I have to admit, I avoided this virtual event. Until the last possible minute. About 5 minutes before it began. Why?
I’m one of those people who are “Zoomed Out.” It was nothing to do with Justin Zimmerman – nothing to do with Partner Playbooks – or even the fundamental concept of the event. I was just unsure that I wanted another opportunity to sit and listen to content I might have heard before. But was it? I was curious.
Unexpectedly, at the last minute I had the time to attend. And, more than the content, I just wondered how an event run by suppliers in the industry could drive a ton of traffic (they estimated 1k attendees) and not turn it into a 99 minute long pitch. SO, did they accomplish it? Yes…and No…
The event kicked off with Bob Moore from Crossbeam addressing the audience. Many were curious about the implications of the Crossbeam and Reveal merger. Bob emphasized the theme of ‘togetherness’ and the potential to expand the network for all customers, which was expected. He highlighted that each company would bring unique feature additions to the table.
The most surprising revelation was the minimal overlap between the user bases of the two platforms, estimated to be between 12-20%. This discovery, along with the alignment of the two companies to different vertical and regional segmentations was unexpected.
Overall, this merger represents a significant opportunity for the consolidated company, Crossbeam, and a major advantage for the industry. If you haven’t explored this company yet, now is the time. The ability to co-sell with your partners has just improved, and so has the attribution on your co-sell efforts.
Bob then pivoted to talking about ELG. You’ve heard the concept, Ecosystem-Led Growth. What is it? Does it matter? He wrote a book written on it. What’s the advantage?
“Ecosystem-Led Growth is a go-to-market motion that focuses on partner systems as the primary way to attract, convert, and grow customer relationships.” It puts ecosystem, partnerships, and relationships at the heart of growing businesses. It’s more than just a tactical team, it’s a strategy for the entire business. So, is your company ready to adopt an ecosystem-led growth strategy? Here’s how you’ll know:
The majority of companies sit in the bottom right – INVEST. They are growing and are part of a ‘stack’ that’s part of a wider ecosystem. The bigger enterprise organizations = Expand. They’re the companies that other companies desire to work with. Don’t push a partner program forward if your scale is small and can be executed as a ‘standalone’ value proposition (coffee shops?). It’s good insight from Bob. His slide/presentation deck can be found here:
Next up = Asher Mathew the CEO of Partnership Leaders. If you’re a partner person and you’ve not connected to Partnership Leaders, you should. It’s a very useful group of partnership people that serve as a ‘support group’ for each other. There are several values in Partnership Leaders beyond the community support group. Research, events, papers, collaterals, frameworks, etc. that help partnership people build better programs and partnerships themselves.
And, they run an event called Catalyst. It’s a big enough deal that Mindmatrix will be sponsoring the event. From Asher, “It’s a partnership event, for partner people, put on by partner people with speakers talking about partnerships.” It’s worth your consideration.
I possibly shouldn’t have posted that link and code. But Catalyst is sometimes covered by the individual attendee rather than their company. Hopefully this helps. It’s a link to a promo if you’d like to attend.
Next up, I attended a panel on “Scaling Partner Revenue”. There were three panelists.
Lizzie Chapman from NextRoll
Samantha Duncan from Intelligems
Greg Portnoy from EULER
NextRoll and Intelligems both leverage the Euler platform. When they got started with Euler, they had a common goal: scalable revenue from partnerships. It wasn’t easy. Here were some of the challenges they faced:
- Pace: It always takes longer than expected.
- Multiple Programs: Some companies need to develop multiple programs for different partner types.
- Incentives: Standardizing various standardized incentives while maintaining agility is challenging, yet the structure is highly essential.
- Tracking & KPIs: Developing relevant KPIs is not easy. A partner management platform can help.
- Scale: Standard office tools are insufficient for scaling partnerships. Google Sheets, email, and Office 365 become too manual and cumbersome as partnerships grow.
The pain points that could be addressed by a platform, along with the business case for implementing such a platform, include:
- A more sophisticated partner program requires a more sophisticated process, primarily for enhanced visibility and professionalism.
- Automation provides significant value.
- Meeting partners where they are, rather than where you are, improves partner program engagement.
- Tying relationships to revenue becomes easier with partner management platforms.
- Reducing missed opportunity costs is important.
And then the session launched a bit of a Euler demo. Up to this point, it hadn’t felt too pitchy or supplier centric. The front half of this session included some good best practices and wasn’t overly promotional. However, the last half became more focused on the product, which was somewhat surprising. Though Greg Portnoy tried to avoid pitching, perhaps that was the point of the session or the instruction he received to begin with. The best part of this session was its simplicity and the emphasis on meeting partners where they are. And, Greg tried to show how his platform tries to live by that mantra which was beneficial to many of the attendees. My key takeaway from this panel: don’t expect partner behavior to change; instead, provide partners with easier ways to interact.
Overall, this virtual event was worth attending. There were a few moments where it felt like a ‘supplier-led webinar’ looking for leads, but I did gain some valuable best practices. The insights identified here are particularly helpful for the folks I engage with who have smaller partner programs and are still developing and scaling. Mostly, the benefits really did align with that group.
Would I attend it again, Yep, I think I would. That might have been, for me, the biggest surprise of the day.
For a listen to the keynote, here’s the link: https://playbks.com/recording-post-pss24
