Howdy Partners

Chad Oda is a conversational AI and workflow automation consultant. Previously, he was the CEO & Head of Consulting at Chat Mode. He joins the show to discuss how he built Chat Mode’s partnership with Microsoft using various methods, including podcasting, LinkedIn, and building relationships with product managers. Chad gives tips for succeeding in partnerships, including mining your existing a...

Scott Hanrahan, VP of Global Partnerships at Rivery, joins the show to discuss strategic partnerships. Scott shares what he learned during his time at Keyrus, where he helped with sales and partnerships. Scott discusses his partnerships philosophy, which is to have: “no ego and lots of hustle.” Scott explains one way this translates to tactical action by way of preparing thoroughly for meetings.

Sunir Shah, CEO of AppBind, shares his perspective on how partnerships work should be organized within companies. Sunir is a proponent of Nearbound and advocates that partnerships should be a strategy deployed by GTM teams rather than a department that may end up siloed from the rest of the business. Sunir’s background in customer experience informs his point of view on partnerships.

In this episode, Tom and Will unpack Tom’s past 8 months as a channel account manager for SaaS Labs. Tom shares what he’s learned through various phases on the job. He shares how he evaluates what is and isn’t working, understanding his own and his team’s capacity, developing a swipe file of ideas, and more. Tom shares what his focuses will be going into the next few months, which will include ini...

Tom and Will discuss how to enable revenue through partners. They break down why partner managers should care about Nearbound and how to secure internal and partner buy-in. They discuss how partner managers can create processes to make it easy for AE’s to request intro’s, influence, and intel from partners. They also talk about how to keep things interesting for partners and avoid boring lunch and...

Tom Slocum, Founder and CEO of The SD Lab, joins the show to discuss how sellers can move to a proactive mindset and take advantage of partner plays to increase sales. He discusses the current state of selling and why cold outreach is performing worse and worse. He shares examples of how the best sellers he’s seen have used partnerships to out-perform their peers and gives tactics that you can imp...

Alicia Gan, Partnerships Manager at AfterSell, shares tips for building a strong partnerships career. She unpacks the agency partner program she’s building at AfterSell, how she’s leveraging Twitter to find potential partners, and how to bring energy and focus each day as a partner professional. Alicia, Tom, and Will also discuss co-marketing, how to scale trust, and particularities of partnering...

Paddy McGill, Founder of PartnerPixel, discusses how to build a successful affiliate marketing program. He shares tactical tips regarding how to decide if an affiliate program is right for your brand, first steps to setting one up, and things along the way you must avoid to protect your brand. Check Paddy out on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/partnerpreneur/ Elevate Summit (Learn about affi...

Alyshah Walji, Director of Partnerships at Vividly discusses how he navigates strategic partnerships. Alyshah, Will, and Tom compare and contrast strategic partnerships from other partnership types (like agency). They dive into the mindset it takes to succeed when responsible for strategic partnerships.

Will and Ben discuss whether it’s better to hire someone with sales experience or with customer success experience as your first ever partner hire. At first, Will argues that sales experience would be more relevant, opposing Ben’s support for customer success. Will is slowly persuaded by Ben to join the customer success side, as Ben highlights that customer success managers must manage variable pi...

Will and Ben discuss how influencers can create trust around brands and impact buying processes. They unpack how influence plays into the nearbound motion along with intel and introductions. They talk through the process of working with influencers, from compensation structures to attribution conversations to comparing the costs of working with influencers vs generating leads in other ways.

Partnerships Expert KaraLynn Lewis discusses securing internal buy-in and building out a partnerships program. She shares about how to build structure and clarity and nurture relationships, as well as what tools she would use (if any) at the beginning stages of a partner program. She also talks about questions she would use to understand the needs of other departments in her company.

Will and Tom discuss incentivization structures. They weigh different paths, discussing how to meet the monetary needs of the business and the monetary and emotional needs of employees.  They discuss how to figure out which structure best fits your needs, highlighting different forms of gamification, discussing how to uncover key micro-actions, product certification methods, and more.

Will and Tom discuss how to apply the 80/20 to your day to day work in partnerships. Will argues against its usefulness as a framework for thinking about partners, saying it confuses people and doesn’t convey enough nuance because it’s such a general rule. Tom makes points to Will’s argument while backing the 80/20 rule. Tom argues for its use as a guide, specifically for startups. They discuss th...

Jason Ashman, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances & Partnerships at SaaS Labs, shares his conference strategy as a partner leader. The group discusses the advantages of being transparent when planning conference attendance and how to optimize ROI in different circumstances.  Jason shares his playbook for what to do before, during, and after conferences.

Jason Yarborough, Head of Partner Accounts at Reveal, joins Will and Tom to discuss nearbound - what it is and how you can use it to accelerate partnership programs.

Bart van Zantvoort, Business Development Manager at Channext, joins the show today to talk productive partner recruitment. Channext helps you run and track partner enablement, marketing, and sales.  Bart shares strategies for marketing with your partners on LinkedIn and activating partnerships successfully.

Chris Lavoie, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Arrive, joins the show to discuss his outlook on partnerships strategy. “A lot of partner leaders are lazy in their assessment of who is a priority,” claims Chris. Partner leaders need to be honest about their own team’s capabilities. “They look too much at the total addressable market and not enough at what their own ability to capture that mark...

Do you already have a favorite partner community that serves as your go-to resource? Do you have a few that you use for different things? Or are you newer to the partnerships field and still looking for your niche, your people that you can learn from and help as you go about your journeys together?  No matter where you stand as far as your personal partnerships community, this episode will help yo...

Ola Ogungbemile, Customer Success Manager at PartnerStack, joins us to discuss internal buy-in, customer enablement, and how and why to get involved in the larger partnerships community. Working with different types of partners, from affiliates to referral partners to resell models, Ola has an eye on a broad range of areas in the current partnership landscape. He’s also an active member of the par...

Michael Jed Lantis, Sr. Alliances Manager at Delegate, shares the things tech partners think service partners care about are not always actually that important. Formerly the Channel Partnerships Manager for the Salesforce ecosystem at Chili Piper, Michael knows the ins and outs of the Salesforce app exchange from both the tech and services partners’ perspectives. Michael unpacks how service partne...

In today’s episode, we discuss how you can use AI tools to improve your efficiency as a partner professional. AI can be used by partner professionals to make content with partners, to create ideal partner profile blueprints, or to analyze data about groups of partners.  If you’re a small or even one-person partner team handling dozens or hundreds of partners, you’re definitely going to want to tun...

Maurits Pieper joins the show to discuss the partner program he’s built out over the past two years at Dixa. As head of partnerships, Maurits has uncovered successful strategies and tactics to secure internal buy-in from department heads and the C-suite. Maurits covers ‘partner enablement’ as well, reinforcing the idea that it takes time and support for sellers to learn partners’ products.  Maurit...

Today we’re joined by Katie Bentz, Channel Partner Manager at Aircall. Katie discusses the importance of working on positioning tactics with your partners. Katie discusses the unique challenges and opportunities presented in working with agencies.  The group discusses how to find win-win situations between software solutions and service-based partners. Tom and Will ask Katie about what to focus on...

On today’s episode, Will and Tom discuss how to go about working with your marketing team. How should you approach them? What questions should you ask about their upcoming programs? How do you help them do more with less and build a more efficient organization? Will recently attended the B2B Marketing Exchange in Phoenix, AZ. This gave him insights into what many marketing leaders are currently wo...