Nearbound demands adjustments to RevOps processes and solutions. At the Nearbound Summit, Cindy Zu & Graham Younger will show you how to get it right without breaking everything.

It’s all about the people

Tom Slocum, CEO & Founder at The SD Lab, shares why he is so excited to see the market adopt a nearbound mindset in our recent article, The State of Sales:

What excites me about nearbound is I see that the future of selling is all about the people. We had the one percenters, top sellers doing that model in the shadows for so long, but now it’s amplified across the board.

When you look at that evolution, you’re bringing in nearbound. You’re activating partners, you’re diving into the community. Scott Leese talks about GoToNetwork and what he’s doing within GTM United is exactly of that nature, and it shortens their deal cycles.

Let’s be real. The point of the nearbound and the real point of partners and warm intros is it shortens sales cycles. It builds trust and even gets you bigger deal sizes.

Because there’s credibility. You’ve come in with an intro. Somebody’s vouched for you at the end of the day. Word of mouth has always been a thing—it’s just now even more amplified through the community.

We need to (un)learn a thing or two

Companies have a lot to (un)learn when it comes to using nearbound. Here are the downfalls the experts say Sales teams need to avoid, and what to do instead:

• Don’t preach the same message. Cut through the noise and differentiate your company by letting buyers and customers
  hear from people just like them
  

• Don’t cling to old strategies. Show leadership, like CROs, how inbound and outbound are failing, and pitch nearbound as the key solution

• Don’t use outbound to go for all those validation points and quick wins. Instead,
  layer nearbound into your strategy to build actual relationships
  

• Don’t listen to the haters, especially those who are close-minded to the ways the market is evolving
  

• Don’t micromanage. Trust your team, let them experiment, and let them make mistakes; they are the ones on the front lines
  

The Enshittification Phenomenon

Image source: pluralistic.net

Back in January, blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow coined the term
Enshittification
to describe when platforms slowly (and painfully) turn to 💩.

Doctorow explains that this typically happens in four phases:

1. First, platforms are good to their users

2. Then, they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers

3. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves

4. Then, they die

We’ve seen it time and time again: Facebook becoming nothing but targeted ads, Netflix banning long-distance users on your account, Twitter...well...being Twitter.

But what causes platforms to shoot themselves in the foot?

Doctorow explains that enshittification is "a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a ’two-sided market,’ where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holding each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them."

So, how can we, the ones building platforms for our buyers (who also happen to be sellers, more often than not) avoid the enshittification phenomenon? By approaching it through a customer-centric, nearbound mindset:

• "Value" should always equal "customer experience."

• Instead of buyers and sellers holding each other hostage, they should work together to create solutions.

• Give to get. If partners receive value, they will give it back tenfold. If they think you’re out for yourself, then they will respond in kind.
  

• Instead of slowly chipping away at what the customers get, give them more. Make them your partners and biggest champions to help break into new markets.
  

If you build it, they will come...right?

Unfortunately, it takes a little more than building a partnership to hit a revenue home run.

Big thanks to Bryan Williams for the laugh!

Stuff you don’t want to miss!

• Join the official Nearbound Summit community brought to you by Partnership Leaders —
  Partnership leaders’ goal is to connect people interested in learning about partnerships around the world.
  

• October 18th —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 1):
  How to Fix Your Broken Partner Program—
  Learn how to fix the root cause of your partner program’s biggest challenges.
  

• October 25th —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 2): How to Prioritize the RIGHT Partners— Learn how to make sure you’re investing your (limited) resources in partners that will generate a meaningful.
  

• November 1st —Firneo Partner Strategy Forum (Day 3): How to Get Executive Buy-In for Partnerships—
  Learn how to secure resources & support from key stakeholders that are critical to partnership success.
  

• November 6th-9th —Nearbound Summit 2023—
  The future of GTM is Nearbound. Join us for the biggest-ever remote experience in GTM where B2B leaders across departments unite to share how they’re winning with Nearbound strategies and tactics.
  

• November 16th —Elevate Your Presale GTM with Tech Partners— Learn from industry experts like Kelly Sarabyn (HubSpot), Jared Fuller (nearbound.com
  and Reveal), Sunir Shah (AppBind), and Alexander Buckles (Forecastable). Evolve your GTM strategy with tech partners.
  

• November 17th —Mastering Partnerships Strategy— Registration is now open! Learn how to diagnose and solve your partner program’s biggest challenges from the world’s top partnership leaders. Use the code "NEARBOUND".
  

• April 19th-20th –SaaS Connect 2023–
  It’s that time of year again! Get your spot early for the 11th annual partnership conference in San Francisco, hosted by Cloud Software Association.
  

Everyone is going to the Summit!

Nearbound is relevant to every company size, stage, and vertical!

Professionals from Adobe, G2, Clari, SAP, HubSpot, fullstory, 6Sense, Onflow, LinkedIn, and more are already signed up! Are you?