HOW THEY DID IT! Unique stories partnerships-led sales and success. Alex Glenn
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- Technology
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/
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How Speargrowth increase revenue by including partners in events
Agency: Speargrowth.com, B2B marketing, 20 employees
CEO: Ishaan Shakunt
Situation: In need of new leads. They were doing all inbound marketing. They decided, after learning about Partnerhub® ironically, to start turning on partnerships. Subsequently, partner-led events.
Result: Hundreds of leads, lots of personal thought leadership for Ishaan, and pipeline for the agency.
Partner(s) referenced: https://www.vweby.com/
Listener takeaways:
Setup checklist for a partner event
How to ensure reciprocity from the event partners
Post event strategy
Why use these virtual summit tech platforms like Airmeet and Hubilo versus a meeting room tech like Zoom
Repurposing content post-event
Links:
Reveal.co/
Partnerhub.app/ -
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/ -
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/ -
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 -
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. -
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.