59: The Secret to Building a Successful Partnership Strategy - Katie Landaal

Katie Landaal of ZoomInfo joins Will Taylor and Tom Burgess to discuss the importance of partnerships as a main pillar of a business strategy. 

She emphasizes the need for partnerships to be included in the overall strategy and not treated as an afterthought. Katie highlights the role of the CFO in providing buy-in and financial support for partnership initiatives. 

She also emphasizes the importance of starting small, building strong relationships, and focusing on specific goals and metrics to measure success.  

**Key Takeaways:**

- Partnerships should be the main pillar of a business strategy to drive customer satisfaction and business growth.
- Getting buy-in from the CFO is crucial.
- Develop a business plan with financial projections, competitive analysis, and alignment with organizational goals.
- Start small, focus on quick wins, and build internal alliances to maintain buy-in.
- Document processes and build a solid foundation to ensure scalability and efficiency in partnership programs.

Chapters:

0:01:37 Importance of partnerships as a business strategy
0:04:32 Key stakeholders for implementing partnership strategy
0:06:51 Importance of getting CFO buy-in for partnerships
0:08:05 Tips for preparing a business plan for partnerships
0:10:19 Building projections and forecasting for partnership strategy
0:11:30 Start simple and show progress before expanding partnership program
0:12:05 The importance of telling a story and developing programs.
0:13:02 Start with non-revenue targets and build the framework.
0:14:04 Start with a few partners, perfect the relationship, then expand.
0:15:04 Consider if a partnership fits your ICP and goals.
0:16:34 Important milestones include influenced revenue, co-sell, and direct wins.
0:19:07 Build internal alliances and do an internal roadshow.
0:20:59 Start small and make it successful before expanding.
0:21:39 Partner with the product team for integration partnerships.
0:23:21 Align with marketing if pipeline is the focus.
0:24:37 Different types of partnerships and their uniqueness
0:25:13 Importance of customer satisfaction and referrals
0:26:08 Leveraging different teams to achieve success
0:26:41 Building a solid foundation and process
0:27:55 Importance of documenting and iterating processes

Transcript

Tom Burgess: 0:05

Howdy partners and welcome back to another glorious edition of the Howdy Partners Podcast, where we bring fun guests or ourselves on to talk about tactical takeaways in anything partnerships. I'm joined by Will and another special guest, but Will, how are you doing?

Will Taylor: 0:24

I am doing well. It's it's been busy times. Listeners of the podcast, you've probably heard the ad read for the Near Bound Summit. Shout out to the Bound Summit. We Been working hard at that, really looking forward to it. So it's been busy, but good. And I wouldn't wanna be anywhere else, so I cannot

Tom Burgess: 0:41

You, I know you guys have been putting a lot of work into that. You've almost reached the pun intended summit of your journey. Well that's good. I am It's late October. We've gotta get ready for Halloween with two kids tomorrow, and I think our special guest kind of gets that as well. But welcome to the podcast, Katie. how are you

Katie Landaal: 0:58

Good, How are you? And yes, I agree. Also getting ready for Halloween. We were just sharing about how our, we have two little ones and it's, we're in the weeds right now.

Tom Burgess: 1:08

It, there's like no better time than Halloween. It's fun. The parents eat every bit of kids' candy,

Katie Landaal: 1:14

Yep.

Tom Burgess: 1:15

although our four yearold would like to have some saying that. But back on topic. So today we brought Katie on to talk about the importance of partnerships as almost like a main pillar of your business strategy, which is you know, pretty important to have. But, so let's, let's kind of jump right into that. Katie, in your experience, what happens when partnerships is not one of the main pillars of your business strategy?

Katie Landaal: 1:37

Well it what you're seeing now, especially today, right? You're seeing partner being partnerships and partner being included in the main strategy, and that's really just because it's been left off the docket for so long. I think it's always been seen as kind of the. Island redheaded stepchild, like yeah, sure, throw whatever that sounds like a partnership, play, you know, whatever that looks like. And so, it's great to see it moving in that direction. It's funny'cause I've been doing partnerships and channel and distribution in the entire gamut for the last I. Almost 18 years now. And so it's pretty hilarious to see the way the evolution goes, right? Because before it wasn't really called the fanciness of partner ecosystem and so forth. But now it's, you know, the kind of main pillar of a lot of Businesses and so forth. And I I just, I love seeing that evolution'cause it's, I don't have to fight nearly as much anymore for it, which is great. I think if it's missing it's just really detrimental to be honest. It's a huge miss for any organization. It's. If you truly care about your customers, you wanna make sure that they're doing everything that they can to better their own businesses. And in order to do that, they have to have the right tech stack. And it's not always gonna be one and done. Right. We all know this is why we call it the step tech stack. There's multiples that need to come into The picture. And so having partnerships as your main strategy is extremely important, especially for retention efforts, you know, branding efforts, customer satisfaction, and all of the above. So I think it's it's pretty critical for your business,

Tom Burgess: 3:18

It's like the idea of you can't, if you build it right from a tech stack standpoint, if you pull one brick out, the whole house is gonna fall.

Katie Landaal: 3:24

right?

Tom Burgess: 3:25

I think that's nothing new. And, and it once again, refreshing to know that one, we all All think that we're on this kind of like cheerleader island. We've gotta have our own big voices, but also your experience. Like that's, that's pretty insane going back from 18 years. So, you know, on the idea of, of making it a main business strategy, I. Walk me through the steps. And it doesn't need to be anything crazy, but like high level how, let's talk about organizations that don't have this as one of the main pillars. How do you get it to be a main pillar and who are some of the key stakeholders that you need to include to make sure that you have the people that need to be listening?

Katie Landaal: 4:03

Yeah. So, the biggest thing here is you really wanna have good relationships cross-functionally, both with leaders as well as either peers or those that are, you know, mid-level. Sometimes VP Depending that are also gonna be champions of your partner kind of initiative and idea. The biggest person in, at least in my experience and in my opinion, that you really have to Get that buy-in from is your CFO. So most of the time your chief financial officer, right? They control the books, they control where we spend money, they control budget, all of the things. And so if you do not have that person in your corner as far as willing to make the investment into these types of partner strategies, especially that you're trying to build or put in within your organization. You're just not gonna get anywhere, right? Like it's just gonna be this constant trying to, you know, run in quicksand. And and so for me that's always been kind of a starting point where as long as I have his buy-in, or her buy-in, I. And they have, they've given me the, the financials to build it. Then I can go off running and go do it. On top of that, it also helps with all of the rest of either the C-suite or those mid-market levels that, or I'm sorry, mid management levels, that essentially they listen to whatever the CFO says, right? I mean, of course they listen to anything that all of the c-suite says, but CFO usually tends to have a much heavier Impact because again, they're the money, right? Like money talks So, I just, I think it's, that's always where I suggest to start and it's really pitch your business as a business and have that business plan.

Will Taylor: 5:54

That's interesting. I don't know if the viewers of the podcast, they were probably watching you speak, but they probably didn't see Tom's reaction and my reaction where we're like, oh, interesting. Because, you know, my first thought, Historically has been probably like the CEO and, you know, like a, a super champion, probably like the CMO or marketing leadership.'cause they just get it a little bit easier or like the, they're already kind of in that mindset. But I like that approach of focusing on the CFO because they're probably like the, the least partner minded already. And so if you can get their buy-in, then you'll get anyone's buy-in. And so. I'm curious what you would say to anyone who hears that and then they go, great. I. I want to now go and talk to my CFO. How do I talk to them? What's the language that they speak? What kind of things should I have prepared? What would you advise them on to prepare for that conversation and maybe have that frame shift that they may be in currently to then have that conversation effectively.

Katie Landaal: 6:51

Yeah, so kind of mentioning before, so it's usually easier to buy, get your CEOs, buy-in your CMOs, buy-in.'cause most of the time they at least get it for the most part, right? This is basic business 1 0 1. It's. Business development. Right. And. They're, it's much easier for them to understand it, right? When you're talking to the CFO, they're gonna want to know numbers. They wanna know what the ROI is gonna be. They wanna know, you know, why is it important to invest, right? The organization's budget against this strategy because at the end of the day, you're really building a business within a business, right? So you're coming up with an entire business plan to basically say, if you allow me to have this amount of money. This is where, what I'm projecting on basically the good, better, best model, which is always a model that I try to implore I tell everybody to do. If you ever go to c-suite, you never wanna just say one number or one talk track. You always wanna have a good, better, best, because what's gonna happen is, is let's say I asked for 5 million for my best plan, they're gonna say, okay, well if I only give you 1 million, what are, what can you do? So that's where you do the di and then anything in between. And that's where you kind of do the different levels. So you just say, Hey, right, with the different funding, this is kind of where it shifts and this is where you know it, it can move into, and this is what it impacts essentially. Sometimes it's not easy, right? To really. Put it all in financial planning and business modeling and so forth. And so you have that as a part of, you know, these assumptions and trajectory goals where you're saying, you know, these are the strategies. This is why I. You know, I need the investment and how I'm gonna use that investment. And oh, by the way, here's what maybe our competitors are doing. Here's what, you know, I'm seeing out in the market. Here's some latest stats from folks like Forrester and Gartner and so forth. And so that really brings that story back home. So it's not just about the numbers, it is also about the big picture and kind of how it affects throughout the organization and, and why you need it and what you need to do.

Tom Burgess: 9:11

Yeah. The idea of of making strategic betts towards. One I love looking at the competitive landscape if your competitors are doing it. It kind of makes it a no-brainer. But more importantly, like there's a lot of things that will bubble up, whether it's you, you're getting you're getting some early feedback from people that are in the partnership space that are like, oh, why don't you have a partnership program? And it's like the idea of starting small and building fast when you're doing it right in that, in that conversation. And I'm sure a lot of that fits into the model where you're building this business plan and it's like, well, we're getting a lot of feedback already that. We have the acumen to do it and putting together price points based on your product. Everything else, it, it makes total sense. So. Let's kind of fast forward now let's say you've got the buy-in although I guess we could talk about really quickly, I do want to hear if you've got like a few tips or just the idea of like putting this business plan together. Like what are the pillars around that? You know, you talked about the financial side and being able to forecast, but talk to me a little bit more about like the landscape, like how are you putting together the projections of like who you're going after, like why that's important and how that affects your business.

Katie Landaal: 10:19

Yeah, so there's a couple ways that you wanna look at it so that, again, you gotta remember this is a business plan that you're basically showing all aspects of the business obvious. Obviously the CFO always pays more attention to numbers. But you're gonna be using this. Same top track with the rest of the C-suite or your superiors, and you wanna make sure that you have everything covered. So that includes, you know, your processes and what needs to happen there, and what type of investment you may need. Cross-functionally. It also needs to include, you know, what do those marketing activities look like? What do the sales activities look like? You know, are you focused in certain pockets of your customers? Is it all customers? Right? You have to kind of tell the story of Where you're, where you're starting and where you're going. And so that's where it's kind of just really important as far as knowing exactly what you're doing and the good, better, best. Right. And I always tell people too, when you're starting to develop any type of partnership program, or if even you're coming into one that maybe hasn't matured yet, or whatever the case may be. Always start simple, knock it out of the park, then add to the program. Don't try to boil the ocean, because then what happens is you're spinning your wheels in so many different directions, you're not really getting momentum, and that's the most important thing, especially to continue to get that investment because you wanna be showing, Hey, my assumptions were either right or they were wrong. It could be wrong in a good way, meaning you, you superseded what you were claiming was gonna happen and or if it's under, there's ways that you can show, well, it's because we assumed this, this, and this, and only this, this, you know, and not this happened. Right? So you have to be able to tell that story and then continue to tell that story as you're developing all of the different programs that you wanna do.

Tom Burgess: 12:14

Yeah. And I, I love the idea of, of simplifying and, and will, it reminds me of a conversation. I can't remember who it was with, but it, so I'm, I'm almost coming up on a year after starting our solutions program with channel partners and. I completely agree, especially when you're building something net new or you're coming into, you know, let's just say an immature partner program that hasn't been around for that long. It's almost the idea of starting with non-revenue targets. And I, I know that's kind of the subverse of what you're talking about here, but the I, you've gotta build and so like. Making sure that you have the proper PRM or tech in place, making sure that you have the proper partner journey, whether it's like enablement pieces, understanding the, the go-to-market strategies, et cetera. And to me it's like, it's less about how much can I squeeze outta my partners, because you don't even have'em yet in some scenarios. But it's like, how can I build the framework? Of the strategy and make sure that there's no leaky buy. So it's super process development. It's super process development oriented. It's super operational. It's getting that internal buy-in and then starting to build those revenue metrics around it.

Katie Landaal: 13:19

I would say all of the above. Absolutely. I think the biggest place that you also can see immediate success is if you're getting those champions internally. They're gonna help you pump that message even more. So. And I always say too, even just starting simple, start with a few, a handful of partners, or start with one or two, right? Really perfect the relationship. Perfect the playbook. Perfect. You know what it could ultimately look like. Like if you want a, a super strategic, very integrated partnership with somebody that's just completely changed the route of your business. Start with one or two, make it happen, right? And then Brinson repeat elsewhere.

Tom Burgess: 14:04

Yeah.

Katie Landaal: 14:04

But don't try to do it with 10 at once, because again, you're just gonna be, you know, spinning your wheels and not really focusing in the areas that you should be focused in. Now, larger organizations, it gets hard, right? Because instead of you controlling who you wanna work with and focus on. You're getting approached by hundreds, if not thousands, of you know, companies that want to partner with you in some way, shape, or form. And so in that instance, you wanna make sure that, again, you're getting very down to the nitty gritty of, does this fit my ICP? Is this gonna make a tangible difference to my product? Like if it's a product integration, for example. Is it gonna improve my customer satisfaction? Is it going to project my brand in a bigger, better way? You have to kind of look at all of the different facets to really know, is this a good fit or not? Right? Is it a good rating scale or not? Most of the time, anybody who is smaller than you, you're gonna get far. More done right? Anybody that's bigger than you, it's all, the work is more on you because you're gonna have to get all this rocking and rolling on your own. So it definitely is a push pull thing. And then equal sizes, obviously you would hope the ultimate relationship is where it's pretty, even on both sides as far as effort goes and things like that. But you know, again, rule of thumb is, is just really make sure that you're getting into A good relationship with a partner and look at it as in the beginning stages you're kind of dating, testing the waters, figuring out what this looks like, and then before you really, you know, pop the question and get married, you already know kind of what the long-term trajectory is. You know what your long-term roadmap is, you know what's working and it's not working, and you guys are just, you know, off to the races. And that, that's where you see the most successful partnerships at the end of the day.

Tom Burgess: 15:59

Love it. So I think we've covered at least like kinda the main chunk there, which is the business plan is everything, but also just the idea of like seeing the forest through the trees, being able to focus simpl, simplified approach first. Now let's flip it. Talk to me a little bit about, so the business now sees this as a main pillar. I wanna understand a little bit more about what the ongoing maintenance looks like, and, and we kind of understand that, right? Like you're gonna continue to scale, continue to grow, but like, at least to you, what are some of those important milestones once you get buy-in to continue to show and get more investment and, and more opportunity?

Katie Landaal: 16:34

Yeah, so it all depends on the KPIs of your organization, and it's all a little different for everyone. And partnerships, you know, obviously the most common are what you would call influenced revenue, which includes any type of revenue that. Has to do with a partner in any way. So it's from them, it's with them. It's you know, part like partner marketed together, whatever that looks like, right? That's your influenced revenue and you can attribute that as almost like a campaign within marketing. Then when you start to go down funnel, you start to talk about more the co-sell motion or having AEs ams get together and talk about those common customers. And so forth. And that's where you're starting to get a little bit more of that mid-level, which is really helpful. And that's where you wanna start to see real wins in the partnership because you can show this is why it's working and this is, you know, this is why we're doubling down in this area. And then obviously bottom of funnel, right? Those are all the direct wins that you're getting. Those are where customers are just, I wouldn't have bought this unless you had this partnership, if that's a tech right. Or if it's, you know, some sort of like Ingenious, you know, go to market motion. You've seen some pretty awesome ones out there. A lot of folks, customers would even give feedback in some instances telling you like, this was a game changer for me in my business, or whatever that looks like. And then like, you know, there's other KPIs that you can always look at. So there's, you know, in, you know, integration adoption for tech technology partners. Integration, usability and adoption. There's customer satisfaction. There's, you know, you know, consumption. When it comes to how many customers are actually utilizing the partnership in some way, shape, or form, is it through the tech integration itself or is it because they're deeply integrated within their business? You know, it all, again, stems back from What does your organization really focus on? Is it just about the revenue or are they really hanging their hats on pipeline generation, for example? Are they hanging their hats on sales activities and marketing activities? Those are all things that you can consider as wins. And I always say get quick wins. To help continue the investment and the interest and then continue to build the big wins, the small wins, the medium wins, right? Short term, medium term, and long-term wins is all super critical to the way that you're presented and how partnerships are seen within the organization.

Will Taylor: 19:07

That's, that's so interesting. So I, a question popped in my mind, and I don't know if this is a curve ball, but I'm thinking around like If I'm, if I got the buy-in from my CFO and then now I'm looking to scale that buy-in, or there's like some initial successes and I'm looking to maintain the buy-in internally. I only have so much time, and let's say the KPI is spread relatively equally across pipeline and revenue generation, should I build internal alliances with Sales, marketing or success. And the one caveat I'll layer in there is if success isn't bought in and I'm not able to give to my partners, then they're likely not going to give back to me. And I've like kind of struggled with this thinking through what's the, the right plan? Like should I spend more time with the success team? Am I not spending enough time there? I'm curious about your thoughts on, you know, strapped for time and resources. Where would you focus your efforts to maintain that? Buy-in.

Katie Landaal: 20:07

So I actually have this going on right now and one of the programs that we're kind of incubating and, and developing within our partner ecosystem, and what I've found the most successful is you really start small. So start with a specific territory or specific team that you partner with, all the way from New Biz through CSM, depending on obviously the relationship and what you're looking for out of the partnership. Get champions internally to say, Hey, this is the best. Partnership. I've worked with them. They're so great. They helped me with X, Y, Z. You know, I never would've closed this deal without them, or I would've never gotten the renewal without them. You know, whatever that talk track is. You start small, make it successful, make it repeatable, and then you can start building out, you know, from that team internally and then going, you know, external. What I always like to say is always do a also an internal Roadshow. So it's essentially you wanna connect with all those in individual pods or individual sales leaders, CSM leaders, SDR leaders, everybody within the gamut, including marketing teams as well, and really continue to evangelize what's going on. Where you need their support, successes, failures, all the things, right? You're almost kind of constantly on this campaign trail to make sure, A, that you're not losing visibility, and B, you're getting more and more people to be bought in to what it is that you're trying to achieve in the strategy that you're really putting out against your organization. Hopefully.

Tom Burgess: 21:41

No, that's, that's spot on. Okay. So as we start to wrap up here one, one of the last pieces be before getting to the tactical takeaway is want your opinionated thought here. Once that foundation is set, what teams should be engaged first? So like the idea of, of like, okay, got the buy-in, where do you go first? And, and that's most likely an internal team question, but I want to get your thought process there.

Katie Landaal: 22:08

Well, it depends on the type of partnership we're talking about, right? So if we're talking about maybe some sort of partner integration, which then creates, you know, more of a strategic partnership because now you're co-selling and then you have cut Mutual customers using both your products and things like that. In that instance, you prob you wanna first and foremost partner with the product team by far. You wanna be shoulder to shoulder with them, you wanna make sure that you're on their roadmap as well, right? Because we all know product teams, engineering teams, development teams are always kind of off in their own silo, and most of the time you see how the roadmap is working against the rest of the organization, and shouldn't say against the organization, but working You know, against those plans of the Russell organization, but at the same time, they're almost in their own vacuum and silo. So they're a really critical piece because if you develop a partnership and make all these promises, or make all these plans and a roadmap of what that integration. Or strategic partnership looks like between both of your systems and the product team is not on board and they don't even have it on their roadmap, you're dead in the water. Right? Like there's just, there's nothing you can do until you get their buy-in most of the time. Then everything falls. After that. Because as long as you have their buy-in, as long as you're on their roadmap, it's coming as a feature no matter what. Or that integration is coming no matter what. And so marketing and sales is gonna wanna fall behind that because just like any new feature that maybe you're releasing within your product they're marketing it, they're selling it, they're right, like it's all a part of the go to market motion. So I always say with integration partners or those types of strategic partners. Hundred percent be shoulder to shoulder with your product team. If it's just sales partners where you're just doing, you know, referrals and co-sell and you're doing, you know, go to market. Things together with marketing and so forth. Again, it all goes back to your KPIs. Like if a, if pipeline is most important, or you as a team are, are bringing in the most pipeline for the rest of the go to market team, you obviously really wanna align with marketing.'cause that's also marketing's focus, right? So you wanna make sure that you're. Doing the same things and if not, at least following the same processes or the same flows that they're doing so that you're still seeing that return on all the work that you've been doing. And then solutions and services partners.'cause obviously we talk about the different types. Those ones are unique. It all depends on the customer. It depends on the scenario, it depends on the relationship that you have. Either it's with the Big six or even mid-market, or even the small consultancy firms, right? It's very, very unique per those partnerships. And so you have to just figure out like, is this more of a product thing? Is this more of a, you know, co-sell thing? Is this more of a. You know, we're just bringing each other into the deals. You know, what does that relationship look like and how, and what do I want out of it? Sometimes it's just about customer satisfaction. So if you're passing somebody along and you say, Hey, you know, customer, we don't personally do this. However, we have a partner that does, we would love to refer you to them. Right? That customer satisfaction score usually will go up. In some way, shape, shape or form, right? And make your adoption better and, and, and, and, and, right? So in that instance, those are the times that you wanna obviously focus on the CSM teams and make sure that they understand that they have these other levers that they can pull to make sure that they're not only reaching their KPIs, but it helps the partner team reach theirs as well. So you always kind of wanna take a little bit from each of the teams. And then, you know, you're kind of compiling that together in your own organization to show, hey, these are the successes and, and not,

Tom Burgess: 26:08

Yeah. And it's funny, there's just one quick point there. The, let's go back to the question. It's like, who do you go to first? Because you'll notice that Katie mentioned Several teams in there that are uber important, no matter the partner organization, to build strong relationships at some point in that partner journey. So, very good, Katie. Alright. Now we ask this, this question to all guests that come on the show. In your, in your opinion, we are asking for one tactical takeaway. So one tangible piece of advice that the audience can, you know, act on pretty, pretty immediately. What would that be and why?

Katie Landaal: 26:41

Oh my gosh. Tactically, I would say always building your foundation first. So after you've built your business plan and you know where your priorities are and where you wanna start, build very solid process in place. And your you know, your tech stack foundation essentially. So that you can run against those priorities and so forth. The worst thing that you could do for yourself is not have a solid foundation or process upfront. So then you have all this manual work. It's not attributable anywhere. It just falls flat because it's just too much. For you to do on your own. So as long as you know you can get that, buy-in as long as you can get that budget right, this goes back to the CFO. You can spend the money on the things you know are gonna help you not only start the plan, but also grow the plan long term.

Tom Burgess: 27:34

Yeah, love it. I plus won that like, foundation is key. The process must come from a little bit of, of scar tissue from partner operations, but it, it can't tell you enough how critical it is to start there because then you're not ripping down, like I said, you're not ripping down a house in a year, you're building to it. So. Awesome. And will any final thoughts?

Will Taylor: 27:55

The only thing going through my mind is I love a nuanced answer and I am also so focused on like, document the process so that you know you can iterate on it and make it easier for yourself. Because if you're just doing it and. Not even trying to think about how can I make this more efficient? Then you're gonna be in a bad position in the future. So I love that point of build the process, you know, document it, do it, but then scale it from there and then you'll be successful.

Tom Burgess: 28:23

Love it. Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us. This was an awesome episode. We hope our audience took at least one takeaway. You're crazy if you only got one takeaway to be honest. But we appreciate you having, having you on On and we will catch you next time on another episode of Howdy Partners.