Partnership Unpacked

Webinars are back. According to a recent report from Crossbeam, webinar utilization is now back to pre-pandemic levels and continues to grow. But as soon as I tell you that, you’re immediately reminded of the fact that your last webinar saw just 25 registrants and only a few attendees, right? If everyone’s doing webinars again, they must be seeing some success, so how do we get there? How do we dr...

Warren Buffet once said, “Partnership is not a legal contract between two equal individuals. It’s an emotional alliance between two people who are committed to each other’s success.” And that’s true, isn’t it? Whether you’re new to strategic partnerships or have been doing this for years, you doubtless understand that your most successful endeavors have been due to the relationships you forged wit...

Would your organization benefit from a global network of reseller partnerships? In a time when marketing budgets are shrinking and global economies are in turmoil, having resellers on the ground in various regions and countries who have already established a trusted relationship with your target audience is a real asset. But such a network isn’t tossed together overnight. Where do we start, and ho...

Because events are not only great for lead generation, but also for attendees to learn about you as much as other attendees, they’re a hot bed for growth and opportunity. And like all marketing and sales motions, events are even better with partners. How can we use events to go to market with partners, and what does that even look like? That’s what we’re covering in our first episode of Partnershi...

Every episode of the classic Western TV Show, The Lone Ranger, started out, "With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early west. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again!" And throughout the decades since, the concept of working alone has often been equated wi...

Through the first three quarters of 2023 in the U.S., over 170,000 tech workers have been laid off.   Now, more than ever, it’s critical for partnership teams to be focused on the right initiatives and have plans in place to measure and demonstrate success.   How do we prioritize the right partners? Where are strategic partnerships headed in the coming years, and how do we define success?   That’s...

One of the keys to successful partnerships is the creation of great content.   You might not always equate partnerships with content, but the fact is, the partnership space is filled with content-filled satellites such as onboarding, case studies, pitches, white papers, reports, sales introductions, books, and of course the more obvious rockets such as blog posts, eBooks and webinars.   Each one a...

B2B SaaS companies all have a shared challenge:   Helping their customers actually succeed with their product.   You can have all the help videos and tutorials in the world, but sometimes customers want someone else to do the work and for that, they’re going to turn to an agency.   Should we partner with agencies? What should that look like?   That’s what Franz-Josef Schrepf is here to help us wit...

Are you the only partnership professional in your organization?   Are you struggling to demonstrate value to your team and organizational leadership?   Are you tired of recruiting new partners only to see those relationships fizzle out?   That’s what Cory Snyder is here to help us with.   Cory is the VP of Partnerships at Sendoso and has been in this industry for decades. He’s seen new technology...

How do you successfully scale a partner ecosystem with hundreds of partners?   We talked about starting a marketplace of partners for your business in a previous episode, but what happens when your early success translates into increased demand and a slew of new partners? There are app ecosystems in the MarTech space that have grown to thousands of partners and integrations. How did they get to th...

One of the key tenets of our podcast here is the fact that there are a lot of different kinds of partnerships out there. Affiliates, influencers, tech integrations… and of course sales and marketing.   Which means one of the challenges facing B2B businesses is knowing which kind or kinds of partnerships to pursue.   Wouldn’t it be great to learn how other B2B SaaS companies are leveraging partners...

In 2008, Apple launched the App Store for their iPhone product and for the first time, allowed 3rd party developers to build apps for their OS and charge associated fees.   In 2022, that ecosystem generated $1.1 trillion in developer billing and sales, and has driven hundreds of billions of dollars for developers. That ecosystem is now the most lucrative aspect of Apple’s business, and a model for...

Have you ever vouched for someone only to have them fall well short of the mark? How’d that make you feel? Disappointed? Embarrassed? How likely would you be to recommend that person again, and, worse yet, how would your recommendation be received in the future? That’s the kind of problem that can occur when you don’t have buy-in from your internal stakeholders and your own organization when you k...

If you want to become a creator and influencer today, you have a tremendous number of options when it comes to platforms and formats. Do you focus on short-form content on X or Threads? Do you spend your time crafting vertical videos for TikTok or YouTube Shorts? Or do you invest more time in long form video content for YouTube, or even podcasts like this one? And regardless of which platform and...

How is your revenue team doing? Did they miss their numbers last period? Are they frustrated with a lack of qualified leads and pipeline? Are they looking to partnerships, and to YOU, for help? That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked. Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel...

“The Sumo Advantage is… alignment with a major market force, capability, or accelerator with the intent to generate revenue and grow market share. It’s a partnership that drives momentum and revenue growth and is, most importantly, a clear and present danger to your competition.” That’s a quote from Bernie Brenner’s book, The Sumo Advantage, and it describes a scenario where a smaller brand is abl...

In 2022, Google announced that their Analytics product would have an entirely new version by Summer 2023, and that all brands would need to update and change. The year before that, it was announced that the mechanism most marketers used to track website visitor activity, cookies, would be going away. In those instances, we had advance notice that change was coming. With disruptive technologies lik...

Just like launching a rocket into space requires a tremendous amount of initial energy to achieve lift-off, launching a new influencer marketing campaign with brand new influencers takes a tremendous amount of work. But, once a rocket achieves a certain altitude, gravitational forces sheer away and the rocket can continue moving out into space on pure momentum. Influencer marketing can work the sa...

I’ve been blogging about social media and the various networks since 2011, and have had a front-row seat as change after change change was pushed upon us as marketers and we had to scramble to learn and adapt. New social networks cropping up. Old social networks shutting down. New best practices to learn. Old best practices to forget. And throughout, it’s been even more complicated for influencers...

Relationships are everything. That’s been the resounding theme throughout every episode of this podcast. From developing strategic brand partnerships, to working with brilliant influencers, every guest has stressed how important it is to develop key relationships. What they haven’t said though is how important personal branding is to that endeavor. Whether you’re a seasoned marketing executive or...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way brands market, advertise and partner with one another. AI platforms are disrupting traditional approaches with data-driven personalization, automation and scale. But many companies are struggling to leverage AI's full potential. Partnerships that seemed obvious on the surface have failed to generate results, while opportunities to collaborate with co...

Every once in a while, there’s an advancement in technology so profound that it impacts every aspect of human life and productivity. Automotives. Airplanes. Computer processors. And now, Artificial Intelligence... AI. While AI isn’t new, recent developments have vastly improved and accelerated mainstream adoption of AI capabilities and enhancements - so much so that it can be, admittedly, overwhel...

85% of respondents to a recent survey by Converge reported that brand visibility is the overall goal for content amplification. At the same time, the majority of those surveyed reported they had neither the time nor the resources to accomplish what they wanted. That’s a problem. CMOs today understand the importance of content marketing for establishing brand authority and driving traffic & sales,...

You have a new partner! That’s awesome! What’s next? How do we make sure that the partnership and the relationship continues forward in a positive, constructive way? How do we set this partner up for success and, at the same time, make sure that our time is spent as efficiently as possible so that we can bring on more and more partners and drive more revenue? That’s what we’re covering in today’s...

You’ve likely heard the phrase “Success breeds success,” but you may not have heard the full quote from Felicity Kendal where she said, “Success breeds success, and failure leads to a sort of fallow period.” I found that interesting because, often, success too can lead to a sort of fallow period. A time where we thought we should be thrilled and celebrating our victories but perhaps found ourselve...