PRINCIPLES

Jason Lemkin’s advice to partner people

In a passionate presentation, Jason Lemkin shared the top 10 mistakes he sees in the VP of Sales hiring process today.

Click here to watch the session.

Starting out, Jason’s #1 mistake was this: 

Hiring a VP of Sales who never understood his product.

Let’s expand that to partner pros.

The biggest mistake you can make as a partner pro is not understanding your product and organization.

Partner pros need to be like CEOs because implementing a nearbound overlay only works if you understand what you’re overlaying.

You’ve got to know your product and you’ve got to understand how your business operates.

That will allow you to:

✅ Know which partners to go after

✅ Construct a stronger JVP

✅ Come up with ideas for collaborative efforts

✅ Identify Black Swan moments

Hiring anyone—a partner person or VP—who doesn’t get your product is a recipe for disaster.

So, if you’re a partner person, save yourself (and your leadership) some trouble.

Become an expert in your offering and your customer.

Listen to the full session with Justin Lemkin to hear the other 9 mistakes or click here to hear how to think like a CEO.

TACTICS

Nearbound from the VC lens

VC track records suck.

In fact, only 8% of all funded startups succeed—proof that founders need more from their partners.

That’s why Justin Gray (Co-Founder & Managing Director), Josh Wagner (Co-Founder & Partner), and Sean Kester (Partner) are doing it differently with In Revenue Capital. With decades of industry experience, they want to help companies build a scalable growth engine without sacrificing the customer journey.

They’re doing this through two methods:

1. Go-to-market

2. Partner-led growth

Go-to-market

Go-to-market is underrated.

It’s how companies bring their products to a market and deliver value to customers.

In the early 2000s, go-to-market was dominated by outbound. In the 2010s, inbound was popularized as another useful go-to-market motion. Now, to separate signal from noise, companies need to layer nearbound into their go-to-market strategy,

When researching venture capital, Justin Gray realized lots of companies have found great product-market fit, but many are still struggling to nail down an effective go-to-market.

And get this: the biggest disparity between where VCs believe they’re offering value and where founders see value is GTM.

If you’re a partner pro, the GTM problem is a huge problem you can help solve in your company.

Partner-led growth

The second pillar of their approach is partner-led growth. What partnerships really do is:

surround your customer with a best-in-class product or service.

Partnerships are about value creation.

Partnerships are remarkable to anyone who understands them — name something else that’ll get you fast, efficient growth, while not sacrificing the customer journey.

The In Revenue Capital team is so bought-in to this growth philosophy, Josh shared:

If there’s not at least the bare minimum desire to look into a partner ecosystem that’s untapped, we’re not going to invest.

That’s wild! Here are three esteemed industry vets going all-in on nearbound as the best way to grow a company in 2023.

They left partner pros with one last piece of advice: start small, and don’t overlook the little things.

Listen to the full session here.

MEME OF THE DAY

When Taylor Swift is in the stands, the Chiefs don’t lose. The lesson — bring your partners to the big stuff.

Thanks Franz Josef-Schrepf for the meme!

FUN EVENTS & STUFF YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

• 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.

• Dec 13, 2 PM EST —Navigating Change: Dealing with Uncertainty, Restructurings, and Its Aftermath— Join Faisal Mirza (Director in Strategic Partnerships at Adobe) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) and they discuss how to manage through changes in the organization and deal with its aftermath. Register here.

• March 19-20th — Affiverse’s Amplify Summit — Join them for a 2-day virtual event to help affiliate businesses amplify their performance. Learn about digital, partnership, and affiliate marketing. Register here.

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