Partner Involvement in Sales and Marketing: What Could Go Wrong?

Go ahead, put all of BD on the shoulders of your most expensive asset. What could possible go wrong? 

In this episode, John and Mark explore the pros and cons of partner involvement in business development. They look at the benefits and drawbacks of a firm partner's role in both marketing and sales. Identify actionable strategies for helping your firm's partners engage in the right kind of business development efforts.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome + Listener shoutouts
03:18 Episode Rundown
04:49 Marketing and Sales Continuum
05:16 Pros of Partner Involvement in Marketing
08:39 Cons of Partner Involvement in Marketing
13:12 Pros of Partner Involvement in Sales
18:01 Cons of Partner Involvement in Sales
27:31 What Good Look Like
30:33 Rapid Fire: Who's the Bottleneck?
35:16 Takeaways and Conclusion

Share your feedback in our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8V9T6Z7

Transcript

John 0:00

The best business development strategy. Put your most expensive overscheduled person in charge of all new business. What could go wrong? Let's have a podcast. All right everybody. Welcome to Breaking Biz Dev, the podcast that beats up, breaks down and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. I'm John. He's Mark, and we have an awesome, awesome topic to explore today, the pros and cons of partner involvement in business development. Mark, how you doing?

Mark 0:52

I am good, John. And you know, just right up front, John, we, we, we love, we love the partners, the principals we love, you know, they are, they are good folks. And we're not, we're not here to roast all those folks. But, I think yeah, but we might, we might get'em a little toasty.

John 1:10

We'll, we'll toast them up a little bit, you know, just turn, turn up the heat just a little bit just to keep, keep these folks in check, right?

Mark 1:17

yeah.

John 1:18

Um, no, I'm, I'm excited about this one. But before we do that, I just wanna give a couple listener shout outs. So, on LinkedIn from time to time, you know, folks will post about breaking biz dev and an episode that has really kind of caught their eye. And I just wanted to kind of shout out a couple people. So Collier Ward, he posted, about our storytelling frameworks episode. So, he found some value in that. And I think if you are a doer seller and in a position to do business development and you want to incorporate more storytelling, go check out that episode. Collier got some value add of out of it, and you can too.

Mark 1:57

yeah, yeah.

John 1:59

Uh, Sagon Ano is, someone else who posted and, uh, on LinkedIn, and he says that the Breaking Biz Dev podcast is like civil engineering sales 1 0 1. So I thought that was a really cool, kind of shout out from him and saying that it helped him kind of understand business development a little bit better.

Mark 2:20

Good. I, I, yeah. I think that was a great comment thanks to both. I tend to think we're operating more at a 200 level, John, but I I appreciate that. Um,

John 2:29

well, if folks find it easy and can, can learn from it if we're making complex topics simple, that's that's great.

Mark 2:34

point. Oh, maybe the 200 to 300 level stuff comes when they actually like, you know, send us an email and we're like, Hey, all right. Show us the 200 level stuff. And we're like, okay, cool. Here we go, let's go. so maybe that's the 200 level stuff. So yeah. Thanks to, thanks to both. Sure. Anytime any listener out there is excited about what we're doing and likes to interact and repost stuff or whatever else, that's great. Right. It's, it's, I think we, we've got a, a growing number of listeners. Out there, some of whom are just kind of like in the shadows, but other people like to share it. And you know, I will say if you've come, come across something that's of interest, go ahead

John 3:09

us know.

Mark 3:10

Yeah. Let us know. Share it. That's we're, we're good there. So, so today's episode, why don't you, why don't you give us the intro on that one?

John 3:18

Our topic de jour for your listening pleasure today will be partner involvement in sales and marketing. We're gonna just kind of chime in on what good looks like, sprinkle in some personal experiences here and there. it should be a fun time.

Mark 3:35

Yeah. and I know there's something behind this, John. I know there's a,

John 3:39

Well, a a, a few months ago I went to the Association for Accounting Marketing Summit in Phoenix, and it was a great time. Lots of podcast content was recorded on the showroom floor. but there was one recurring theme that just kept bubbling up from these, um, these accounting marketers. And it was. Uh, we've got all these great ideas and you know, we try to execute, but execution falls flat because partners are bottlenecks in this operation. And, so that is, it was enough of a pattern for kind of us to bring it up in one of our planning meetings and saying, Hey, let's do an episode around it.

Mark 4:19

Yeah, totally. so that comment, right? They're a, they're a bottleneck. We will touch on that, but before everybody starts rolling their eyes and saying, oh my God, I, this is, it's, you're right. It's terrible. Partners and principals and others, and, you know, the senior team folks, you know, getting their meddling hands into marketing and sales. It's all bad. It's not. Let's talk about the good stuff, right? Let's talk about some pros first. So partner involvement in marketing specifically, what are some of the good elements of that.

John 4:49

Yeah. So let's, let's, uh, bring out our marketing and sales continuum. Our old trustee device that we use from time to time.

Mark 4:57

Yeah.

John 4:58

So these would all be living in that one to two to three end of the spectrum that focuses on marketing, led, marketing supported. Some activities, could be marketing led and sales supported. So that's the area of, that we're talking about here.

Mark 5:14

Yep. Makes sense.

John 5:16

I would say some of the pros of partner involvement in marketing is, authenticity with their thought leadership. So if you can have. A partner who has a lot of real world expertise, maybe get behind a microphone and a camera, or go out on a speaking tour. or if you can get them to put pen to paper and pen and a blog post or something, then you know that marketing content becomes much more relevant and relatable to, your target audience. So that's one.

Mark 5:48

Good.

John 5:49

another, bullet point we have here in terms of kinda the pros of partner involvement in marketing is it's a credibility booster. So if you've got folks that are in the most senior levels of your organization talking about the topics that are relevant to your target audience, then people tend to pay more attention than if it was maybe an intern or an associate level talking about that kind of

Mark 6:11

Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. Makes sense.

John 6:15

You know, partners do have a lot of expertise. If they have a lot of experience, in the industry, then, you know, they would naturally have insight into how the industry operates, especially if they've, you know, worked with a number of different clients that look like you. Then Presumably they know what the market actually cares about. You know, there is a level of gut instinct or intuition from understanding the industry that they can bring out. so that would be, I guess, another pro of partner involvement.

Mark 6:46

Yeah. That you're, you're exactly right. And, and I think that, that one, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lob out kind of a, a, a recent episode where we talked about empathy, right? So the deep industry insight. I'm gonna loosely hopefully connect that to your partner is able to articulate some amount of empathy, you know. Customer, client insight. that is, you know, yeah, I've kind of walked a mile in their shoes'cause I've worked with them for so long and I know them well. So, yeah, I like that.

John 7:17

Yeah. Another, um. moving down the list here. Another pro for, partner involvement in marketing. And this, again, this leans on their experience. This leans on their expertise in working with clients, but they can be a source of stories and we know the important, of storytelling and business development. We talked about, you know, we had a listener comment about that episode earlier. but if you can. Extract more stories from the partners who have all that experience. That's content gold right there. That's marketing gold.

Mark 7:48

Agreed.

John 7:50

and then finally, when partners are invested in marketing and when they are involved in marketing. Things can move. Budget gets unlocked, without partner involvement, it can be a steep hill to climb and kind of trying to unlock budget for marketing, especially if it's seen as a cost center and not an investment.

Mark 8:11

Yeah, totally. and that's a critical point. And, and that, you know, there's a, corollary to that pro, which is immediately, you know, apparent.'cause we're gonna get to the cons next, John. We'll get to the bad stuff, but yeah, that last one, unlocking budget. Well, guess what? If the partner isn't involved, you're not gonna get the budget. Right. So that's the corollary to that last one. Just to tee off the cons thing. So you did the good news. Let's hear the bad news, John.

John 8:39

All right. Alright, so we talked about bottlenecks, in the past, and that's going to be a common theme here, foreshadowing. I would say the first con on this list, inconsistent participation. So, and I've experienced this frequently with many different partners, people that sit in ownership seats, you know, they're hot for two weeks. They hit deadlines and everything, and then they vanish. Until we need more leads.

Mark 9:06

They start banging their fist on the, you know, something, the,

John 9:09

Where are the leads? Come on, we're ready to sell.

Mark 9:13

Yeah. Nice. Cue the eye roll. Yeah.

John 9:16

oh geez. Where were you two weeks ago? When I was, when? Yeah. So, uh, that's definitely one, again, kind of like a byproduct of that is slow content velocity. So, you know, if you're. Trying to hit a certain publication schedule. We know the importance of consistency in marketing, but if it takes 12 weeks for a partner to write a blog post, then you're not really getting the throughput You need to create the consistency that you need to build familiarity and trust. slow content velocity.

Mark 9:54

Yep, yep. Makes sense.

John 9:56

Partners also want to sound smart instead of being helpful. So a lot of the times, you know, we, we talked about this on another episode a little bit, that empathy gap, sometimes partners involvement in marketing can sound a little bit egotistical, a little bit more narcissistic

Mark 10:14

Oh

John 10:15

kind of understanding.

Mark 10:17

I like that. That that's so, so true. And you know, we've listed a bunch of things here that are kind of screamingly obvious. This one. Oh yeah. Right. You can, you know, they're like, Hey, I've got this idea, or whatever else. Maybe there's some content out there that's been developed. You developed it. Some, it was, you know, and then it runs through the partner filter, and all of a sudden you're like, wait, why did this become suddenly all about you? What just happened there? Yeah. Interesting.

John 10:43

Yep.

Mark 10:44

Yeah. Huh.

John 10:45

another con of partnership involvement in marketing is understanding kind of the channels and tactics and when it makes sense to use certain things. So, for example, why aren't we sponsoring this charity golf event? Or why aren't we, why don't we have billboards downtown?

Mark 11:04

yeah.

John 11:05

And you're like, well, our budget was slashed and you said we wanted leads and not awareness. So that's why that decision went down.

Mark 11:13

Yeah. Good, good, good one, right? It's, yeah, right. That's, that's, uh, uh, why aren't we constantly, you know, baseball reference, you know, swinging for the fences for the home run, and it's like, well, actually we have to just, you know. Get people on base, you know? Right. There's the, what's what's the, yeah. Help me out with the movie reference there. Why am I totally,

John 11:33

Oh, Moneyball, that's what you're going after, right? OnBase percentage, yeah.

Mark 11:38

Yeah, right on. Right. That whole thing for people who don't know baseball references, I apologize. I'm sorry. But yeah, it's, you know, everything's not a home run. I'm sorry. There's just sort of the need to get people on the basis to score runs. So, anyway, I, I co-opted that one. What's your last one, John?

John 11:53

the Pete Rose Effect.

Mark 11:54

Yeah.

John 11:55

yeah, so the, the last one, I think this is kind of similar to, to the, the one we talked about just a second ago, but I guess it's a little bit more on the strategy side of things. So if we're zooming out a little bit, it's like. Overruling the strategic decisions with gut feel and it's like, oh no, that strategy's not gonna work. We've done it. I, I've seen it done this way and we're gonna go with that. Or I've got a friend who is, was talking to me about this, and that's the direction we're gonna go. I know you did a bunch of research and did a bunch of client interviews and everything like that, but my cousin's friend's, uncle's, hairdresser, says otherwise, so.

Mark 12:31

Totally. Totally. Yeah. That, yeah. Or, or, or it's even like, like almost the worst example of that is, is that, okay, so we all sat down in a a room and agreed to this plan six months ago and now. We're changing it, right? So now we do billboards. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Great. Good. Alright, so pros and cons on the marketing end of things. Good list. And again, a lot of that's screamingly obvious. A lot of it's just bringing words to some of the things that people sort of, you know, feel are occurring. But yeah, that's a good list, John. I like it.

John 13:12

All right, so Mark, let's turn the tables a little bit and let's talk about partner involvement in sales. Do you think you could run through some of the bullets of why it's good to have partners involved in sales?

Mark 13:25

Yeah. And, I mean, when we were talking about this, it wa it was, um, You know, marketing and selling with the, partners involved? this is a relevant topic for both kinda the marketing stuff and the sales stuff. Most people just are gonna assume like, well, yeah, the partners are absolutely going to be involved in the selling end of things and maybe they're involved in the market, like marketing stuff. You know, I think we were like, oh yeah, absolutely. This is, where we're gonna find partners playing a lot of the time and. There's pros and cons to this as well, folks. I'm sorry this isn't all roses, but let's get to the pros first. Right? The first one I have there is just sort of the, the gravitas, you know, sort of in the room right there, there are a partner. The partner's gonna be in the room, Everybody's gonna be a little more focused. The, you know, clients paying attention more. It's, there's, we're bringing a, an elevated level of, personnel into the conversation in these, in these sales situations. So yeah, pro good, right? there's a role and a purpose and a need for that, a lot of times just to have, you know, that level of individual in the room, I, I think it, it, it communicates positively to the client. Like, yeah, this is a big deal. You're a big deal. This is a big deal. So. You know, we have a partner involved. the next one is the trust thing. I think people are maybe willing to put a little bit more trust in the partners. Maybe your clients, you know, a seasoned professional so they can kind of connect with your partner who is also a seasoned professional. A little bit more, maybe there's a little bit more. Trust there. so that's good. It's, you know, accelerates this whole sort of, you know, speed to trust kind of thing, so That's true. One of the other things that having the partners involved in the selling, brings is maybe a little bit bigger picture.

John 15:18

Oh, that's

Mark 15:18

know, if you're a junior or more of a mid-career professional, it's like you could be really tactically focused. You know, you could be focused on the, the stuff, you know, the, you'd be in, you're in the weeds, and the partner brings a sort of, all right, what are we trying to do here, folks, you know, picture into the conversation. I mean, I've, I've, I've seen that, no doubt about it.

John 15:41

like this one because it, It builds on kind of an understanding of the clients, right? And so understanding their situation, so they're able to zoom out and talk in terms of kind of like what, how what outcomes can the client expect and how can that make their lives easier?

Mark 15:59

yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that that more seasoned expert is able to make the leap to the outcomes a little bit. A little bit more comfortably and confidently than maybe others can. So I like that one. the next one here is up, I'm gonna say, this one's up for de debate, right? This, you know, like the partner as the closer, you know, is like, is that a pro? Is that a con? I, you know, I, I, right. There's two, two sides of that. One we kind of had that listed here is that. I think from an experience and sort of, I've walked this path before, I know what to expect when the conversation reaches this point. you know, I think that's good. what this can turn into a lot of times from the partner closing the deal thing is that, you know, oh, the junior or mid-career person wasn't able to, Get this thing done, get the contract completed. So now the partner's gonna come in and that's not good for anybody. So that gets a pro con on, on me, but you will, we'll, we'll put that one aside for a second. So the, last one is just sort of the relationship is like, hey, having the partner involved in selling, maybe this is an existing client with, you know, that they've got a relationship with and they just kind of keep building that relationship. Maybe this is a fairly new client where the partner is there and they've made it very clear that they, you know, appreciate and seek long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with their clients. So it kind of brings that sort of relationship thing in here that says, alright. Partners here, partners involved in this whole thing. We don't look at these as a one and done. it's important that we, build and maintain this, you know, sort of a long-term thing. So those are pros for me. And that's a reasonable list I think.

John 17:44

Yeah, I, I think so. And so some of the common themes that I'm hearing, it's like authority, trust, and relationships. those are kind of the big takeaways as to why It could be a pro to have partners involved in sales. Alright, so let's, uh, let's turn up the heat a little bit. Mark. What are some of the drawbacks of having partner involvement in sales?

Mark 18:09

Yeah. And these may or may not be as screamingly obvious as some of those previous ones, but man, these happen. So there's the, okay, so the bottleneck thing, right? The bottleneck is not just on the marketing end of things, where you, the marketing professional, are sitting there, you know. Tapping your finger on the desk, waiting for the partner to come up with that content that they promised you three weeks ago, right? On the sales end of things, right? If you're doing this right, selling is a series of conversations that you're having with your prospective clients, and all of a sudden the partner needs to be in the room and they don't have any openings for the next three

John 18:45

Their calendar's filled up.

Mark 18:47

Yeah, so big problem there. And some people are like, well, how do I get around it? And it's like, well, you know, it's, we have to make very important decisions on how we involve our partners because if they're gonna be a bottleneck in the sales process, then that is a problem. You know, if the client needs to go and you can't go without the partner who's not available. It's like, we're, we've, we just created a problem for ourselves. So there you go. So bottleneck and selling,

John 19:12

Get ready for more. Five o'clock meetings. Five and six o'clock meetings.

Mark 19:15

Oh, brutal. So, so true though. So true.

Mark Wainwright 19:19

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 19:21

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 19:35

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 19:45

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 19:51

and now back to the show.

Mark 19:54

So, follow through and follow up, right? Follow up for me is such a critical part of these sales conversations. It's every, every conversation we have, there's some follow up that just reiterates and reflects back what we heard, what we understand, you know, clarifies next steps, articulates what you know, where we're headed next. You know, we act as good guides when we sell. Uh, you know, we're not pushy, salesy, we're just guiding people through this really organized sales process and follow through is critical in that. but sometimes your partners will look at follow through as way, you know, follow up as, you know, administrative, you know, it's, it's like, ah, I don't

John 20:35

How can we automate this? Hey, can you follow up with this lead for me?

Mark 20:39

Yeah. You're like, wait, what? so yeah. So they look at a lot of these really important sort of more tactical steps in the process as sort of beneath them. And then the follow up breaks down, and then the new business opportunity breaks down, and then everybody starts looking around the room like, what happened? And it's like, our follow up was terrible, you know? It was horrible.

John 20:59

But nobody wants to say it, right.

Mark 21:01

Nobody, right. Nobody wants to say that. Right. It's like, actually we should have scheduled that next meeting

John 21:05

who is supposed to follow up? Uh Oh.

Mark 21:07

Oh. Blew it. Right. And this, this ties to another thing that we had written here, is that there's no discipline in the, in, the process. Right. It's, the wild west, it's like, look, I don't, there's no steps. There's no process. There's no CRM, there's no, there's just there, you know, we're just shooting from the hip. Constantly. It's like prep for a meeting. What? You know, it's like, no. So it's, it's the wild west as far as the process is concerned. And not only does that wreck and derail your opportunity, that's steering you in the face, that's also showing, really, really bad behaviors. To the younger team members that are involved in this thing as well. Right? The partner is behaving badly with no discipline in no organization, and the younger team members are like, ah, who needs a process? CRM? What's that?

John 21:58

Mm-hmm.

Mark 21:58

So yeah,

John 22:00

I say, not as I do. I, I can't tell you, I can't tell you how many times I've early on in my career where I've been kinda shadowing a sales meeting. And then the partner would come in sometimes like a minute late to the meeting, and then, okay, what do we got? Who's, and it's just like, oh, wow.

Mark 22:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So true. So true. So, so a, a lack of discipline. And this is no small mountain to climb here, John. This is a big one. I will tell you from my experience, it is, you know, in what I do when I work with organizations, it is the hardest. To have seasoned professionals recognize opportunities for improvement and then start to change behaviors. It is hard. It is easy for mid and easier for mid and early career professionals to start to see new ways of doing things and behave differently. The long timers very hard. So this is the old dog, new tricks kind of a thing. So that's that. Yeah. So next one here, folks. This is huge is it's unscalable. Right. And yeah. so scale, scale for really, from my perspective, when we're talking about organizations who are selling scale can happen when we have more and more people involved and leading and sort of guiding, you know, prospective clients through the sales process. If we stack all of this sales stuff on the shoulders of one or two partners, you're in trouble. So bottleneck. Too much work. You know, they, they don't like selling in the first, you know, in the first place, you know, so it's not scalable. So we have to find ways to use them when appropriate, maybe. but yeah, we can't stack it all on the shoulders of just the partners bad idea.

John 23:49

That reminds me of a recent episode we did around rainmakers and how that model is completely unscalable. There's a lot of parallels there.

Mark 23:57

Tons of, tons of parallels. And the last con, you know, I don't know at what point we start beating a dead horse here, John, but, uh, um, but there's some, I look at this kind of, this is an overpromising, you know, like a partner is willing just to go off script, right? It's like, wait, we had a plan going into that. Wait, yeah, wait. We had a plan going into that meeting and we had a very, very specific. You know, approach, scope, right? Whatever, whatever. And you just threw the kitchen sink in there. Wait a minute, you just promised the moon and the stars to the client for the amount that your, you know, little project manager here just worked their tail off to figure out and come up with and have the client sort of. You know, agree with in principle, and you just, you know, doubled the scope without doubling the money. So what just happened there? And then they gave a little wink and a nod, and they're like, ah, it's fine. You know,

John 24:50

Right.

Mark 24:51

So yeah, that's like a, that's like, that's a torpedo that just, you know, works so hard this thing together and then the partner comes in and it's like, oh yeah, we'll do this. We'll do everything

John 25:02

and then there's the ad hoc requests. Oh, and by the way, can you bolt this onto the scope? Can you bolt this on? Yeah, sure. We can do that too. And then, you know it's, oh, okay. Team, we're just gonna chalk this up as r and d.

Mark 25:13

Yeah, there you go. Let's, let's charge this, let's charge that chunk to, to marketing. So yeah, so that's a, that's a disaster. So pros and cons. Pros and cons. Marketing, selling. We kind of moved back and forth on that marketing to sales continuum thing, so hopefully people were tracking with us throughout that whole thing. So, okay, so what is, what is the good. Let's, let's draw a picture, create a vision of what this actually looks like,

John 25:39

let's bring it all, let's bring it home. We're we're, we're rounding third. We're, let's bring it home now. So I think, if you're a partner in an organization and you have a sales and marketing team,

Mark 25:49

I.

John 25:50

your sales and marketing team are the experts, right? And we talked about bottlenecks, we talked about. Partners as individuals being unscalable. So in order to make your business development operation scalable, there needs to be some sort of a system in place. There needs to be team members that support and elevate you and take away the things that are going to be bottlenecks. And so I think that that's the first part of this is an understanding. From the partner that they are not a sales expert, that they are not a marketing expert. They are there to bring authority, to help with the relationship, to help with build trust, and their team supports that.

Mark 26:32

Yeah. This is the biggest hurdle in this list that we, I think that we've got, because we're talking about people who are experts. Experts inevitably believe their expertise extends well beyond, you know, the, the, the, the limits of their sort of actual expertise, right? So, you know, engineers suddenly become, you know, marketers, you know, so, you know, accountants suddenly becomes sales. Gurus, you know what? Like what? Whatever, whatever it is. So yeah, so there's an acknowledgement that I'm not an expert here. There's tons to learn. Oh, and by the way, there's probably people internally here who have some level of expertise and I need to let them lead. I need to come alongside them as we kind of walk through this, both marketing and selling. So, yeah, absolutely. That there's expertise in these areas that

John 27:21

Let the Sier do the sauce, my

Mark 27:24

Yeah. Sure. I like that. I like that one. Yeah. Don't, yeah, let the chef do the work. Good. I love that one. So there was another one here. Another good thing, and this is great. What good looks like is, you know, partners, principals, whoever they are, these senior folks in the firm, they are exhibiting fantastic situational. Awareness. Right. A good sort of, you know, emotional intelligence sort of thing. It's like understanding their role, you know, if you aren't, hopefully you're pretty explicit about it. Hopefully you've kind of, you know, drawn this whole thing up or planned this out, but even, you know, those kind of fail sometimes. But you know, it's a fantastic sational awareness where they understand who's leading. If it's them, they need to lead. If they, if they're not leading, they need to support, how do they support, what do they need to do in order to, you know, develop others in the firm or help others sort of lean into their expertise, you know, so that's. critical, both in marketing and selling as fantastic situational awareness exhibited by the partners who are just, they just know what's happening here and they see maybe it's really important for a mid-career professional to be. Running this whole thing through, right? They've established the relationship. They, they're working with the client. They, you know, and sometimes that means that things get a little sketchy towards the end.'cause the mid-career professional's, like, I haven't done this before, but the partner's saying it's okay, I'm here if you need me. Just keep going. You're doing a great job. Right?

John 28:57

Couldn't have said it better myself. Mark that. That's exactly right. And understanding that, that it's a system. And that's kind of this, this next bullet point here is, is we mentioned, you know, un understanding that you're not an expert. Understanding the situation and the roles that all the whole team is playing, and then the having the systems in place to facilitate that, to help the team members succeed. To help the partner not be a bottleneck, to let the marketers market and for the sales folks to do sales. And so that could be, you know, adherence to a sales process like we talked about. Leveraging automation, leveraging AI to a degree, I suppose. You know, we, we talked about note taking apps. I think that that was a, you know, a really great example, leveraging executive assistants, virtual assistants, again, to some degree because there, there are certain things that only partners can and should probably do. so I think like building that system around is incredibly important.

Mark 29:59

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and again, folks, when, when we, you know, some organizations have people that spend the vast majority of their time doing selling, but a lot of the organizations, a lot of. People in the audience who listen out there is that they have these people who are doing and selling, right? So partners might be doing and selling, but you've got other people in the firm who are also doing and selling. So, you know, when everybody's got their sales hat on, hopefully the partners are letting others in the firm lead and guiding, helping, supporting, all that sort of stuff when everybody's got their sort of sales hat on. So, yeah. Good stuff.

John 30:33

All right, so Mark, I wanna close out this podcast episode with something fun.

Mark 30:39

Oh boy. Here we go. All right, let's see. Let's see what we got here.

John 30:42

All right. We are gonna play a game called Bottleneck Bingo.

Mark 30:47

Bottleneck. Bingo. All right.

John 30:50

I will read out typical sales or marketing tasks, and then you are going to guess who is the most likely to be the bottleneck. Is it the marketing team? Is it the sales lead or is it the partner?

Mark 31:08

got it.

John 31:08

Okay. Do you understand you've got three

Mark 31:11

Partner, marketing team, sales lead. Got it. Okay. And you're gonna read me some scenarios and I have to respond with one of those.

John 31:20

With one of those three. Those are the only three acceptable answers. Yeah.

Mark 31:23

Okay. So we're gonna, are we gonna do this rapid fire here? Is that gonna, how it's gonna go?

John 31:26

Let's do rapid fire and then in, in post prod, I'll add like a little ding or a, a buzzer if you, if you get one

Mark 31:32

Got it. Ooh, I love, I love that. Okay, cool. Good. That's good. All right.

John 31:37

so who is most likely to be the bottleneck? All right, so here's our first scenario. When you're drafting the first version of a proposal.

Mark 31:46

Mm. Tough one, but not really partner.

John 31:49

All right. All right. The next scenario, when you're trying to get final approval before that proposal goes live to the client.

Mark 31:57

Ooh. Ah, it's gotta be the partner.

John 32:00

Ding, ding, ding, ding. Good job. All right, so what about getting the green light for paid ads?

Mark 32:05

well typically the, you know, the partner's in charge of the, you know, the purse strings. So partner.

John 32:12

Ding, ding, ding. All right. How about providing bios and headshots for the website? Do you think the marketing team would be the bottleneck? Probably not.

Mark 32:20

No partner.

John 32:22

Ding ding. All right. How about showing up to the webinar? They insisted on hosting.

Mark 32:27

Uh, that's so funny. Partner. Uh.

John 32:31

How about submitting a list of target accounts for a campaign?

Mark 32:35

Target accounts for a campaign. So the marketing team probably went to the partners and we were like, all right, so we need to know the most important client accounts so we can build these campaigns around them. And the partners aren't giving them the client. Got it. So partner.

John 32:48

Partner. Yep. How about following up after that intro meeting, we talked

Mark 32:52

Oh, I said this earlier. That's easy. Partner.

John 32:56

Oh yes. What about that brilliant idea that they had that they said they would upload to the CRM but didn't?

Mark 33:03

That's funny. That's funny. Partners are great idea creators, but they're not the idea executors. So yeah, partner.

John 33:11

Oh. How about posting a LinkedIn thought leadership piece?

Mark 33:18

Well, the marketing team is typically fantastic at doing this regular, you know, content creation, but when it's coming from the partner, it often gets delayed. So partner.

John 33:26

Yep. Oh, are, are we being too hard on them?

Mark 33:31

No, let's keep going.

John 33:33

Okay. How about rerecording that three minute video that they recorded once, but then said, ah, this isn't quite right.

Mark 33:40

Oh, that's funny, right? There's an ego slipping in there.

John 33:43

Yep. All right. How about approving the budget that the marketing hire desperately needed?

Mark 33:50

Yeah, right Partner.

John 33:53

Mm-hmm. Uh, how about refusing to use that email template because it sounded too salesy?

Mark 34:00

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I, I don't know. I, I, boy, I'll, I'll give them a little bit of a break. Maybe it's the partner or the sales lead, so they both share some responsibility there.

John 34:13

I suppose so if it does sound too salesy, maybe it is.

Mark 34:16

Yeah. Yeah. All

John 34:17

Okay. Uh, okay. I, ooh, I like this one. Taking credit for a deal that marketing and sales actually worked.

Mark 34:26

Mm. Yeah. Well if, you know, if the partner has blown all of this stuff up till now, there's no doubt in my mind that it was the partner. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. Can't we gotta, we gotta prioritize the right things, partner. I.

John 34:46

Yep. And then last but not least, mark asking for analytics but never looking at the dashboard.

Mark 34:54

It is right there. All you had to do was look at it, right, partner.

John 34:59

Oh. You got them all correct,

Mark 35:01

Oh, my, my, my bingo card looks, looks amazing. Unfortunately. It's like, it's like bleeding red right now, so that's, that's terrible. I got bingo like 10 times on that one.

John 35:12

Yep. Always up, down, sideways, and crossways every way.

Mark 35:16

All right. Well, that was a fun little digression here, but, all right, let's, let's, all right. What are the takeaways here? Like what, what, what's the big deal? A lot of this was kind of like, you know, we, we beat a, you know, we, we, we beat this up. No doubt about it. Poor partners, we love you, but man, there's some definite takeaways that, you know, can improve.

John 35:36

Yeah. And I, I would say that partners have a wealth of experience. They have a wealth of knowledge. They've, they're a wealth of stories. they are a trust building. Element to your business development, strategy. They can open doors, they can help deepen relationships, but they are a bottleneck and there needs to be a system around partner involvement in both sales and marketing. That's my biggest takeaway.

Mark 36:06

No, I, I, I, I love it. Right? I mean, nobody wants to think of themselves as the bottleneck, at least I don't think so, right? I mean, that's, there's some negative connotations to that. It's like, oh, we actually have a system and we have a way of doing this, and it actually works, and all of a sudden it hits this one person and everything gets stuck. They don't, I don't think anybody wants to think of themselves that way. So, you know, word to the wise. if you're not a partner in your firm and you realize there's a bottom, maybe just like, just start writing that on the whiteboards before every big meeting. They just, you know, bottleneck. but no, just some self-awareness here to understand that, you know, yeah, you as a partner are really important in a lot of these things, but it's not all about you, so you could potentially be a bottleneck. So, understand. the organization needs to function and figure out, your role in all of that. So, great takeaways.

John 36:55

Well, mark, this was a, a fun episode. hopefully we didn't turn up the heat too much. On our partner friends out there,

Mark 37:03

Uh, that'll be fine.

John 37:04

they, I think they will be fine. Yep.

Mark 37:07

they will be good. All right, John, until next time.

John 37:10

until next time.