The key to building a resilient partnership strategy

Can you name a better trio than Kelly Sarabyn, Ben Wright, and Asher Mathew? Don’t bother mentioning the three musketeers or the three blind mice, because they just don’t compare.

We sat down with them to learn about what it takes to build a resilient partner ecosystem strategy. It’s crucial to closely evaluate your product roadmap, harness the power of partnerships to enhance your product’s capabilities, and make economic adjustments where needed.

As Kelly Sarabyn points out, partnerships can provide the tools to extend the functionality of your product without overtaxing your in-house development resources.

“Maybe there’s a partner out there that sells into a very similar ICP, but has that product feature and they’ve either built an awesome integration or they’re willing to build it…We’re essentially producing a product that is more fully functional and robust by going to market with our partner on this feature.“

Next Step: Identify potential partners that fill gaps in your product’s functionality. Consider the benefits of a co-marketing strategy with these partners.

Ben Wright emphasizes the importance of verifying customer overlap before investing time and resources into integration with partners.

“Don’t just guess that you have customer overlap… Do we have a similar ICP? Do we have significant overlap to actually invest time and resources in, in building or developing this integration?“

Next Step: Use account mapping tools like Crossbeam and Reveal to validate your customer overlap before initiating integration efforts.

Let’s delve into some valuable insights from Kelly, Ben, and Asher, along with actionable steps to follow.

Asher Mathew underscores the need to understand where your product falls short in the customer’s workflow.

“Ask your product managers… which part of the workflow did we lose the deal on?… Almost every customer now will have like five to seven different products that they have to work together… somewhere in the workflow, things break.“

Next Step: Identify the points in your customers’ workflows where your product is struggling. Utilize that information to inform your partner strategy and fill product gaps.

Kelly Sarabyn suggests taking feedback from the sales and customer success teams to learn about lost deals or churns due to a lack of integrations.

“Talk to your sales team, ask them which, what big deals have you lost because of integrations?… Go to CS. Find out who’s churning because the integrations stink or they’re not there.“

Next Step: Regularly collect feedback and data from sales and customer success teams. Utilize that data to deploy a partner-led strategy that benefits the entire company.