Not everything is about building a fancy product — sometimes all you have to do is listen to your market, know your customers’ tech stack, and prioritize building integrations.
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PRINCIPLES
Show them you know them
There’s too much noise out there, so if you want to be “seen” by your audience (even current customers) you have to be relevant — provide some value to them.
Show your customers how much you care by showing them you know something special about them. Don’t just spend time telling them about how your product is relevant to them.
Show them that you care about them as people and about the challenges they have at work.
What tech stack are they using? What do they do in their free time? Who do they trust? Be real, and be relevant.
"Why wouldn’t we try to get to know the people that we’re ultimately trying to do a deal with, but why not prioritize that relationship first? It is vital to our success and setting ourselves apart." – Sam McKenna, Founder of #samsales
TACTICS
3 plays to increase integration adoption by 17%
Mike Stocker, VP of Strategic Partnerships at RollWorks, knew that his customers leverage RollWorks the most when leveraging ABM data within RollWorks in tandem with data from the sales and marketing tools in their tech stacks.
The key to driving integration adoption? Knowing your customers’ tech stack.
After realizing that, RollWorks has seen a 17% increase in customers integrated with at least one additional partner (on top of each customer’s standard CRM integration) and a 7% increase in integration usage for their customers’ campaigns in just one quarter.
Here are the three plays Mike implemented to identify his customers’ tech stack and drive immediate integration adoption and improve retention:
Play 1: Identify high-value integrations for your customers
To know your new customers' tech stacks, start by identifying their business objectives and target accounts, such as increasing enterprise segment opportunities. Use Crossbeam to map your new customers' accounts with your partners' accounts to identify overlaps and potential integrations.
For example, Mike promoted the RollWorks integration with Opensense, which helped his customers engage target accounts faster.
Run reports in Crossbeam to determine if your customer is a prospect or user of your partner’s product, and recommend relevant integrations.
Your onboarding team should consider your customer’s company-wide and department-specific goals to prioritize the best initial integrations that will help achieve their objectives quickly.
Play 2: Leverage your partners to educate your customers on joint solutions
If your integration isn't the best fit initially but your customer also uses your partner's product, leverage your partner to enhance the customer's onboarding experience.
Your partner, who is an expert, can help shorten your customer's "time to first value" with your platform.
For instance, Mike asked Sendoso to discuss effective use cases for combining ABM with direct mail if the customer uses both platforms.
Additionally, you can map accounts in Crossbeam to identify overlaps between your new customers and your partners' customers, and collaborate with your partner to provide context around beneficial use cases.
This approach can deepen the customer's expertise and pave the way for future integration adoption. Once mapped, your onboarding team will receive automatic updates on new overlaps to act on promptly.
Play 3: Develop your customer’s integration adoption roadmap
After you helped a new customer adopt their first integration and achieve their initial business objective, you can create an integration adoption roadmap.
This roadmap is then passed to your CSMs who will manage the account as it matures. The roadmap outlines a plan for enhancing your customer's (in the case of RollWorks) ABM strategy and adopting additional integrations to achieve long-term goals.
For example, what Mike did was to suggest starting with integrations like HubSpot, LinkedIn, and Opensense, and later adding RollWorks-Sendoso for combining direct mail with digital ABM.
Make sure you prioritize integrations that provide immediate value with minimal effort. Begin with one integration to build early momentum and then introduce more as the customer becomes an advanced user.
Get Mike's full play-by-play here.
MEME OF THE DAY
Only build what matters
Sometimes your customers don’t need new fancy features, they might just need an integration.
Here are some integration stats to indicate the growing importance of integration-first buying behavior among customers:
- 91% of customers place a higher priority on how a product integrates into their lives or workflows over its price, service, and brand reputation.
- Integrations with existing tech are a top priority for 76% of buyers.
- 74.2% of buyers report that a system’s ability to integrate is either a very or extremely important consideration.
UPCOMING EVENT
Partner Sourced Summit ’24
Partner-sourced revenue is a crucial metric for any successful partnership program.
It’s the revenue directly attributed to the efforts of your partners through referrals, co-selling, or co-marketing initiatives.
On July 31st at 9am PT / 6pm CET, join us at the Partner Sourced Summit '24 to learn how top GTM leaders track partner-sourced revenue and leverage their ecosystem to build tech and co-selling programs.
This event, orchestrated by Justin Zimmerman, will provide you with insights, practical tips, and networking opportunities with industry leaders.
Featured Speakers:
- Bob Moore, Co-Founder and CEO of Crossbeam
- Rob Rebholz, CEO and Co-founder of Superglue
- Christine Li, VP Partnerships at G2
- Cody Sunkel, VP of Growth at PartnerFleet
- Asher Mathew, CEO and Co-Founder of Partnership Leaders
- Christine Li, VP Partnerships at G2
- Alexis Bonavota, Sr. Manager, Partner Success at G2
- Taylor Pyle, Sr. Manager, Enterprise and Commercial Sales at G2
- Dane Running, Enterprise AE at Crossbeam
- Tanner Lacey, Director of Sales and Partnerships at Sendoso
- And many more.
Save your (free) spot here.
Stuff you don't want to miss!
- July 24th — Capital-Efficient Growth: Join Richard Lin (Managing Director at Metropolitan Partners Group), George Alifragis (Senior VP at Metropolitan Partners Group), Lindsay Cordell (Senior GTM Analyst at GTM Partners), and Sangram Vajre (CEO & Co-Founder of GTM Partners) as they share insights on achieving sustainable and profitable growth. Register here.
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