The LeadG2 Podcast
The LeadG2 Podcast is dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week host Dani Buckley (VP/GM at LeadG2) discusses proven sales enablement strategies and real-life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries.
The LeadG2 Podcast
Unlocking the Secrets of SaaS and Service Partnerships with Barrett King
In this episode, we’re discussing partnerships. Specifically, why fostering and maintaining them are so critical when it comes to growing your business.
We ask questions like: What makes an effective partnership? For those exploring potential partnerships, how do you know you’re making the right decision? And, how do you measure the success of a partnership?
Joining me to answer those questions and more, is the awesome Barrett King, Senior Manager, Global Partner, GTM Strategy at HubSpot.
Barrett shares a ton of great insights, including:
- How, when looking for potential partnerships, you should look to the products and services that are used in tandem by your end customer
- Why it's important to aim for a surround sound approach when entering into a partnership.
- And, finally, why every partnership should feel like you're investing in a lucrative relationship.
Links:
Barrett King
Outcomes - Where Partnerships & SaaS Meet
Dani Buckley
LeadG2
Welcome to Sell Smarter Sell Faster, a podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager at LeadG 2, a sales performance agency. In this episode, we're discussing partnerships and, even more specifically, those between SaaS companies and service providers. This includes why fostering and maintaining them are so critical when it comes to growing your business. We ask questions like what makes an effective partnership.
Dani Buckley:For those exploring partnerships, how do you know you're making the right decision And how do you measure the success of a partnership? Joining me to answer those questions and more, is the awesome Barrett King, Senior Manager, Global Partner, GTM Strategy at HubSpot. Barrett shares a ton of great insights, including how, when looking for potential partnerships, you should look to the products and services that are used in tandem by your end customer, why it's important to aim for a surround sound approach when entering into a partnership. And, finally, why every partnership should feel like you're investing in a lucrative relationship. Welcome, Barrett, i am so happy to have you here, excited to jump into this conversation. How are you today? I'm fantastic.
Barrett King:It's sunny here and bright, and my kid's playing outside, and it's a good day for sure. I'm excited to have a chat with you. It's great.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, sounds like a lovely day, cool, so let's jump in. We're talking about partnerships and, to start just to kind of get everyone on the same page, can you tell us just a little bit about your background, kind of how you got into being what I believe to be an expert around kind of like SaaS partnerships and partnerships in general? What do you have to bring to the table, barrett?
Barrett King:Yeah, it's interesting. I think I know a little bit about partnerships. I learn every day, so maybe I'm not an expert yet, but I aspire to be. I actually didn't intend to get into partnerships, it just sort of happened. So I went to school for digital design and came out of college really like 2008 or so when the market didn't have anything for designers and for marketing directors and such. So I ended up going into restaurants and in my very first restaurant job right out of college I was the host, but they called me a hospitality manager, which I took to heart because ego and everything that comes with that I had to be hospitable, i had to figure out a way to help us grow the business, and so the long and short of it is I actually developed a few different relationships with different businesses in the area. So Fidelity had a shop down there, and Morgan Stanley and it was very kind of a financial-heavy part of the city, and what I did is I went out to these businesses and I met with the heads of HR and the front office managers and all the folks that were in charge of where people ate really and how they ran their events, and I basically established what became a partnership program for the restaurant, where I was working with these vendors to figure out how do we bring in more business, how do we host your parties, how do we curate this dynamic with you. Again, i had no idea what I was doing, but I learned as I went And over the course of the next couple of years of my career I was in and out of tech a few times, and each of those roles held some version of partnership.
Barrett King:One of them, i was leading sort of an events component of a bigger business, and so I had to establish dynamics with vendors that were in radio and TV advertising. I had to work with local vendors for restaurant and food, for onsite services, and so I was building partnerships there. And then, later on in my career, as I got into tech a little more deeply, i was in sales And I was the head of sales for a small 35 person startup at one point, and that was all about partnerships. Later on, when I joined HubSpot, the first opportunity that I had which is actually where I'm at today was to build partnerships. I was partnering with marketing agencies to help them grow their organization, and so a lot of my kind of later stage growth around the idea of partnerships comes from certainly being in the profession in my current career, but also just a fascination with how do you, you know, build interpersonal relationships over the course of really my lifetime.
Barrett King:And what I'll leave you with and this is sort of one of the kind of defining moments in terms of how I thought about partnerships was that you know, it's like call it senior year. I went to kind of an alternative school We'll call it senior year of my art education and I had done some actual design work, but mostly I was like the project manager, i was the, you know, team lead, i was the speaker for every one of my projects because I just enjoyed developing relationships, being in front of folks and speaking to that point. And I remember standing in front of one of my peers at his final presentation. He was this incredible traditional artist. He had designed this, this like real world, hyper realistic charcoal drawing drawing of Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin, a few other beautiful artists, and it was just incredible work.
Barrett King:And I turned to him and I said now, i'll never be as talented as you are. This is such an incredible piece of art. He was big smile on his face and he looked over me and he goes you know, i wish I could do half of what you do. I said what do you mean? It was really simple, man, your words are your art And forevermore I've defined that as sort of like my kind of mantra, if you will. With my words, of my art, i've learned the sort of power of conversation and through that, the way to connect with people And ultimately, for me that's where partnerships sort of became the anchoring part of who I am.
Dani Buckley:I love that And I can't go down the rabbit hole of that. But that deeply resonates with myself too When I think and compare myself to my friends who are visual artists or different kind of artists. Words are also my art, so I love that story. Thanks for sharing. That's great. Yeah, so just to also kind of make sure we're all talking about the same thing Partnerships what are we talking about? Give us a little more context when we're saying to find, i mean, you gave some good examples already, but can you give some examples like in the B2B world, just like maybe a couple of different types of examples of the kind of partnership programs or partnerships that exist?
Barrett King:Yeah, so, keeping it really simple, there's a few different components that make up any sort of partnerships in that sense And I could say, like the very heady sort of a theory definition would be it's the intersection of value between two or more parties. It's sort of like the dictionary definition, i guess in many ways I would go bigger than that.
Barrett King:I would say it starts with a couple different dynamics, so one could be something like a vendor partnership. So you could say I'm a software company B2B, saas, for ease of example And I work with X, y or Z integrations. You might be like you know you're a software provider and you work with companies to help them build websites. We'll keep it really simple, right, and so maybe there is an integration that helps those companies to also. Actually everyone loves AI right now, so we can say there's an AI platform that plugs into your website system and allows you with a really easily populate content.
Barrett King:That would be an example of a partnership, specifically a tech partnership. You also, in the same sort of example, say, might be that same vendor. You've got a website platform and you work with businesses that build websites, agencies or consultants and whatnot. You might build a channel program through something like that, a reseller program, where they would use your software to help their customers build websites and subsequently sell that software as well. So again, i think about it as the intersection of the kind of transfer of value between different businesses and, in particular, in B2B, tends to be additive in some capacity.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, got it. Great Makes sense. So what makes a partnership effective? What makes them good? What makes them work? Any best practices that you can speak to?
Barrett King:I think it's actually more simple than most folks make it. You know, ultimately, partnerships again being about the transfer of value. Actually, it's interesting. I just talked to somebody this morning. He's selling hardware with services to companies. They actually they do to really anchor it, they install electric vehicle chargers in homes. So they procure the actual system and they install it and they set up your kind of home chargers network or whatever And like that's super niche and interesting and fascinating and certainly there's demand for it, no-transcript.
Barrett King:And one of the things he was asking me about specifically was how do I go and figure out, like, who I actually should work with from a reseller perspective, from a co-service perspective, all of the individuals that would deliver value to my customer? And I was like, well, it's that statement right there. When I think about defining and really in building out best practices and partnerships, you need to figure out what your end customer is likely doing with somebody else. So if you think about, like what you do, so we'll use well, actually we use this example So you build chargers for EV cars to install them in people's houses. Those individuals are working with probably some form of a car dealer, like they're buying their vehicle at some point. They're probably working with some sort of like a mechanic or servicing business. They're working with probably an electrician for the like at least eventive install. They may have other like green initiative based things. Maybe they work with solar companies, maybe they work with other vendors.
Barrett King:In that regard, those are likely the intersections of value that are happening around your product or service offering.
Barrett King:So we could say that like in that case we might partner with those folks.
Barrett King:And if I back up and I say, well, how do I think about this more broadly, across any type of partner program or opportunity, i would actually anchor in this idea of what are the services and the products and whatnot that are being used by your customer, either in tandem, ideally, with your own product or service offering or in like kind of an additive motion to that.
Barrett King:And so if you think about best practices, you should really look for what your customer is they themselves looking for, that you don't provide again product or service, and look to those organizations as your earliest opportunities to partner. And it's sort of the opposite of what your folks say, because usually they'll say things like how do I work with the companies to help sell more of my product? Or how do I work with companies to service more? It's actually a step beyond that, which is again what are the products and services and who are the companies that are talking to my customer already And my customer is working with that I have an opportunity to work with as well to increase my reach, my kind of market penetration and the value they deliver that in customer.
Dani Buckley:Got it Makes sense, Love it, Okay. So here's what I want to talk about next, Because I think there's some partnerships that are very much I mean there always should be mutually beneficial, of course, But there's somewhere it's more a mixture between it's not like a clear like one's a reseller and one's this right, Like there can be different dynamics that exist. So when we're thinking about, I think maybe the more common which is like one is more of a reseller but they're tapping into an ecosystem or an audience or whatever that might be. So if someone is the reseller so I'm going to give the example of us, Leigh G2, we are a reseller, we are a partner of HubSpot, for example, and other software as well, right, So kind of like that B2B typical kind of technology partnership that might exist.
Dani Buckley:Hubspot does not resell Leigh G2, right, It is a one-way thing, even though it's a mutually beneficial experience. How can the reseller take best advantage of these partnerships right, in growing their business? So it's one thing to be like okay, I know this is a product or a service or a software that makes sense for my business model, that my customers need, But like what else? What else can they be doing? What do you see working that really takes like kind of like the doing it well to like doing it great in those types of partnerships.
Barrett King:Yeah. So when I think about one of the things that a reseller somebody who's engaged in the software company can do really effectively, it starts off with being intentional around taking advantage of the surround sound. So it's super easy to say like I get value from this single dimension, whatever it is Like I resell a software, i use a software delivered to my customer or whatever that intersection is. When you look at the way that people You know then around that and grow their opportunity, it gets far more interesting. So you see a lot of vendors say like okay, cool, we've got like you know software company. It says we've got a reseller motion here We also have a Implementation motion. So you sell the software and now you can implement it as well. Or it might have like a need for integrations works. You say, okay, cool, i'll skew a little more technical, my team's gonna get really tuned up. Do good, integration works. So now I can resell the software in the front end and I can integrate because now maybe I can get some referrals from that company as well, things like that, you know.
Barrett King:The third obviously would be like you could build something right, and so I think it's really easy and B2B SAS to say we've got something going on, it's working really well. You know we can sell it and we can service the customer that way. What if you built other things to add value on top of that? That could be another really interesting opportunity for you to say alright, we'll, like you know, do the sales thing in the front and help our customers, will service better in the middle, maybe get some good referrals. The third piece would be let's build something together That helps it any customer. Give them more value from the ecosystem.
Dani Buckley:I love that. It's like, yeah, just there's more opportunity than just didn't just being this simple like I sell this thing and I follow this linear path and And I think you know you you're touching on this in those areas, but I just want to emphasize it because I know it's been my experience and I'm curious if I have anything to add. It's like also just building relationships, right?
Dani Buckley:with with with that, that company, you know, whatever it might be, however that looks, whether there is the opportunity to get referrals or just to like Strengthen the relationship and even just to see and explore the opportunities that you just mentioned, that happens through real relationships.
Barrett King:Yeah, it's 3d chess like I always describe it, as it's not single dimension. We're not talking about advancing, you know, left right, straight or otherwise. Yeah, look at the board game in multi dimensions and it is a game. I don't mean to be, you know, facetious or kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it's important to think about it in that sense. So what that means, you have to learn all the rules, you have to learn sort of all of the pathways toward the outcome that you're looking for. And then I always recommend, in any vendor you know, to partner dynamic, to think about the multi-dimensional component of it, in terms of Not just the different ways you can interact with them, how they interact with you, how they perceive you, but then, at the core of it, keep the customers the focus. So if there's things the customer needs that they're not getting from that vendor, doors wide open for you, whatever that capacity is, to go and take advantage and show Both the vendor and the customer that you can do more than just sort of dimension, a like we talked about got it.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, makes sense. So you know our primary audience here is sales leaders, business leaders of sales organizations And so in the B2B world. So for those that are maybe Considering or exploring new partnership opportunities, do you have anything that you would advise, what they should be thinking about looking out for, kind of like asking themselves to make the Right decision? because there's, even if it's just as simple as you know, we need this type of software like how do you choose which one when there's a bunch?
Barrett King:Yeah, i think you have to listen to the market first. It's actually really easy, and I this is probably more of an American view, so forgive me if you have European viewers. Like I think the thing that we don't do well here And I'm an American myself, so I'll say that openly like self deprecation here. We are very me-centric as a culture, as a society, and so, like you know, one of the things that we do really wrong and I talked to hundreds of leaders a year now at this point About partnerships how do I start a program is the first question usually, and if it's not that, it's how do I work with companies to make more money or my business faster, kind of thing. You got to go back to the root of why you're trying to do this, which is to help your customer, and so I had somebody recently say to me how do I build a partner program? I was like, well, it was last time you talked to your customer. Sure, well, you know we get an NPS quarterly. And I was like, no, i didn't say that. When did you last talk to your customers? And what I really encourage and I think is really important, in particular in B2B because you have access is Go and talk to your best, most successful customers. Have a conversation with them. If there's things that they're doing really well with you, great.
Barrett King:The next question should be what are we not doing? Well, what should we incorporate into our product or service offering? And usually it's something that you're like I'm not doing that, like I don't want to go and change the product offering that we have. I want to be more intentional about it. And so you, maybe you say, like I will stop doing that, i will start doing that in terms of adding to your product or service offering, but nine times out of 10, you're gonna look for somebody else who's already doing that. So I go back to that thing I was saying before, which is like, when you think about sort of best practices, the first thing you should do is go and listen to your customer and look for the surround sound, the services and products around them that you are currently not delivering. Totally normal Like you should not be one thing for everyone doesn't work that way in the real world. But go and work with those folks And the way that you do that is not to go to them and say we want you to sell our software service or customer. Otherwise it's hey, like there's this thing that we've observed, this event that's taking place, which is that our end customer is getting value from us and from you. Let's go figure out how we work together, and I think it's that simple And I don't think it needs to be complex and over indexed on.
Barrett King:I think when you get to a certain measure of scale, it gets a little bit different. It thinks about to evolve, cause I think about partnerships in three different stages of evolution based off sophistication It's building, it's growing and it's scaling. And the reason I think about it that way is, if you're, as you're describing, an early leader trying to build a program or help something kind of evolve a little bit, sophistication is key. Are your partners sophisticated? Your customer needs sophisticated? What are the things that drive the outputs that really deliver value to the market? And if it's like something massively complex, then okay, maybe you're further along than you thought. But I wager a guess the persona you're describing is probably building their go-to-market strategy.
Barrett King:It's building their partner program around. that. That's much more simple. at that point, how can we transact together to help the customer? Then, when you're growing it, yeah, you need a little bit of something there, some framework around a program, maybe some tiers or some benefits, a commission structure, things like that. But again, it doesn't need to be massively complex. It's not really until the scale stage where you've got process and people and product in place to do that work And then you need to lean into like let's think about this at a kind of multi-dimensional level.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, i love that. I feel like, whatever topic I'm talking about on this podcast, somehow one of the biggest answers is like keep it simple when you're starting out, whatever it is.
Barrett King:Yep and document too. Like keep it simple, right, but ask a lot of questions and do a lot of like sort of you know the Q and A stuff is really good, but like actual feedback reception is important And that comes from listening with the intent to understand. Like not to make an assumption, not to defend, but just like ask a quick what do we do well, what do we do well, and then turn off your mouth, turn your ears on and write everything down and then do that constantly And you'll notice a pattern in the data pretty quick.
Dani Buckley:Love it, love it. Okay. so let's talk about measuring success. How does one measure the success of a partnership? How does one know when to stop, Cause a lot of people stay on the train and maybe shouldn't?
Barrett King:Yeah, that's a good one. I think, on bullfend, it's really important to always reevaluate the you know, frankly, the reason why you're there, right? So in terms of measurement, you know data is definitely. It's either really present in partner orgs or like completely devoid of that, like you just don't see it at all. I think the core fundamentals are you know, partner market fit. What percent of our partners are doing the thing that we're looking for them to do every day, week, month, year? And so it's something like 20% of like 80% of all of your revenue comes from 20% of your partners. That's kind of true in a lot of industries. So you say like, all right, cool, do we have consistently 20-ish percent of our partner base actually reselling, 20-ish percent of our partner base, co-servicing, whatever that mechanism that you're looking for is? And then you want to look at a percentage of that that's happening on a regular basis.
Barrett King:So there's the original CRO of HubSpot. Marco Baerge has this thing called the science of scale. It's a programmatic way he looks at helping businesses grow And he uses PET. P percent of people do E event over T time. That's for product market fit. I've adjusted it and, like, frankly, stole it because it's beautiful and brilliant. And I think about it in terms of partner market fit. P percent of partners do E event over T time. So, for example, you might say, like they log into your software and they take action against three or more of your applications once a month. You might say they help you know two of your customers to onboard twice a month and they sell an instance of a license or whatever that framework is. It's you know the value event that I've talked about.
Dani Buckley:Yeah.
Barrett King:And then you plot that on spreadsheet and you do it every single month And the moment you see that stuff start to get away from baseline, start to turn orange or yellow or even God forbid red, then you start to say, okay, well, how do I like what changed and how do I move it back in the other direction? You want to keep your customers happy. They got to be yellow and green, which means you got to consistently measure that value event over and over and over again. And then you know at some point that starts to wear thin. And then you got to think about how do you diversify that On the other side of the same coin, i think about being the recipient of that.
Barrett King:You're the partner in yourselves. It's got to be about you, like I know it's about the customer, i appreciate that, but it's got to be about helping your business grow. If you're growing by being with that partner, with that other organization, great, stick around. You don't have to love it Like I think there's a lot of folks if this is probably controversial that they want to love it right, they want to feel good about it. Like respectfully, you know, i kind of want to say that some of those folks like you got to move on like businesses isn't always about that. You should feel like you're investing in a good relationship with mutual values, though, and so that's the thing that I would lean on. In terms of the other end, yes, you should generate revenue or services or you should grow your business by that partnership being present, but your shared mutual values are really the core, the crux of what makes this whole thing worthwhile.
Dani Buckley:Love it. Thank you for that very just like tactical thing that people can do. I love when we can leave folks with that. That's fantastic. Well, we are at that time to kind of wrap things up Though of course I'm sure we could chat for a long time, but anything that we haven't touched on, that you just want to be sure our listeners hear words of advice, closing thoughts, anything for us.
Barrett King:Yeah, i mean, look, i think partnerships is a growing profession. It's been around for eons in that sense, but at its core, b2b partnerships and particular around SaaS are really evolving, accelerating. J McBain over Canales, is doing some great research and work around. There's some brilliant thought leaders Jared Fuller, who's over at oh my gosh reveal right now, and it's just really awesome folks. Ash or Matthew over at Partner Leaders Folks are doing a bunch of really good work. My advice, same thing that I've done myself phone a friend, go and get yourself involved in the network. It's a very helpful community. Ask questions. Linkedin is a great resource. Folks are welcome to go and connect with me on LinkedIn. I have my own show outcomes. It's all about partnerships. So happy to be a resource for anybody, but the way that I've learned, the way that I've grown, is by asking just as many questions as possible about the community as I can. I mean just keeping my ears turned on to learn on a regular basis.
Dani Buckley:I love it. That's great. Thank you, barrett, so much for your time. I appreciate it. Always a pleasure chatting with you. As you just mentioned, we'll leave in the show notes your contact information, your LinkedIn, your podcast, so people can check you out and get in touch if they have follow-up questions. And, of course, my information is always there and I always welcome continued conversation with any of our listeners. So thank you everybody for joining And we'll see you again on the next episode of Sell Smarter at Sell Faster. Until then, happy selling. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smarter, sell Faster. If you like what you hear, click that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Be sure to visit our website, sellsmarters, sellfastercom, where you can find even more helpful sales enablement and inbound marketing content.
