The Nearbound Daily is now officially the ELG Insider Daily!
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PRINCIPLES
Collaboration without the chaos
Ecosystem-Led Growth is inherently cross-functional, which is why we focus a good chunk of our ELG advice, tactics, and thought leadership on communication and collaboration among go-to-market functions.
A lot of the time, effective cross-functional collaboration relies on aligning goals and incentives and focusing on the objectives you have in common with other teams so you can work together to meet them.
It’s also really important, however, to be conscientious about what you don’t have in common – what are your respective day-to-day responsibilities that you must spend time on or that may even conflict with each other’s goals? How can you initiate a collaborative effort or knowledge exchange that respects and supports another team’s critical work?
For example, customer success managers talk to current customers all day long, so they’re other functions’ go-to for identifying and communicating with customers for go-to-market tactics.
But a key element of a CSM’s job is to make customers’ lives easier, meaning being extremely disciplined and selective about asking customers for favors and advocacy, even if the result of that advocacy would help their cross-functional partners and the business overall.
The best thing you can do as a cross-functional partner to another team is to reduce friction or conflict for that team as much as possible. Think about how you can do your own information gathering and self-serve before you go to another team, so that when you do, their workload and/or stress is lessened. When they have a similar need, they’ll remember that support.
TACTICS
How to communicate effectively with your customer success team about partnerships
You start typing a message to your customer success manager (CSM). You’re struggling to find the right words and end up with two options sitting in your Slack draft. You turn to your cat and say, “Which of these is better?”
Option A:
Hey, Amy, we need to drive these integration adoption numbers up among your customers.
Option B:
Hey, Amy, I’ve pulled together a list of your customers who are actively using our partner’s product (I checked with the partner and confirmed!). I know some of these are new customers… This integration will help them get to value faster.
Your cat gives you a look of disdain. “Obviously, the second one. And where are your pleases and thank you’s?”
Option B clearly shows how your request will help your CSM hit specific goals tied to their key performance indicators (KPIs) and that you have their customers’ needs top of mind.
Jai Shroff, Senior Customer Success Manager at Freshworks, says working with partners has helped his team retain customers who were likely to churn, upsell the accounts for more annual recurring revenue (ARR), and sign them for multi-year deals.
“If your company is scaling, let’s say north of $100M in ARR, partnerships is the only way to reach that billion dollar dream. Inside sales is not going to get you there,” says Shroff.
We’ve developed a little exercise to help you communicate the value of partnerships more effectively and get your entire team driving adoption. Get your pen and paper ready.
To note: Depending on the size and structure of your company’s org chart, the CS role may encompass onboarding and quota-related responsibilities. For the purpose of this blog post, we’re treating the CS role as one who handles the onboarding process, manages the remainder of the customer lifecycle, and supports upsells and expansions.
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The partnership ask: “Could you identify integration adoption opportunities for your new customers and recommend the integrations in your “new customer kickoff” meetings?”
What your Customer Success team thinks: How do I actually ensure this effort will provide value to the customer? Are the integrations critical to the onboarding process, or will they distract from helping the customer hit their first milestone? Which integrations are best to recommend?
What you should say instead: For your upcoming customer kickoffs, these are the integrations we think would be most beneficial. These are the use cases and successes we’ve seen for similar customers. Are there any other integrations or use cases we should prioritize in our roadmap for these customers?
Tip:
Bring thoughtful integration recommendations to your CS team to help them prepare, and listen carefully to their feedback. Show how you can provide value through integrations at onboarding and throughout the customer lifecycle. The earlier you can drive adoption for your customers, the more value they’ll get out of your product, and the longer they’ll stay.
If your CS team manages the onboarding process for new customers, sync with each CSM to discuss their upcoming “customer kickoff meetings”. Help them determine which integrations could have the biggest impact on each of their new customers’ first 30-90 days using your product. Make sure your CS team has success stories, case studies, and all of the information they need to effectively communicate how the integration will help the customer achieve their business goals.
The partnership ask: “Could you drive integration adoption up during the onboarding process?”
What your Customer Success team thinks: This is potentially a big ask on top of my regular responsibilities. Should this actually be my priority? I’ll need to spend extra time identifying the best integrations to recommend, on top of the adoption I already drive. And how can I be sure the additional integrations will add value and not distract from the customers’ goals?
What you should say instead: Let’s increase adoption at onboarding — These are the integrations that lessen the time-to-first-value (TTFV) for these types of customers. For example, for your customers in the “customer data platform” category, this is how we’re seeing successful integration usage. And for customers using X, Y, and Z tools in their tech stacks, these are the use cases we’re seeing. Let me know if there are any other use cases we should prioritize, or how I can help support your new customers hitting their first milestones.
Tip:
Identify customers who have seen success hitting specific milestones in your product using integrations, and help your CS team replicate those successes for other customers in the same category. If managing the onboarding process is part of your CSMs’ responsibilities, then they’re actively working to help their new customers complete specific activities and achieve their first business goals using your product.
Identify integrations that can help support hitting those milestones. Listen to feedback from your CS team about each customer’s pain points and needs, and prioritize recommending, building, and customizing integrations that can help solve pain points for your CSMs and their customers.
Learn more about getting ELG buy-in and adoption from your customer success team.
FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
The Future of Revenue survey
For the second year, we’re partnering with Pavilion to gather insights from go-to-market leaders for the Future of Revenue survey.
It’s a quick 7-minute survey aimed at understanding the strategies and trends shaping the industry.
Your perspective would be incredibly valuable, and as a thank you, you’ll receive early access to the report before it’s officially released this fall.
Share your experience here.
UPCOMING EVENT
INBOUND 24
Join us in Boston this September at the industry's leading event for thought leaders across marketing, sales, customer success, revenue operations, and beyond.
If you want to meet the newly merged Crossbeam team and get the most up-to-date intel on our merger with Reveal, pre-book time with the team at the event.
Stuff you don't want to miss!
- TODAY, August 28th — GTM is Better Together — Join GTM Partners, Demandbase, Clari, G2, MadKudu, ON24, TechnologyAdvice, Totango + Catalyst Software, Vidyard, ZoomInfo, and an elite group of leaders to discuss around what a modern, enterprise, GTM team and tech stack should look like and how it can be best optimized for efficiency and scalability. Get your ticket here.
- TODAY, August 28th — ABM’s Value to Sales — Learn from Nate Spurgess, Demand Marketing Manager at Service Express, Nancy Naretto, Head of Global Brand and Marketing at QAD, and Mac Conn, VP Commercial Sales at 6sense, how to sell your Sales leader on ABM and why it adds value to Sales. Save your spot here.
- September 10th — RevOps Playbook for High-Growth Companies — Tessa Whittaker, VP of Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo, and Mollie Bodensteiner, VP of Operations at Sound will share how to start and identify your RevOps approach. Organized by RevGenius. Save your spot here.
- October 14 -16 — GTM2024 — Join Pavilion at The Fairmont in Austin, TX to get ahead on your 2025 GTM strategy, learn about market trends, and boost your GTM strategy. Get your ticket here.
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