October 10, 2024
Issue #675
Partnerships don’t always start on equal footing, and that’s okay! Sometimes, you have to put in extra work to prove your value.
Just ask Klaviyo, whose early hustle with Shopify laid the foundation for a game-changing partnership. Learn how doing the legwork upfront can pay off big in the long run. And remember — partnerships thrive when you’re willing to put in the effort first!
PRINCIPLES
Not-so-instant karma
“We often think of [partnerships] like a rope. And if you’re going to keep it tight, you need both sides pulling on it. I also think when you’re building partnerships, you should expect to have to do a lot of the legwork yourself when you start. I think sometimes it can sound good. It’s like, yeah, we’ll agree in principle and then magic will happen. But that’s not really how it works.” —Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki
There are countless factors that go into successful partnerships, and in an ideal world, each partner is putting in equal effort and resources for equal benefit. But in most cases, that isn’t how it starts.
Maybe you’ve identified a partner with a nearly identical ICP and tech that will seamlessly fill your own product gaps, but that company isn’t convinced or has other priorities. Or the partner you want to work with has a much bigger ecosystem and isn’t sold that you can pull your weight.
As Andrew Bialecki says, you can’t just go in with shared goals and a good pitch — in many cases, you have to be willing to do the lion’s share of work up front to demonstrate what kind of partner you can be. And you need patience, because this might take time. Then when it clicks, that’s when the mutual wins start to happen and the early groundwork pays off.
TACTICS
How Klaviyo earned the partnership that launched its ELG momentum
Marketing automation platform Klaviyo is a huge B2B SaaS success story, with nearly $1B in ARR and the market strength to break the SaaS industry’s two-year IPO dry spell when it went public in September 2023.
Klaviyo is also a Ecosystem-Led Growth superstar that has used the power of its partnerships to evolve and grow. But the company’s first big ecosystem win, with eCommerce giant Shopify, came out of a gamble. Klaviyo’s chips were its superfan SMB customers that had a lot in common with Shopify’s biggest users.
CEO Andrew Bialecki recently told the story in a conversation with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin. As shared in SaaStr’s recap:
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For Klaviyo, they realized Shopify merchants were a great fit. So Andrew and his co-founder set a goal to get 10-20 raving fans to show that data and those reviews to Shopify to get them to stop and take a look.
Case in point, Andrew made a bet in the early days and his thesis was that customers were calling into the Shopify support team and asking them questions like, ‘Hey, I’m curious about how to send an abandoned cart or Hey, I have this idea for personalization in marketing. What product would you recommend?’
And so Klaviyo had this belief that Shopify had to answer that question.
Imagine being the person that’s doing customer service at Shopify and answering ‘I don’t know, I’ll get back to you.’
That’s not a good experience.
So Klaviyo had this belief that if they could just say, “Hey, look, we’ve got these super fans” and then share that information back to Shopify team, then the folks on the front line, their sales team, their customer support team could feel comfortable recommending them.
The bet paid off.
In fact, by the time Klaviyo started working more formally with the Shopify partner team, they told Andrew that they already had their customer support team recommending Klaviyo because they realized it made their jobs easier.
From the outside, it might look like Shopify is playing favorites, but from the other side, Shopify has to recommend someone to solve a problem, so why not recommend someone who already has a lot of customer love and is solving real problems?
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When working to get a strategic partnership off the ground, identify what your partner needs that you can provide better than anyone else — but don’t make them take your word for it. Put in the legwork to demonstrate real value to your partner, and you’ll put yourself in the position to get real value in return.
Watch the full SaaStr conversation here.
STUFF YOU CAN'T MISS
- October 10 : The $1B Sales Leadership Methodology —
TODAY
Tune in at 9:30am PT for GTMNow's live training on a framework for high-performing sales managers and leaders. Kevin “KD” Dorsey has built multiple $100MM+ ARR orgs, trained 1500+ sales reps, and more. He'll break down his sales leadership framework.
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.
- November 11-14: Web Summit
70,000 people will gather in Lisbon, Portugal for one of the biggest tech conferences in the world, featuring speakers from leading companies across nearly every technology vertical.
Book your ticket to join them here.
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