “Solutions” partner program.

In this episode, Dustin and I review:

  • Definitions of Affiliate vs Partner vs Reseller, and Channel, etc…
  • Who should not be thinking about affiliate programs?
  • What is step 1 of building an affiliate program?
  • What are the pillars of affiliate program success?
  • What to know about products that do well in this affiliate system.
  • What are the best ways to enable affiliates?
  • When and what commissions make sense.
  • What separates service provider partners from pure affiliates - in operation and enablement.

You’re going to love this episode if you are considering an affiliate program for your saas.

Thank you for being a listener of this show. We work hard to bring you entertaining and actionable content every week.

In order to continue to operate, we work with vetted partner enablement sponsors like the ones I’m about to mention. Please take a second to hear about these awesome platforms…

Resources:

Slides we spoke about in the episode.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Partnerhub - for finding and managing your partnerships.

Jul 11, 202249:38
How a mature partner marketing team handles new product GTM, w/ Yotpo

How a mature partner marketing team handles new product GTM, w/ Yotpo

How a mature partner marketing team handles new product Go-To-Market

John-David Klausner, VP of Partnerships going by JD, and Moran Khoubian, Director of Global Partner Marketing going by “Mo”, both working at Yotpo - the platform best know originally for their reviews product, then as the loyalty programs category leader for D2C eCommerce brands.
Like many other platforms, Yotpo has built and acquired an array of products to benefit users and partners. It’s very much an “ecosystem hub” for tech and agency partners which means it alone can support a partners entire service revenue.

Today, Yotpo’s partnerships team has 5 members working on partner marketing specifically.

Mo and JD have been working effectively together for 6 years now, so they are ideal to speak to effective longevity of partner marketing.

Today we want to uncover how partner marketing impacts global channel success for their 1000+ active agency partners, and 250+ technology partners they engage with.

  • What their program is today
  • Who operates what on the team
  • Orchestrating marketing with partners
  • GTM function for their new products
  • Specifically, after their acquisition of SMS Bump
  • Cross-functional strategy of their GTM
  • How they work with those agency partners who are close to a now competing product (i.e. SMS)
  • How education plays a factor in that GTM success
  • How their 6-year team allows Yotpo to remain a category leader even when they go into 2 new highly competitive categories like loyalty and SMS
  • We end with actionable advice for teams wanting to build a partner marketing role / team

As always, some of the best advice and strategy is right around the 40min mark.

Resources:

Partnerhub - Find and manage agency-to-tech partnerships.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Jun 27, 202251:07
Part 1: Advanced Partner Marketing w/ the team at Alyce

Part 1: Advanced Partner Marketing w/ the team at Alyce

Marketing-Partnerships Alignment can be a challenge for tech companies for a multitude of reasons, which we get into on this episode. Further, maintaining a community within product advocacy is becoming more and more crucial to category leadership. To address the why and how of marketing-partnerships alignment as well as community competency, I’ve asked Nick Bennet, Director of Evangelism & Customer Marketing @ Alyce, and Rob Sale Director Of Partnerships @ Alyce, to help us understand:

  • Marketing / Partnerships alignment.
  • How Rob and Nick run their overlapping projects.
  • Nick’s community and where/how he allows Alyce and Rob access in any way (email, social…).
  • Community-Led Partnerships.
  • Building a community under your partner program.
  • Converting community members to active partners.
  • Tracking / reporting on community KPIs.
  • How those KPIs relate to partnerships.

This is part 1 because Nick and Rob are just getting started on some major initiatives that we want to check back on in a few months.

Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

May 27, 202246:34
What effective partner marketing looks like

What effective partner marketing looks like

Daniel Nissan is the President and CEO of StructuredWeb - a platform used by major brands to run through-channel marketing automation (basically, operationalizing partner marketing). He’s built product around this dilemma for years, and does partner marketing internally, so he is the expert for today so we can all learn:

  • The definition and practice of partner marketing vs direct marketing.
  • State of partner marketing and enablement.
  • Complexity and challenges - attribution, assets, syndication, operations, etc…
  • What types of content and marketing collateral are great for partner marketing.
  • Partnerships-marketing alignment
  • The we talk about the Risks - compliance in GDPR / CCPA, channel conflict, legal statements in content, localization, trust and brand reputation…
  • We go deeper into strategies teams use to avoid Channel Conflict.
  • What causes friction between co-marketing partners and how can teams prevent that.
  • Finally, we list off the strategies + recommendations for next steps…

Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

May 11, 202256:53
Starting New with partnerships: Tips & Tricks for Partner Managers

Starting New with partnerships: Tips & Tricks for Partner Managers

Mia Bobak is on the rocket ship that is Gorgias's tech alliances team. In this episode, Mia is months into her new role, which means we get to hear how to get started on a new partner team in a new partner ecosystem, and what it takes to start seeing success with your partners right away!

Vital for anyone new to a partner team in tech. 

Takeaways:

  • How to save time creating your strategy, 
  • Ensuring success with your partner collaborations, 
  • Community strategy to learn fast and speed up your endeavors, 
  • Working with your partner managers/teammates and find what works for them, 
  • And even early-stage attribution.

This is a great episode for both CEO's and Partner Manager's - as well as anyone wanting to break into partnerships.

Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Apr 26, 202232:47
The Nuances of Partnering with SEO's and SEO Platforms w/ Semrush

The Nuances of Partnering with SEO's and SEO Platforms w/ Semrush

Every type of digital agency has unique relationships with their software stack. Implementation partners for major platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce sit between the product and the internal team who ends up using it. And when you look into agencies whose revenue exists on top of technology the client may never know about, let alone log into, their partnership with those platforms is highly nuanced. This causes some frustrations for the partner teams at said software who struggle making their programs work around the platform that is only managed by the agency partner.

One such platform is Semrush - the suite of SEO tools used by agencies like our guest today to power enterprise-grade services with 6-figure monthly retainers. So, how does the partnership work between these two entities?

To find out, I asked Brian Moseley, former HubSpot, former Databox, now Director of Channel Sales at Semrush to bring one of his favorite digital agency partners (Marty Martin, Founder, CEO at LOCOMOTIVE Agency) onto the podcast to help us understand:

  • What makes a world class partnerships org like HubSpot, Databox and Semrush.
  • How to launch partner programs around sub-products like SplitSignal by Semrush.
  • What drew Marty into the “partnership” originally - what Brian / Semrush did well.
  • How Marty makes the case to devote time/resources to a new partnership.
  • How much value Marty places on the partnership bringing thought leadership.
  • Brian’s criteria for qualifying an agency to take down the partnerships track.
  • A great qualifying question Brian asks potential partners to make this decision.
  • Marty’s take on successful partnerships activities.
  • How much of a factor communication is in the success of a new partnership.
  • Why it’s always best to start with a small set of core partners.
  • Why SEO agencies are very skeptical of “Partnerships” in general.
  • Final recap of what partner teams and other SEO’s can learn from this agency and their partnership with Semrush.

This is another great episode I think your team will benefit from no matter your relationship with partnerships.


Resources:

https://www.partnerhub.app/

SplitSignal Enterprise SEO Split-Testing: https://www.semrush.com/splitsignal/

Surround Sound for Search Reputation Management: https://www.semrush.com/srm/


Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Apr 01, 202248:28
Including partners in GTM campaigns w/ Justin Graci from HubSpot

Including partners in GTM campaigns w/ Justin Graci from HubSpot

Today I’m joined by Justin Graci, whose title is: Principal Marketing Manager - Product GTM & Enablement at HubSpot.

His job at HubSpot is building the strategies on how they go to market with, and through partners on new and existing products. This includes everything from launch plans, to activation, enablement, development of our partners across sales enablement, service enablement and marketing.

  • How a platform with multiple products, with partners underneath each, avoid over-complicating their program
  • What is the GTM strategy for big product releases like Operations Hub
  • How to determine what partners to include in GTM campaigns
  • How did they incentivize partners to get behind this campaign
  • What types of products are partners-first products
  • The impact of the partner network
  • Bringing in current partners in net-new partner acquisition / enablement campaigns
  • Further, how HubSpot instituted Partner-to-Partner learning
  • The a strategy similar to Multi-level-marketing (pyramid schemes) and how that can be beneficial to increasing activity in your program.
  • Then we end on what’s coming around how Justin / HubSpot want to add incentives for partners to learn / add new services (going horizontally across the product line).

Hang on to this one until the very last minute - you’ll thank me.

Resources:

https://www.partnerhub.app/

https://www.hubspotmatch.com/

https://ecosystem.hubspot.com/marketplace/

Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Mar 21, 202255:42
The mentality and operations of growth partnerships w/ Ashley Scorpio

The mentality and operations of growth partnerships w/ Ashley Scorpio

Welcome back to Make Them Famous! The only podcast that sheds light on more than 1 side of the partnership equation. On this show, our goal is to uncover how the best partner leaders, agency operators, ceo’s and department leads activate and enable their partners.

Back for another round is Ashley Scorpio- VP or Partnerships for Hawke Media. Ashley and her team of 7 manage over 2500 very active partnerships which Hawke as an agency includes in almost everything they do from marketing to sales to client services.

On this second discussion with Ashley, we are going to uncover:

  • Ashley's experience with partnerships
  • What's changing
  • Current strategy with partnerships
  • Why she’s hiring a PDR
  • Recap the “Circles” strategy
  • Review some current active partnerships
  • How the best partnerships began and what they do differently
  • How Ashley qualifies and quickly finds opportunity with almost everyone
  • Why not lead with compensation incentives, and what to do instead
  • How can partner teams perfect the first 90 days of a new partnership - let's create their SOPs live


Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.


Resources: 

Read this article on incentives strategy 

Create Partnerships Memorandums with your new partners.

Mar 10, 202254:25
Early stage partnerships; the decisions, strategy and operations w/ two bran new partners

Early stage partnerships; the decisions, strategy and operations w/ two bran new partners

This episode happened on the fly when I was co-demo’ing Partnerhub for an agency (Masood, CEO at Facebookads.io) and his tech partner (Raj, CEO of HaiX.ai) simultaneously. We started recording because this duo has such a cold story and were at a very important stage in their partnership wherein the three of us could formalize some next steps live for you.

On this recording, the three of us discuss:

  • What they did together early on to activate the relationship
  • How they qualified each other to be potential “partners” - more than just a user-relationship
  • How Masood (the agency partner case study) is helping Raj formalize this program and why he’s doing that
  • What Masood and I recommend to Raj for communication and operations best practices
  • What incentive structure should be in place early on and how to implement / track that
  • What an early stage tech stack would be
  • We talk about how the circles strategy can add a level or retention to his partnerships which will keep the partners through product declines / dips
  • Why Raj should not think about scaling this program now, if ever.

I hope you enjoy this episode format of live program strategy development. If you do, or have other feedback, email me: alex@partnerprograms.io

As usual, before we kick off, please take 2 minutes to learn about 3 platforms which can help you grow your program:


Sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.


Resources mentioned:
https://collective.partnerprograms.io/posts/co-marketing-ideas-examples

https://www.journey.io/use-cases/communities

https://databox.com/dashboard-examples/google-analytics-kpi-dashboard

Feb 18, 202249:08
Deep-dive into co-selling strategy with Daniel from Quantum Metric and Noemie from Reveal

Deep-dive into co-selling strategy with Daniel from Quantum Metric and Noemie from Reveal

We work hard to bring you multi-perspective conversations on strategies we know most struggle with. This episode is no exception. I was able to enlist Daniel Lancioni, Partnerships Director (EMEA/APAC) at Quantum Metric, and Noémie Goubin, Head of Partner Success Strategy at Reveal who also led partnerships for AB Tasty, to find out how to get co-selling to work - for tech and agency partners.

  1. Intros / background
  2. Experience co-selling overview
  3. What is account mapping and co-selling to most org's
  4. What do Daniel and Noemie say to each key stakeholder when approaching them about co-selling
  5. How Daniel suggests tech teams deal with the nuances of approaching digital agency partners to co-sell
  6. Who needs to be involved to succeed in a routine co-selling motion with partners
  7. The MVP of a co-selling motion with an agency who has never done it
  8. What prevents most companies from co-selling
  9. Is there ever internal conflict
  10. How can a tech company align partnerships with the sales to prevent conflict
  11. The numbers of Co-selling - value for Quantum Metric in terms of pipeline
  12. And, how valuable is starting to pave the way with co-marketing to warm leads up before you start co-selling
  13. Co-selling KPIs and OKRs
  14. Recommended process for getting started account mapping with partners

We hope you enjoy this discussion!

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Jan 10, 202254:57
Your Partner Program won't succeed unless you know these things... w/ John Cawdery

Your Partner Program won't succeed unless you know these things... w/ John Cawdery

John Cawdery ran US operations for Incubeta, a 500+ person agency based in London most recently, but also built a partner program at Google for 14 years, so he is able to speak towards his unique perspective and experience on the topic of partnerships. Today, John is alone on this call, which is unique for this show, because he is both sides of the partner coin in one. In this episode, John and I review:

  • What to know before you define your program
  • Communication with partners - why it is most important
  • How to structure your team to succeed
  • Perception of "MSP" partnerships while at Google
  • How this changed after joining the agency
  • Misalignment around incentives
  • What John would build if he started a solutions partner program today - 1st, 2nd, 3rd steps
  • What should the partner managers first 6 month KPIs be
  • What truly incentivizes agencies to partner
  • And we end with examples

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Dec 15, 202145:21
Part 2 with Site-seeker and Lead forensics; What's needed to make a new partnership successful.

Part 2 with Site-seeker and Lead forensics; What's needed to make a new partnership successful.

In this episode of "Make Them Famous" - The Partner Enablement podcast, we catch up with our friends at Site-Seeker agency and their new technology partner Lead Forensics to find out what has transpired in the first 6 months of Site-Seeker's deployment of their new white label service relationship with Lead Forensics.

Guests:

Michael Graham, Lead Forensics

Thomas Armitage, Site-Seeker

Find all episodes on your favorite channel: https://www.makethemfamous.fm/

Here’s the show:

[00:00:24] Intros

[00:04:24] What services Lead Forensics enables for Site-Seeker

[00:07:28] The progression of the sales system

[00:11:01] Strategy to be repeating

[00:12:18] Definition of partner enablement

[00:14:40] What makes Lead Forensics attractive for agencies

[00:17:05] Operationalizing partnerships

[00:19:56] ROI

[00:21:57] Advice for agencies considering this type of partnership

[00:23:49] What we learned

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Nov 28, 202125:54
Why Alignment with your Marketing Team is Key for a Successful partnership w/ 6sense

Why Alignment with your Marketing Team is Key for a Successful partnership w/ 6sense

The partner program at 6sense has evolved through the years and one of their main focuses as they have grown their partner program was to ensure their Partner and marketing alignment. With this alignment they have been able to bring first in class marketing activities to their partners and create incredible resources that help with partner sourced revenue and compelling stories. Take a listen at how Jeff Wagner, Technology Partner Program Leader, and Courtney Smith Head of ABX at 6sense accomplish this alignment.

What they cover:

  • [00:04:53] Intros
  • [00:06:32] The progression of their program over the past year
  • [00:08:41] Team growth and marketing alignment
  • [00:15:13] How they measure net new revenue
  • [00:17:05] CEO buyin and reporting structures
  • [00:20:43] Marketing alignment
  • [00:22:15] Adding team members to the strategy mix‍

Resources:

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.


Nov 18, 202126:05
Product Position Changes & your Partners - how Signifyd executed a large positioning change with the help of their top partners.

Product Position Changes & your Partners - how Signifyd executed a large positioning change with the help of their top partners.

Today’s discussion is perfect for any teams out there who know they need to (a) inform, (b) train, and (c) rely on their partners to successfully-execute a positioning change, pivot or enormous product release.

To get an idea of how this can be done, I invited James Denker, Director of Partnerships for Imagination Media - someone who is no stranger to massively-important partner programs, and one of his closest tech partners from Sygnifyd, Senior Partner Manager Megan Blissick.

Megan has just undergone a company positioning change wherein Sygnifyd moved from fraud prevention to revenue operations and optimization.

So of course, we learned how this impacted partnerships.

In this episode, we uncover:

  • Knowing these two partner personas.
  • Understanding what it’s really like on that partnership island for both sides.
  • Megan’s favorite plan of attack for activating new agency partners.
  • Enablement structure strategies from James.
  • How Megan folded partnerships into Signifyd’s recent pivot.
  • The timeline and strategy to bring partners into PR.
  • Hiring your partner managers from an agency.
  • Driving value for your partners.
  • Final words of wisdom from Megan and James around partnerships-led product endeavors.

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Oct 20, 202151:42
How a Category-Leading Product creates Partnerships-Sourced Wins by Enabling Power Partners

How a Category-Leading Product creates Partnerships-Sourced Wins by Enabling Power Partners

With me today is Anca Bujor, Head of Biz/Dev and Strategic Partnerships at Unbounce. And one of the few dedicated landing page services agency founders Nic Scalice, CEO of Earnworthy.

I invited these two onto this season of Make Them Famous to chat about how an already Category-Leading product like Unbounce generates success from partners like Nic who would promote the product with or without the partner program. It’s scenario all top of their class products have to understand so this podcast is for those great products out there.

What we’ll learn from this episode is:

  • How to get agencies to focus more on the revenue they could make on your solution.
  • How Anca splits up her partner activities between her active, inactive and net new partners.
  • Changing the narrative around your “tool” to turn it into the basis of a scalable service platform.
  • The pie chart of enablement components.
  • What makes Nic continue to want to call himself a “partner” of any of the tools he uses.
  • What is valuable to see in a partner newsletter from the partners’ POV.
  • Partner communication best practices - frequency, type, Slack, newsletters, recurring…
  • How Nic works between client referrals, tracked links, and PRM.
  • Product aspects tied to partnerships - branding, sub-accounts…
  • The future for Anca’s partnerships agenda.
  • Nic’s advice to partner teams.

Our sponsors:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Oct 05, 202154:41
What we learned in the first 25 episodes of this podcast w/ hosts Carina and Alex
Sep 10, 202139:58
Top 8 Questions I get asked about Partner Programs and Partner Enablement
Aug 28, 202134:27
Building Successful Implementation Partnerships w/ InsightSquared and Aptitude 8

Building Successful Implementation Partnerships w/ InsightSquared and Aptitude 8

This is the episode to listen to if you are either a robust tech product interested in building an implementation partner program, or an agency interested in becoming a trusted implementation partner of a top technology company. With us is Ben Turner who runs partnerships for InsightSquared and Connor Jeffers, CEO of Aptitude 8, one of his top Implementation Partners.

  • What it is an “implementation partner”?
  • Qualifying your product to support ‘implementation’ partners?
  • What the agency partner needs to have / be to be a successful implementation partner?
  • What’s needed to ensure success in this unique partnership?
  • What both sides should know about when things break?
  • Operations: Communication… Alignment… contracts...
    Enablement: documentation, assets, case studies, co-marketing around those ideal case studies…


This is the episode to listen to when you want to get a better implementation or expert partner program setup.


Suggested partnerships tech:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.


Aug 12, 202143:40
Part 2: How to Successfully Launch your Agency-to-SaaS Partnership, w/ Albert Daily from Cella

Part 2: How to Successfully Launch your Agency-to-SaaS Partnership, w/ Albert Daily from Cella

Albert Daily is Director, Strategic Solutions & Partnerships at Cella agency.

​​Albert talks in great detail about how important it is to set those expectations up front with potential partners to ensure they are a good fit. There is no need to put pressure on something that might not be a successful partnership so it's important to understand each other’s businesses, goals, and overall mutual fit between your two offerings.

“If it's not a give and take then what is the value in our partnership?”

Sections:

[00:03:03] Intro to Albert / Cella

[00:06:48] Why partner with Stensul

[00:10:23] Enablement assets provided by Stensul

[00:15:05] Co-marketing

[00:18:16] Bringing Cella / Stensul  into deals

[00:20:53] Generating revenue from partner channels

[00:23:53] Their stack

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Jul 30, 202129:17
Part 1: How to Successfully Launch your Agency-to-SaaS Partnership, w/ Fabian at stensul

Part 1: How to Successfully Launch your Agency-to-SaaS Partnership, w/ Fabian at stensul

Starting from the ground up, Fabian Eckstrom-French shares with me the key pillars to focus on when growing your partner program and how to do it successfully.

Fabian is a strategic alliances and business development leader at stensul - the email creation platform for enterprise - with technology and international consulting background.

“Day one week one, see that as an immediate opportunity to help your partner out.”

Sections:

[00:04:05] Where Fabian started

[00:08:41] Influenced revenue from integrations

[00:13:52] Timeframe to kick off your program

[00:15:14] Initial acts with all new partners

[00:20:37] Team alignment

[00:29:34] Fabian’s advice to partner managers

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Jul 30, 202134:13
A Deep-Dive into the Digital Agency-Partner Persona, w/ Greg Portnoy and John Florey

A Deep-Dive into the Digital Agency-Partner Persona, w/ Greg Portnoy and John Florey

Today’s episode is a deep-dive into the agency-partner persona.

Our guests:

John Florey, CEO of SAMA Labs a performance marketing agency partnered with platforms like Klaviyo and Attentive Mobile. They’ve spent the last 7 years assisting clients in growth with their tech partners involved throughout. John knows growth with partnerships, and was brought into Attentive’s partner program by Greg a few years ago, so he’s the perfect guest for the show.

Greg Portnoy, Former VP of Partnerships at Attentive Mobile and Hawke Media, now COO of Live Recover, and an agency-partnerships verteran, is our partnerships expert for this call because he found/onboarded John at Attentive.

In today’s discussion you will learn:

  • How agencies should look at “Partnerships” as a growth engine
  • How can agencies diversify their partners in order to quantify true growth
  • Qualifying and deciding on the partner track to pursue with each new tech
  • How to select / prioritize your partners
  • How can platforms mitigate favoritism
  • Dealing with the competition between partners
  • What is a optimistic and realistic partnerships strategy for an agency
  • Speaking to the an agency without a partnerships manager - their CEO is your POC
  • Some of the ways to break into this type of an agency who is busy and has a competing solution as a partner
  • Outreach tactics
  • Co-marketing-only partnerships
  • And we end on non-compete clause pro

Resources:

Sendoso - The leading sending platform.
Partnerstack - Partner tracking and payouts.
Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

Jul 17, 202155:37
Ironing out "Partnerships" so you can have better internal conversations and board buy-in, w/ the Partnerstack team

Ironing out "Partnerships" so you can have better internal conversations and board buy-in, w/ the Partnerstack team

The word “Channel” is lost on many. The word “Partner” is broad and encompasses so many types. And you cannot call your “Partners” affiliates. Further, “You do not discuss partnerships in the same way to your team as you would your board.” This is the premise for our discussion with Bryn Jones, CEO of PartnerStack and Nikita Zhitkevich, their Director of Channel Partnerships.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • What are agencies thinking about related to partnerships today.
  • Any litmus tests for if/when you should launch your program.
  • Nomenclature of partnerships and what you should be using.
  • Why conversations about partnerships with the board are completely different than conversations with your team.
  • Bryn’s opinion on bifurcating the role of a partner manager to marketing and sales.
  • A thought exercise and rollout strategy to consider.
  • Timeline and budgeting for an agency-focused program.

Enjoy this!


Special thank you to our sponsors:

PartnerStack- Partner tracking and payouts.

Sendoso- The leading sending platform.

Reveal (formerly Sharework) - A free account mapping solution.


Jul 08, 202151:41
Forming the Agency Channel for Hotjar Live on this Podcast w/ Dan Crowther from Trellis

Forming the Agency Channel for Hotjar Live on this Podcast w/ Dan Crowther from Trellis

On this episode of Make Them Famous, I am speaking with Daniel Crowther, Senior Manager of Partnerships, and Sharon Biggar VP of Marketing at Hotjar and frame Sharon’s partnerships strategy live with her. You get to hear Sharon asking Dan and I questions about incentives structure, PRM, co-marketing, dedicated support, which department partnerships should live under… This is a perfect episode to listen to if you are in the early stages of program development and have savvy implementation agency partners persona’s in your crosshairs.

Here’s where Sharon/Hotjay is/was at the time of this recording:

Sharon is formalizing their program - deciding on types and GTM.

Trellis was their first agency partner.

But now they have 5 total agency partnerships.

They are launching formally in Q3 of 2021.

They do not have a PRM.

We learn:

  • What started this partner program endeavor for Sharon / Hotjar.
  • What they learned about incentive structure.
  • How Sharon resources the program today with her team and CS.
  • When and how should she approach PRM needs.
  • What training system should she set up.
  • First year KPIs.

Daniel answers all of these questions from the agency partner POV so you get a unique feedback and strategy recording in this episode.

I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy it.

Sections:

[00:04:24] Intros

[00:07:50] Program incentives discussion

[00:14:11] How important is the partner portal

[00:19:07] Partner training and LMS

[00:23:36] Co-selling

[00:27:17] First year partner program KPIs


Resources:

Sendoso.com - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack.com - Partner tracking and payouts.

Reveal.co - A free account mapping solution.

Jun 28, 202132:35
The Hard Truth about Agency - SaaS Partnerships w/ Remington Begg

The Hard Truth about Agency - SaaS Partnerships w/ Remington Begg

Remington Begg is the founder of Impulse Creative - a top HubSpot solutions partner building large websites, running content marketing, revops, and all around inbound mark eting services.

He’s been running Impulse for 11 years which makes him as experienced as they come, with partnerships especially.

His tech partners today range from: HubSpot, Sendoso, Aircall, Sacari, and Avoma.

I get a phd in partnerships from having these detailed conversations with top agencies like Impulse Creative because it’s the hard truth about partnering you cannot get from speaking to Channel managers.

“Partner managers think they're the only ones in the entire universe. Like here's all these things that you need to fill out in order to make it happen… Can’t we just jump on a 15 minute call and tell you what's up.”

In this episode, Remington shares:

  • What Remington reviews first around the partnership opportunity
  • Why things go sideways
  • When (if ever) are commissions a factor
  • How important help documentation is to the agency partner
  • Remington’s partner track from vetting to implementation
  • How Remington vets tech to be an expert solutions partner
  • Why he suggests not using beta’s as an incentive for agencies
  • What tools and apps Remington uses to manage partnerships
  • What communication channels he prefers
Jun 17, 202148:47
Clearco's Data-Driven Referral Partner Program w/ top partner EmberTribe

Clearco's Data-Driven Referral Partner Program w/ top partner EmberTribe

Coming off of an enormous series C, and a rebrand, we have Clearco (formerly Clearbanc) and their  Agency Partnerships Lead Christopher Vigmond. Along with Chris is one of his top producing agency partners T. J. Jones, Co-Founder at EmberTribe. TJ and Chris have been partnered for 2 years now, but things really took off when they started working together to refine Clearco’s partnering process.

Quote: “For now, I need to take a month or two and drive value to TJ and his team and not ask for anything in return.” - Christopher Vigmond

In this episode, we uncover:

  • What TJ and Clearco realized that they can do for agencies for the agency clients to build partnerships around.
  • How Clearco increased the close rates for their referrals to and through their agency partners.
  • What partner persona’s Clearco focused on and why.
  • Where Clearco’s data plays a role in new services TJ and other agencies sell clients/brands/
  • How partnerships played a factor in Clearco’s series C.
  • What about Clearco’s partner program was so attractive to TJ.
  • How Chris and Clearco integrates into the agencies processes.
  • When partnerships have gone wrong for TJ’s agency and why.
  • When and how Clearco features new partners to their audience.
  • And finally, both of their advice to new partner teams.

Sections:

[00:04:38] Intros

[00:07:54] The state of Clearco’s partner program

[00:13:23] How much of a factor did partnerships play in Clearco’s series C

[00:15:01] Partner enablement at Clearco

[00:19:55] How TJ justified hours into partnerships

[00:23:32] Activating partnerships for Clearco

[00:27:14] Co-marketing

[00:33:30] Types of partnerships that work well for TJ/EmberTribe

[00:39:04] What’s next for sales/marketing partnerships at Clearco

[00:43:06] Closing remarks on partnership best practices


Resources:

Sendoso.com - The leading sending platform.

Partnerstack.com - Partner tracking and payouts.

Sharework.co - A free account mapping solution.

Jun 08, 202150:22