60: Navigating Partnerships in 2023 and Planning for 2024 - Will Taylor, Ben Wright

Will Taylor and Ben Wright discuss the challenges and opportunities in the partnership landscape for 2023 and beyond. They reflect on the unique challenges faced by businesses in 2023, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, high inflation rates, and changes in VC investment. They emphasize the importance of partnerships as a growth strategy and the need for CEOs and C-suite executives to fully understand and invest in the partnership motion.

Will and Ben provide insights and advice for partnership leaders as they plan for 2024. They stress the importance of setting realistic goals and metrics, based on a normalized baseline of revenue. 

They encourage partnership leaders to focus on efficiency and doing more with existing partners, rather than signing on new partners. They also highlight the value of co-marketing events and building a multi-partner ecosystem orchestration to create a defensible position in the market.

## Key Takeaways

- Partnership leaders should set realistic goals and metrics based on a normalized baseline of revenue.
- Efficiency and doing more with existing partners is key, rather than signing on new partners.
- Co-marketing events with partners can be a valuable strategy for driving revenue and engagement.
- Building a multi-partner ecosystem orchestration creates a defensible position in the market.

## Quotes

- "Partnerships is not as one-to-one as other channels. It requires patience and a mindset shift." - Ben
- "Partnerships should be a pillar of growth strategy, not just an experiment." - Will
- "Think like a bootstrapped company, even if you're funded. Focus on efficiency and doing more with less." - Ben
- "Partnerships are cyclical. Stay strong and ride out the tough times for long-term success." - Will

Transcript

Will Taylor: 0:05

Howdy partners and welcome to another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast, where we give you tactical insights so that you can do your job better. Today it is Ben and I and we are going to be talking about 2023 and what to look out for in 2024 and how of course you can start planning. Ben, how have you been?

Ben: 0:25

Yeah, it's been a, it's been a little bit of time, I think since the, the last time I was maybe on a, on a, podcast episode. Yeah. Working away mate. Lots to work yeah. apart from that, all good mate. Enjoyed the Near Bound Summit last week for those, some good. yeah, mate, looking forward to end of 2023, star 2024, which I think, you know, we'll be talking a little bit about on today's episode.

Will Taylor: 0:48

Yes, sir. Yeah, the summit was awesome. It was really cool to see the reception and also even more you know, non-partner tech and non-partner, people coming together. And I think it's, it's a sign of the times. It's. Showing for the struggles that people were having for, for 2023. But Ben, what's your, your overall perception of 2023? How's it felt and what do you think the unique challenges were?

Ben: 1:13

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think there's not many people that are gonna, that, that are gonna have, have, had, sorry, a gr like great, easy, well, not easy. Nothing's easy in business ever. Right? But like. I genuinely feel like this has probably been a really tough year for people, regardless of their role in B two B SaaS, and I think there's a lot of things that are kind of filtered into that. I think still of covid, unfortunately. I know it seems ages ago, but I think there was a lot of inflated growth in those times. And so companies were basing their growth on, on, you know, weird inflated numbers. And so I think we're still feeling the pain of that. Um, I think obviously that coupled with, you know, high inflation rates, macroeconomic stuff that's happening is just really impacting the entirety of SaaS. Plus now VC companies aren't. Of that VC firms, sorry, aren't necessarily rate that they did in previous years, which means now, you know, the priority is to build scalable, efficient businesses, which I think in SaaS we've maybe been a little bit to be honest with you, because there was this power that was being deployed across across companies. And so, yeah, I think broadly speaking, it's been a tough year. And that doesn't relate to. You know, partnership people. I think it goes across market and across sales and across of role, mate. So, yeah, that's my broad take on how I think this year has gone for, for B two B SaaS.

Will Taylor: 2:34

Yeah, it's been interesting and we talk of course a lot about the changing tides and it's so many different factors. But I also think that the silver lining is that it is a forcing function for organizations to run those, you know, efficient lean businesses. Because I have a, inkling that's the overfunded or hyper funded companies were burning cash at a rate that then made playbooks that people didn't really, you know, it did make them money, but it was also, you know, if you had the capital kind of thing. So those playbooks are hard to follow now.

Ben: 3:14

There's a well-known SaaS company out there. I won't mention any names, but they brought in brand new CRO who had this background in marketing. So, you know, came from a marketing background, spent hundreds of thousands in paid ads because they were like, this is what I'm used to. You know, this is what worked for every company I've been at so far. Spent like half a million dollars, right? And returned about 10 grand in, in in in revenue. so when you're thinking about like cost per lead for that, let's just use that in isolation, right? You take that bucket of 500 grand, that's a fully staffed partner team for an entire year. Do you know what I mean? So it's like when you actually start like breaking down. The logic of partnerships and even if we say it takes a year to even get like your first 10 grand of revenue, which isn't likely, but it can happen, right? Why would you not run that experiment of building a, a scalable, efficient part of your business instead of still having this mindset of like, it makes sense just to burn through millions and millions and millions of dollars in paid ads, right? So I think to your point, like these, these kind of tactics or strategies that have just been part and parcel of running a marketing team. I've really been scrutinized now. And these had an easy button of look every, every quarter we are gonna chuck million dollars in ads will get 1.5 back VCs are gonna be happy'cause we're showing growth. But actually if you break it down, like the cost per lead is wild. I think we've that to it not working at all, actually being negative. So, So, yeah, with you from like a growth tactics strategy perspective. I just think old ways of working are not working anymore.

Will Taylor: 4:51

Yeah. And I, I have a feeling that some people will think, well, it's not just the macroeconomic environment, it's. The culture, the just like changing evolution business because you know, when people were hitting the road and going door to door, that was much more common. And then, you know, call centers and calling definitely much more common. But now it's, it's this next wave, this next evolution of, you know, these channels that get saturated. And so you just mentioned this organization that could have spent that money on a partner program. Where do you think partnerships fall for the level of importance? Because, you know, we see a lot of data, especially from like Jay McBain who says, uh, you know, a large majority of CEOs are looking at ecosystem or partnerships as a strategy for, for growth. But it still feels like it's that smaller part of the strategy. More people are waking up to it. But what have you been seeing in conversations and also just research in, in the market right now?

Ben: 6:00

a good question. So I think, again, this is fresh on my mind, but I know G Tmm Partners just launched that study, right, where they basically said like, I think it. 65 or 70% of company surveyed said that they had a partner program of some of some description, which is again, a great sign, right? Like I'm not, I'd like to have seen the numbers of they done it last year in comparison to this year and how they shaped up, right? So you take that in isolation. A lot of companies have partner programs. I think there is still a lack of patience and a lack of education still as it pertains to partnerships, meaning that. As ACO of a company, you when, when you're considering doing a partnership program, typically either your competitors or somebody else in the market has got this partnership program. Somebody's reported, it's like a CrowdStrike. They did a billion dollars through the AWS marketplace, right? And so I'm ACEO sat there like we should freaking like we should do AWS, right? We should. We should go for it. We want a billion dollars in revenue. And there's so much that goes into that that I still think there's a lack of patience for CrowdStrike to get to a billion dollars in marketplace transactions. They'd have had to like really build that program up over a number of years. Put the right people in place, give them time, develop the relationships, invest in the technology. Right. And I still think that is fundamentally the missing link, which is again, it goes back to old way of doing things. You put money into the machine, you get a result outright. Partnerships is not as like one-to-one in the way that, like you can predict exactly, I'm gonna invest$150,000 in. A partnership person to come in and build my program out, I can expect a million dollars in the first year in terms of revenue. Right. And so I just think there's still that shift, mindset shift that needs to happen c-suite executives, that it's not gonna be an overnight success story. It's gonna take some time, and you need to have patience in order to reach that promised land of, of scalable revenue.

Will Taylor: 7:58

Yeah, that's interesting because for the thought that goes through my mind at that point is I wonder if there will be a repeatable Programmatic, you know, way that CEOs and boards can think about partnerships because partnerships is so broad. You know, there's channel, there's affiliates, there's reseller, there's, you know, all these different kinds. And there they all have their own different nuances. And even with the, like different markets and business models that all of these businesses will have I. I am skeptical that it will be this playbook type thing where you can just plug it in and then it works. I'm sure there's going to be some, uh, like potential baseline calculations that organizations can do, which I'm excited for, but I have a feeling that it'll be much more. Difficult. And I actually, I commented on LinkedIn. I forget which post it was, but I made a comment that partnerships has a unique challenge that marketing and sales doesn't, where it has this additional complexity to it. Because not only are you doing different programs in different partner programs across multiple partners, and there's so much variance in all of that that you don't necessarily have control in, but. It's also not as direct like marketing. You have the control, you control the metrics, and that's what feeds the, the engine. Same with sales. You know, you do this many calls and you have control over it, but

Ben: 9:32

Yeah, I think what you're spot on about as well is like not just the different partner types, adding randomness, let's say for, for a lack of a better word, but also the people involved and so. Again, you mentioned sales, right? Like if your sales team aren't on board with partnerships, they ain't gonna work. Right? Especially if you're going into like a motion where you are gonna be expected to co-sell and, and refer business each way. Um, don't just think it's the randomness of the, the motion, but also the fact that it does need a lot of people to buy in for it to be truly successful as well. Um, what we need to get to really is a. World where every CRO, every CEO understands and is fully invested in the partnership motion, has experienced running partner, partner programs and knows at least a little bit how they can best support and get everybody else on board, right? Like, and it's so tired. Like, I hate to say, you know, this, the line of everybody needs to buy in in the organization. But truly, like if you look at the best partnership programs in the world, and I'm talking like the Microsofts of the world. From the top down. Their CEO is saying, partners are the way that we do business. Part like Satya at Microsoft says it all the time, right? They are literally all in on their partner ecosystem. And so that trickles down, right? That trickles down across the organization. And so in a similar way like Snowflake in the ISV world, Okta, in the ISV world. Both of them are very vocal from the top down, that partners and ecosystem are a massive part of their business strategy. And so what you get there is just an unequivocal, this is the way that we do business. Instead of it being, it's an experiment.'cause I still think that's the way a lot of CEOs view it is. It's an experiment. It's like us chucking money into those paid ads, right? It's an experiment. Let's see what, see what works. It can't be viewed as that. It needs to be a pillar, a growth strategy that everybody's gonna buy into and you're gonna fully back. Because unless you do that. It just becomes this thing that nobody really invests in, nobody really believes in. And after a year, you're like, oh, we tried, it didn't work, you know, and then you kill it. It just, it just, it can't work like that, I don't think.

Will Taylor: 11:37

Yeah, and I get, I think I get why they would do it. One, there's the lack of education and experience with it, but then there's also the, the lack of that Equation. And the thought I, I had as well was like, maybe there's a chaos coefficient that needs to be put into any kind of forecasting for a partnerships program where it adds like this variance where you know, if you're wanting X amount, you need to account for YNZ on either side of, of that forecast. So that leads me to the, the idea around like the predictability and you know, we talked about just now getting buy-in from the CEO and probably the rest of the c-suite. What would you say partner leaders should be thinking about for the 2024 planning over the next month and a half, or I guess month with holidays? What do you think should be Let's say that number one priority to, you know, reduce the probability that they, they get let go, but also, of course, to increase the overall success of the program for the business. What's been on your mind for that?

Ben: 12:42

a good question, mate. It's like a, it's a pretty loaded question as well.'cause I think it depends on like where you've ended up, right? In terms of revenue, what, like, what your organization looks like. But I think, I think broadly speaking, just to be realistic, I think that there. Then you need to have as a partnership leader, just very clear, like, and, and reasonable goals and metrics that you want to hit in 2024. Like I think the other piece that I keep hearing is now a lot of organizations are being realistic about their growth targets. Like they've now set a baseline from this year and they are basing their revenue goals on this now. Pretty, I'd say normalized baseline. And so as a partnership leader, I'd be doing the same. I'd be realistic about your revenue goals. Um. promise too much. You know, track your, track, your revenue. Um, and again, I think I'd also be upfront like about what you need to hit that next growth stage, right? If you get pushback around the metrics that you've put forward, I, I'd be realistic around what you need from an investment perspective to push over the line and, and reach a higher level. So I think those two things together, like be realistic, don't, don't over promise. Um. kind of, you know, plan around what else you'd need to hit, you know, another level of growth.

Will Taylor: 13:59

Running like a bootstrap company will force you to look at efficiencies and not try and shoot for the moon and just like you were saying, not have overzealous goals that are likely unrealistic. And I would, I. Plead all partner leaders to have that firm direct conversation with their leadership as well, to talk about how less is more in the partnerships world, especially if you're either earlier stage or I would even say that, let's say your organization has a lot of partnerships that are already stood up, the Worst thing that you could do is confuse yourself and spread yourself thin by trying to just get more partners in the pipeline and in the funnel, and then maybe ignore the performers or mid performers that are already engaged because they're going to struggle just as much as you know every other business, and they're going to look to where there is value for their business and potential opportunities for revenue. That's one thing that I, I just, I keep talking about and keep thinking about even for myself where it's like, it, it's not about having more partners, it's about doing more with the existing partners that you have. Because if you're ha having existing partners, you probably haven't done all that you could do in building that ecosystem groundswell with them. So. That's, you know, if someone came to me right now and they said, what should I do for 2024? I would say, you know, look realistically at the resources that you have, if you can actually spend the amount of time that you would need to with new partners, then go get new partners. But if not, then look to double down with your existing partners. And I I am getting closer and closer to the story of the multi-partner ecosystem orchestration, where I want to hear that story from people in the market where they are partnering with multiple organizations and partnering with their partners, partners so that they can do the, you know, true near bound approach and build this ecosystem groundswell where they are the major players in the space. That's what I would want to see, and I have, I would place my bet on that being one of the things that helps a company continue to grow revenue, um, in this climate, but then also build such a good long-term, defensible position that your competitor will, you know, nine times outta 10 not be able to win as long as you're playing in that ecosystem. Because yeah, right now it's get defensible. Don't go on the attack.

Ben: 16:37

it's, I mean, like there's also just like. I think I'll go back to the point you made around like, don't just sign more partners. Like there's just certain things that I see people not doing that you can just do easily. Like the, the co-marketing piece is just put one co-marketing event on your calendar every month where you're just sitting down with your partner and running an event. Like one or two partners, to be honest with you. Right. Like as sense Spark at the moment we're doing, we're doing an event this month, end of this month with close CRM and instantly, and so we've leveraged two of our partners. Also they partner together, right? So all three of us partner and we're putting on an event on cold email, which fits all of our ICPs, which is salespeople, right? Like such an easy event. We pull from like we've got a 60,000 list, you know, CRM i's got a hundred thousand close's, got a hundred thousand, and so it's gone from a webinar that you can run, which is gonna have. Maybe, you know, 300 people attend to now having a thousand people attend. Do you know what I mean? And so it's like these little things that I just sometimes see in partner programs that are just easy, low hanging fruit. Um, the other thing I would, I would really say to your point, don't just sign more partners. Just do things that are actually gonna move the needle a little bit as well.

Will Taylor: 17:50

Yeah. And so I'm excited to, to see that. I hope those who take this advice are, are actioning it and going out in the market and doing it. And if you have been doing it or you're planning to do it. Reach out to me. I'd love to cover the story.'cause like I said, I, I want to see that multi-partner, Orchestration out in the market. And a good example that you know, was already in existence is SalesLoft Shift Paradigm Six Sense and Drift. They, at least at the time, had a really good partnership together between all of them. Where there was the agency, you know, there was the, the outreach tool. There was the ABM tool and of course like the, the chat bot tool. And they would sponsor events together. They would Go and, you know, be together so that when customers of one company come by to the booth, they can then talk to their partners, you know, perhaps all three of them. And I think the mindset is, if I was a, a partner manager at a tech company today is what if you. Your partners are the cool kids at the event that you go to, or the event that you throw, or the content that you're creating with an economy that has their attention spread so thin already everyone's, you know, stressed looking here and there in the, in the news at their KPIs that they're struggling with, and so on and so forth. They want to be immersed in something that is fun and actually aimed at helping them. And the more partners that you bring into your programs, the more educational and more valuable it will be. And so the way I like to think about it is like. I, I love the event analogy'cause it's in person and it, it's a lot easier to connect with.'cause we've all been at an event you want to go to. You know where the interesting booth is, where everyone is congregated around and you know, if you are orchestrating that with your prospects and your customers, then you'll be in a really good spot to close actual business. And you'll probably have More fun time doing it as well. So I wanna see more of that. I'm, I'm eager, I feel like it's gonna happen.

Ben: 19:58

Yep. Hundred percent. would say is like, people that have, that have got anxiety listening to this as well, like things like this are cyclical as well. And so I think even though times are tough at the moment and like, you know, I, I do think genuinely if you're able to ride this out and survive this period in tech, I think you'll be really well positioned for like, the years to come. Because I do think, you know, like everything is cyclical. Um. cyclical in the way that, to your point, that some of these saturated channels are, are gonna become unsaturated, right? Like, I don't necessarily believe in that, but what I do believe in is it's gonna become easier. I think there's gonna be more funding, all that type of stuff. So, um, yeah, I this says to this keep, keep strong so to speak. And I think, you know, the tide will turn eventually as well.

Will Taylor: 20:48

Absolutely. Okay. We are coming up on time. We will definitely continue this conversation on another episode. We always, of course, leave you with a tactical takeaway and let's, let's do that. Now. My tactical takeaway is to think about how you can do. More with the existing partners that you have today. Not necessarily more with less, but more with the partners that you have today and how you can partner with your partners. Partners. And the best way to do that is ask your partners, who else do you wanna partner with? Note down who is willing to partner with who. Make those introductions and then start coordinating something larger than your typical, you know, one-on-one webinar with one partner. Look to build that groundswell in your ecosystem by engaging your partners, partners.

Ben: 21:38

Yeah, and I think mine, I mean, along the same theme um, get in how you operate. I think in a similar way that every part of your organization is leaning down, doing more of, less, all that type of stuff. Um, partner program? Um, I to, to your point, will look at your existing book of business, who are your top partners? How can you double down? How can you generate additional revenue? Um, and your point, making use of your partner network co-marketing, always. Um, like I said, stay, stay strong as well. Stay strong for sure.

Will Taylor: 22:13

Amazing. Thank you everyone. That was another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast.