By Olivia Ramirez & Zoë Kelly
June 27, 2023
Congrats on growing your partnerships team! (Or joining a partnerships team if you’re a new hire!). Partnerships and Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG) is still a fairly new go-to-market (GTM) motion, and it’s becoming more advanced and widely adopted each year.
See? 👇The Ecosystem-Led Growth Index below shows how the number of companies globally adopting ELG has risen from just above 0% in early 2020 to 6.6% in May 2023. The increase is significant — and there’s still a long way to go.
The good news is, you’re here! You’re already a step ahead, and thus you’re more likely to win deals and generate revenue at scale compared to your competitors (and the status quo). Those who are adopting ELG, including those who are co-selling with partners, are going all in.
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ELG best practices, original research, and industry-wide stats each week when you subscribe to Crossbeam Insider.
Today, there’s a wealth of resources, tools, and people that can help any new hire hit the ground running in tech partnerships. Below, we’ve curated some of the best communities, articles, webinars, and more to help you skip ahead in the learning process and start driving results (and having fun!).
Onboarding a new hire? Download the “Partnership Team Employee Onboarding & 30-60-90” template.
#1: Ecosystem-Led Growth 101
Ecosystem-led growth (ELG) is accelerating customer acquisition, account expansion, and access to new markets by improving go-to-market (GTM) motions via partners and partner data.
Your Ecosystem includes not only your partners but also your customers, their tech stacks, and their partners. You can imagine the power it holds!
ELG helps bolster the work of every GTM team. In sales, your sales development representatives (SDRs) lean on partners for warm intros into accounts they’re trying to break into. They can also engage prospects at the right time using plays like the “fast follow”.
Your account executives (AE) can also reach out to partners to get valuable intel about your prospects, like information about their business goals, their buying timeline, and the stakeholders with the most buying power.
Example stories:
Your marketing team can leverage partner data to reference tech stack insights in their marketing campaigns. For example: If you know that a group of your prospects overlaps with your partner’s customers, your marketing team can run a campaign sharing the value of the integration you have with the particular partner to generate high-quality leads. They can also collaborate with partners to produce joint webinars and generate greenfield opportunities.
Example stories:
Additionally, your integrations with tech partners help create additional value for your customers using your product. This translates to more product usage, more active users in your product, and less churn — all metrics your product and customer success teams care about.
Example stories:
A growing number of companies are embracing ELG — Check out the ELG Alliance to learn which of your partners, colleagues, and customers are advocating for ELG in their organizations, and strike up a conversation to swap best practices.
Slack Communities
One of the best ways to understand this rapidly expanding world of partnerships is to surround yourself with the other people within it. And unlike riding in a subway car or waiting in line for the bathroom at a concert, the more people you can get around you, the better.
Slack partnership communities are a great way to stay connected with other partnership professionals, ask questions, and maybe even make a couple of friends along the way.
Here are a few to get started:
Who’s there:
How to join: Apply to join Partnership Leaders here.
Who’s there:
How to join: Sign up with your email address here.
Who’s there:
How to join: Apply to join the SaaS Ecosystem Alliance here.
Who’s there:
In the May 2023 Pavilion Pulse Survey, Pavilion and Crossbeam surveyed the sales community and learned that only 42% of GTM revenue leaders decreased their targets for the year, and 54% are more likely to co-sell with partners this year compared to last. A quote from Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion at the 2023 Supernode conference:
“Ecosystems may be the only defensible path to market in the future.”
How to join: Apply to join Pavilion here.
Partnerships are all about forming networks and building your own personal one is a great place to start. We’ve compiled a list of people to follow on LinkedIn, but we suggest adding your favorite follows to our customizable “New Partnership Team Employee Onboarding & 30-60-90” template.
Articles & E-books
Thoughtful articles on partnerships and ELG introduce you to the common language partnership teams and their GTM peers use every day, teach you about best practices, and give you answers to the questions you might not know you need to ask just yet. That’s why we’ve spent years interviewing hundreds of Ecosystem leaders and practitioners to share the best insights with you. Here are some of our favorites:
- The Second Edition of the Partner Playbook — Your complete guide to thriving as a partnership professional. Get the “Source, Decide, Enable, Execute” framework and dozens of tactics for co-selling, co-marketing, and rolling out new integrations. Featuring plays from WP Engine, HubSpot & Google, ActiveCampaign & Salesforce, RollWorks, Vidyard, and more.
- The 2023 State of the Partner Ecosystem Report — Understand how your partner program stacks up to your peers. Learn which key performance indicators (KPIs) your industry peers prioritize, the types of Ecosystem tools they’re investing in, and more.
- The Pavilion Pulse Survey — Learn from sales executives and individual contributors (ICs) about the sales motions they’re prioritizing, their revenue goals, and their current pain points.
Check out the May 2023 Pavilion Pulse Survey to learn how sales teams are adjusting their revenue targets in a shifting market and the changing sentiment around ELG (Spoiler: 54% are more likely to co-sell with partners this year compared to last). - Alloy’s Building a Business Case for
Integrations — Understand what product managers care most about and how to get their buy-in for investing in your integration roadmap. Get tips for communicating the need for integrations, learn about your product team’s priorities and anticipate their questions, and get a free business case template. - Partnerships 101:
ISVs, VARs, SIs, MSPs, and the Glue That Holds Them Together — A primer (or refresher) on the fundamentals of partnerships, the partnership types, and the acronyms you’re bound to hear every day. It’s a great place for any new hire to start. - How to Communicate Effectively With Your Sales Team About Partnerships — Getting buy-in from your sales team can be a challenge, but it shouldn’t. Ecosystem-Led Sales and co-selling with partners accelerates sales cycles, increases the likelihood of closing a deal, and can increase the deal size (or lead to an expansion). In this article, learn about the metrics and goals your sales team cares most about and how to communicate the value of partnerships effectively.
- Partnerships 101: Account Mapping. How to (Finally) Do It Without Giant, Cumbersome Spreadsheets
— Get familiar with the Crossbeam Account Mapping Matrix, and quickly identify co-selling, co-marketing, integration development opportunities, and more.
- The Subtle Art of the Warm Intro: How to Set Your Sales Team Up for Success — Co-selling doesn’t need to be complicated. The simple act of making a warm intro for your sales rep can go a long way in strengthening your relationship internally, helping them close the deal, and encouraging an ongoing relationship with your partner. Check out how the partnership team at Ometria makes warm intros for their sales reps who are struggling to break into an account.
- Every Stat We Have That Proves the Value of Partnerships and Ecosystem-Led Growth — Need buy-in for a new partnership or initiative but don’t have the results to prove the impact? It’s a story as old in time. Luckily, this article has tons of stats you can borrow from companies big and small who have put ELG plays into practice and seen results like:
Plus, here are 13 articles showing the business impact of partnerships.
- Viewing Your Integration Strategy as a Lever for Expanding TAM – Your integration strategy could contribute to significant growth and expanding your total addressable market (TAM). For example: a new integration could open the door to new buyers in a different industry or category. This article covers how to calculate your potential market penetration for a new integration — and validate the case for your product and leadership team.
- Three Bite-Sized Ecosystem Plays That Take Less Than a Day to Kick Off (Crossbeam Insider Newsletter) — Learn how Noah
Rahimzadeh, Head of Partnerships at Malomo, identified three low lift efforts that elicited big rewards and a momentum of engagement with partners. For example: he identified areas to mention partners in all of Malomo’s existing case studies, and now they’re doing more lead gen activities with one of their biggest partners.
Want more? Subscribe to the Crossbeam Insider newsletter to get the latest insights and stories every week.
Podcasts
Some people prefer their words spoken, not written. We get it, no hard feelings here. Here are some recommendations for those new tech partnership hires that prefer to learn via podcast:
Ultimate Guide to Partnering
Host and Sales and partnerships executive Vince Menzione is joined by business leaders who share their success strategies, best practices, and industry insight. Through a focus on industry transformations and diverse leadership, the podcast showcases how “changing times have led to changes in strategy” within the partnerships space.
Favorite episode – VP of Hitachi Group Companies Sharan Hildebrand joins the podcast to discuss what “getting tech partnerships right” looks like.
The Official SaaStr Podcast
Saastr is the world’s largest community for business software. Their podcast features tips, tactics and strategies from leading operators and investors to help others be successful in the SaaS world.
Favorite episode- Partnerships leader now turned angel investor Cristina Cordova talks about knowing when it’s the right time and the right partnership.
Check out additional partnership podcast recs here.
PartnerUp
By PartnerHacker. Follow along for weekly episodes with expert guests providing knowledge about marketing, sales, and, most importantly, partnerships.
Favorite episode – Crossbeam’s own Bob Moore talks about the underserved world of partnerships.
Conferences
We’re back baby (in a fully-vaxxed, masks-on kind of way). Conferences are happening and we couldn’t be more excited:
Supernode (June 2023 – Join the waitlist for 2024)
Supernode is a two-ish day conference for Ecosystem-Led companies. Attendees include partnership leaders and practitioners, go-to-market (GTM) teams, and founders.
Here’s what 2023 attendees had to say:
“The event was awesome and really is a ‘must attend’ for any partner leader.”
“I could only make it the last day and it was still the best partner event I’d ever experienced.”
“🌟 Just attended Crossbeam’s
Supernode event in San Diego! Amazing talks on Ecosystem Led Growth (ELG) and its potential for enterprise sales in SaaS.”
“Last week I attended Crossbeam’s
Supernode, and it was overflowing with incredible (and actionable) content! We got to hear from industry leaders on how to drive growth through a partner ecosystem, and set up effective co-selling and partner programs with buy-in from product and leadership, limited resources, and clear performance metrics that show impact on revenue. Can’t wait to incorporate these tips and strategies into our own partner program!”
Go if you like:
Check out the talks from Supernode 2022, and sign up for Crossbeam Insider to get access to the Supernode 2023 talks as soon as they’re available. Highlights include:
Startup Grind Global Conference (April 23-24, 2024 – Redwood City, CA)
Join 3,000 of startups and scale-ups for a conference with an emphasis on bringing humanity back into the focus of business.
Go if you like:
SaaS Connect (April 2023 – San Francisco, CA)
Attend the annual event for SaaS companies, platforms, API services, channels, distributors, resellers, app stores, and investors.
Go if you like:
Catalyst (August 2023 – Denver, Colorado)
Presented by Partnership Leaders, Catalyst is a multi-day event featuring lightning talks, workshops, and parties for the partnerships community.
Go if you like:
SaaStr Annual (September 2023 – SF Bay Area, CA)
The world’s biggest SaaS event is back for the 9th year in a row. Some call the conference the “SuperBowl” for SaaS companies and it includes three days of networking sessions, speakers, deep-dives, and workshops.
Go if you like:
YouTube videos
If you’re a visual learner, check out these educational YouTube videos:
Supernode
All Supernode 2022 videos are available on Youtube now. 2022 Speakers include Andreessen Horowitz’s Sarah Wang, Pandium’s Cristina Flaschen, Alloy’s Sara Du, and more.
Subscribe to Crossbeam Insider to get access to the Supernode 2023 videos as soon as they’re live in July 2023. 🎉 2023 talks include Drift’s Andy Cochran, RyderEcommerce’s Marco De Paulis, Chili Piper’s Alexis Petrichos and Nicolas Vandenberghe, and more.
Partner Insight
Hear interviews with partnership leaders from companies like Dropbox, Atlassian, Expedia, and more, hosted by Partner Insights CEO Roman Kirsanov.
Episode: Key lessons from launching and leading partnerships in Asana, Loom and Census with Sharrifah Lorenz.
Crossbeam Explains (a series)
Learn about partnership basics and more with the Crossbeam Explains series.
Learn:
APIs (series)
APIs, or application programming interfaces, are blocks of codes that act as messengers between different systems and serve as the basis for tech integrations. And considering that tech partnerships are all about tech integrations, understanding what APIs are and how they function is foundational knowledge for any partnerships newbie.
Learn:
The basics of SaaS
Chances are you’ve heard the word “SaaS” thrown around a lot recently either in the hiring or onboarding process of your new job. But are you 100% confident you know what it is and how SaaS really functions? (Even if your answer is “yes,” it can’t hurt to double check.)
Learn:
Structuring Partnerships
The structure of your partnership program can determine its efficiency, effectiveness, and revenue. Knowing how to do it well is a valuable asset for partnership newbies — even if your new company has their program up and running, you can suggest beneficial changes (and prove your chops at the same time).
Learn:
Additional resources
Partnerbase: research potential partners using the largest database of partnerships and Ecosystem-related information. Look up any company to see who their partners are and where you could fit in. Learn how to filter companies by “Location” and other fields in this edition of our Crossbeam Insider newsletter, and how to quickly identify which of your potential partners are on Crossbeam.
Crossbeam Academy: The Crossbeam Academy provides all Crossbeam users with a first of its kind Crossbeam Administrator Certification Exam. The academy covers the basics of getting started on Crossbeam, closing deals faster with partner data, and creating an internal culture advocating for ELG.
Crossbeam Template Library: Get free templates to help speed up your partner onboarding, integration development process, and more. Templates include a “partner tiering checklist”, “standard partnership agreement”, “warm intro emails”, “integration announcement”, and more.
Are you a hiring manager reading to onboard your new partnerships team member? Get your “Partnership Team Employee Onboarding & 30-60-90” template here.
