Welcome to the Nearbound Daily Newsletter—the #1 partnerships newsletter in the world keeping thousands of partner professionals on top of the latest industry principles, tactics, and trends. nearbound.com is a project of Reveal. Join the movement here. And ask NearBot a question here.

PRINCIPLES

Fundamentals > specifics

As a general rule, it's best to focus on the fundamentals.

Mastering core principles helps you adapt to new situations and quickly grasp specific details.

When choosing what to learn, go for knowledge that applies broadly rather than being tied to one specific area. Aim for principles that work across different fields and contexts.

This way, your foundational knowledge will be useful no matter what changes come your way.

For example, mastering a fundamental of partnering could look like:

• Learning how to map your customer's journey and understanding why it's important
• Learning how to think like an executive and align with your stakeholders
• Learning how to align business objectives with partnerships objectives

And contrastly, mastering a specific area could look like:

• Mastering account mapping filters
• Building killer pitch decks
• Reaching out to potential partners, cold

Mastering fundamentals makes you adaptable when inevitable technological and market changes occur.

TACTICS

Get the final signature with partners

A few months ago, Reveal's Partnership team was trying to help Sales close a deal in the final stages.

Problem:

Neither the Partnership team nor the Sales team could tell if they were heading in the right direction because despite having the approval to sign the contract, the company was ghosting the Sales team.

Solution:

The Partner team dove into Reveal to find which existing partners had a relationship with the company (filter used: "is a customer of").

After a little digging, they learned that the POC of the partner company had just gotten a new job. However, thanks to the strength of the relationship prior to his job change, they asked for intel regarding the company.

They asked three questions:

1. What's going on in the organization?
2. Are we talking to the right people?
3. What's your overall take?

And learned information nothing else—not LinkedIn or Google—could give them:

• The person the Sales team was talking to had no decision-making power
• The company's org-chart
• Who the decision-makers were
• The 2024 focus of the deal influencer (C-Suite) was all about partnerships

Actioning this intel:

After the Sales team was aware of this intel, they reached out to the right deal influencer by requesting an intro through Reveal to the existing contact they were talking to, and involved and engaged the right people during the Sales process. 

Based on the pain points and the focus of the C-Suite, the Sales team built a personalized pitch and clear next steps, resulting in a closed won deal. 

How you can leverage this play:

1. Get familiar with your Sales team's rhythm of business and priorities.
2. Find problems partners can solve: stuck deals, ghosting, access to decision-makers, or influence.
3. Orchestrate a solution, making both your partners and Sellers heroes in the process.

Read two more plays like this, here.

READ OF THE DAY

Hanging onto customers has never been harder

Jay McBain (Chief Analyst of Channels, Partnerships, and Ecosystems at Canalys) is known for saying, "Every company is becoming a technology company."

This article published by INC. and written by Howard Tullman (General Managing Partner, G2T3V and Chicago High Tech Investors) validates his point and emphasizes the importance of partners in this shift.

In it, Tullman explains that Amazon is the leader in giving customers what they want, the way they want it and everyone else is playing catch-up.

Speed, ease of access, and convenience have been the dominant differentiators of success in online retail, but he claims three new drivers for success will increasingly separate the winners and losers.

What are these new drivers for success?

1. The clearer the offer, the fewer the choices, the quicker the buyer decides.
2. Brand loyalty is the best tool for overcoming decision confusion, reluctance, and fatigue.
3. Price is rarely the final determinant in most online transactions anyway. 

Here's Tillman's point:

In the old, pre-web days, consumers had many needs and few choices. It was a local seller's market. 

Today, the whole world is just a click away and buyers have infinite choices but little time, and even less loyalty.

Even then, consumers whose expectations are perpetually progressive will continue to ask "what have you done for me lately" and will seek out the best and most effortless experiences - regardless of the provider.

Small businesses must move online, and large businesses must learn to compete with other large businesses like Amazon on quality and efficiency.

Where nearbound comes into play: 

Partners are the best way to surround buyers with trust and value.

In a world where every company becomes a technology company, success doesn't happen alone. Every company becomes an integrated piece of customers' solutions.

Partners will:

• Increase product quality.
• Enhance buyer experiences.
• Create use-case-specific clarity.
• Sell directly to customers in their watering holes.
• Build trust through every interaction.

Put simply, partners help you become the best because as Tillman puts it,

If you want your customers to keep coming back, you've got to try to be the best in the business and Amazon is currently the gold standard.

Read the article here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Stuff you don't want to miss!

• TOMORROW—May 29th—Roles on a Partnerships Team—Join Antonio Hidalgo (Senior Director of the Channel Programs at Megaport) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) where they will dive deep into the various roles crucial to building a successful partnerships ecosystem. Register here.
• May 30th—Driving Revenue Through Technology Partners—Learn from Kelly Sarabyn (Head of Product Partnerships Advocacy and Enablement at HubSpot), Asher Matthew (CEO at Partnership Leaders), and Robbie Ptaszynski (Director of Strategic Pursuits and Priority ISV Co-sell at Microsoft) as they discuss the revenue impact partnerships teams can have and evolving from re-selling to co-selling. Register here.
• June 4th—Happy Customers Festival—Join Arrows, HubSpot, Reveal, PandaDoc, Grain, Wistia, Aircall and thousands of GTM leaders to learn how to unlock the full potential of HubSpot. Register here.
• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

You're all caught up.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED ON NEARBOUND.COM

• Expanding into New Markets with Nearbound by Andrea Vallejo
• The GTM Bowtie: How To Overlay Partners Across the Complete Customer's Journey Part One by Ella Richmond and Will Taylor
• How GTM Leaders are Tracking Nearbound Metrics
• Your Deal Isn't Dead, It's Just Not Partner-Led by Andrea Vallejo
• How Sendcloud Achieved an 80% Increase in New Leads Sourced From Partners Using Reveal with Wilson Favre-Delerue
• The Elephant in the Ecosystem by Chris Messina
• The Era of Ecosystem Orchestration is Finally Here by James Hodgkinson
  
• How Fullstory Builds their Tech Partnerships Program with Reveal’s Help to Increase Their Renewal Rate by 14% with Nigel Liaw
  
• Nearbound and the Rhythm of Business by Jared Fuller
  
• Rhythm of Business Checklist by Jared Fuller
• How Pigment Increased Win Rates 5-10% with a Nearbound Overlay & Reveal with Wendy Wen
• How to use Reveal for Co-marketing Events
• Unleashing the Power of Nearbound: The Stats You Need to Know by Andrea Vallejo
• Howdy Partners #72: Psychology of Team-Wide Buy-In: The Answer to Partner Program Success with Maurits Pieper
• Mastering the Nearbound Rhythm of the Business: Key Takeaways from the Nearbound Book by Andrea Vallejo

See you tomorrow

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