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Direct selling is no longer as effective as it once was, but prioritizing partnerships as a go-to-market strategy offers businesses an economical and sustainable way of generating revenue.
This is the Allbound vision for the future of the partner ecosystem.
01
The ecosystem is here
Direct selling is no longer cost effective. Acquisition costs are on the rise and aren’t a sustainable way for businesses to generate their entire sales pipeline.
Every year, it takes more interactions to convert a lead, with most of them not involving your business. There also haven’t been any new marketing channels since 2016, and AI is gaining ground on the existing ones.
Today, median sales and marketing spend for direct acquisition has returned to 37-40% of revenue which was where they sat before COVID-19.
However, the median revenue growth has dropped from 37% in 2018 to just 26% in 2022, with the same spend. These are clear indicators that things have to change.
This is why many businesses, such as Dell and Rapid7, have shifted from primarily focusing on direct acquisition to partner-led growth.
This rapid pivot has given birth to the partner ecosystem; this ecosystem is different from the traditional ‘sell-through’ model of indirect acquisition.
Let’s look at what’s next for partnership selling.
02
Why the transition?
Traditional Channel Model
Vendor is central
Partners become an extension of vendor’s sales and implementation team
The goal is to make partners “self-sufficient”
Vendor is often removed from the customer
While this model will remain for many years to come, the challenges with direct acquisition are causing an evolution in the ‘hub and spoke’ partnership mode, to something that more closely resembles a web.
There is no longer one central vendor, but rather all parties have equal status. The value is generated from the interconnection of all businesses. They have full transparency into one another’s goals and work together to achieve them.
This is the emerging partner ecosystem.
Emerging Ecosystem Model
Everyone is equal
Vendors and partners work together
Self-sufficiency is still important but it works both ways
The vendor isn’t removed from the customer
Want to build a company culture around partnerships? Get the “How to Shift into a Partner-Led Sales Strategy” guide featuring Will Taylor, Head of Partnerships at nearbound.com
03
Co-selling and beyond
Co-selling is a common term in partnerships, but it can be difficult to do well.
The current partnership model is transactional in nature, focused on generating revenue through partners rather than focusing on providing them with a superior partner experience.
Allbound is focusing on what businesses can do differently to acquire long-lasting partnerships. And it comes down to how you market to and acquire customers.
This is how we see it: the traditional scenarios of reselling and referrals remain, but co-sell activity will increase driven by the strong results we’re already seeing through that motion. Customer acquisition will no longer be left in the hands of another business, rather both parties involved will stay connected and engaged.
This only works if everyone – the vendor, partner, and customer – are all equally invested in driving valuable opportunities for all.
This means building strong, resilient relationships is more important than ever. After all, the web is only as strong as the threads that hold it together.
The value of partnerships
Businesses report that by moving to an ecosystem model of trading, they typically see:
If you’re looking to make serious revenue from partnership selling, it’s not enough to simply co-sell. To unlock the true value, you need to co-keep and co-grow.
04
Keeping partners
engaged with co-keep
The best partnerships are approached less like temporary flings and more like a marriage – you need to put in the effort to make the relationship last for the long haul.
It’s imperative you show your partners you’re dedicated to them by providing an unparalleled experience. That’s where co-keep comes in.
Each partner in your ecosystem could easily generate a multitude of opportunities, arguably making it more valuable than a traditional vendor-customer relationship.
As a result, nurturing and growing your partner relationships should be high on your list of priorities. If you try to create an ecosystem without a compelling partner experience, your web will unravel quickly.
Co-keep focuses on retaining partners. This is what PRM technology has been helping businesses achieve for many years.
05
Co-growing a resilient future
With a strong co-sell and co-keep strategy in place, you will begin to maximize the potential mutual value in every relationship. But how do you leverage those relationships to scale the ecosystem?
Co-grow is all about creating genuine value and mutually beneficial success by boosting partner engagement and identifying the best partners for you.
How do we achieve this? Let’s introduce the co-sell flywheel.
The co-sell flywheel starts with identifying and recruiting partners based on referrals, recommendations, and resell activities. These businesses become part of your ecosystem (and you part of theirs!)
With a co-keep solution in place, the partner experience ensures an enduring and valuable relationship, driven by transparency, ease of interaction and mutual responsibility. This makes for a resilient ecosystem.
The co-keep stage also provides tremendous opportunity to identify other ideal partners. There are many AI-driven insights such as partner activity, deal frequency, velocity and value, engagement indicators, and user behavior, that can be used to identify the very best partners to add to your ecosystem through the co-sell motion.
Co-keep intelligence is fed into co-sell activities to further increase acquisition momentum and build a stronger ecosystem. This is what the co-sell flywheel represents.
06
What does this mean for PRM?
The success of the ecosystem is wholly dependent upon the strength of the relationships between the businesses that comprise it. So, it’s time to start prioritizing the partner experience.
PRM technology is now evolving from helping vendors close more business through partners, to creating powerful partner experiences that bind businesses together to grow and scale the ecosystem.
At Allbound, we believe this is a key shift that needs to happen in the partner ecosystem. Our mission is to be the glue that holds your partnerships together, and allows you to nurture them to their full potential.
There’s been a clear acceleration in co-selling to create mutual value between businesses. After all, people buy from people they know – trust has always been the most powerful marketing tool.
However, the current co-sell motions primarily focus on the acquisition of new partnerships, and less so on how to maintain and nurture these relationships. This is imperative to achieving the maximum value a partnership has to offer.
This is the key to ecosystem growth and the new evolution of PRM.
07
Co-keep = PRM
PRM technology is commonly viewed as an automation tool used to optimize manual relationship management processes to reduce cost. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Source: Canalys latest 2023 Ecosystem tooling roadmap
The real power of PRM technology lies in:
- A means to ensure partner engagement through superior experiences
- The opportunity to nurture and grow the ecosystem when many tasks have been automated (e.g. optimizing the long tail)
- The insights gleaned from partner relationships enabling a feedback loop into co-sell
This all directly impacts revenue and builds a foundation for a partner-first
go-to-market strategy.
08
So what is Allbound all about?
We see Allbound as the ecosystem glue that helps kick-start, protect and feed co-sell activities to nurture and scale relationships and in turn, the broader ecosystem.
Allbound is a PRM technology stack that provides capabilities needed to nurture engaging partner experiences. We know what it takes to ensure a compelling and resilient relationship between businesses and have evolved our technology solution to achieve just that.
With capabilities such as:
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When you integrate all this with a traditional co-sell strategy, you have a seamless relationship lifecycle that allows you to acquire, enable, engage, grow, and retain more partnerships.
08
The partnership
revolution is here
Allbound is transforming the future of the PRM space.
By pushing what it means to create and nurture a partnership through the principles of co-sell, co-keep, and co-grow, businesses can create an ecosystem of mutually-beneficial partnerships that continue to strengthen and evolve over time.
Allbound is committed to closely collaborating with businesses to enable you to harness the full potential of your PRM.
All you need to do is unlock the tools that can support your new partnership ecosystem.
Grow and engage your ecosystem partners with PRM
Easily prioritize your partner relationships by automating and analyzing each step of your partnership lifestyle