Partners are not your glorified BDRs

In the past, a lot of organizations confined partnerships to pipeline generation.

Neither the executive team nor the partner professional understood how partners could drive impact at every stage of the buyer’s journey so partner teams became “a glorified BDR team.”

But here's the realization that matters as we enter the Nearbound Era:

Partnerships is not a department. A true nearbound partnerships strategy is an overlay to the entire business.

TACTICS

Overlay partners to the attract stage of the bowtie

Purpose of the awareness/attract stage: To drive greater exposure of your company and solution inside of an existing ecosystem.

How partners help:

2x the reach
Broader expertise creates more value for customers
Tap into existing trust, the hardest currency to develop in an ecosystem

Which department(s) are most involved:

Marketing

Partner types:

Media partners
Communities
Influencers
Key Opinion Leaders
Content-level co-marketing tech partners

Why partners are critical to this phase

The left-most side of the bowtie, the awareness stage, also referred to as “top of funnel,” casts the widest net.

In the awareness stage, potential buyers become aware of your brand, product, or service with one goal: to learn about the ecosystem.

These marketers help customers succeed by creating content like articles, podcasts, webinars, and whitepapers that are general but informative like trends or industry-related information. Then, they distribute them as far and wide as possible.

In the past, it was normal for marketers to take a company-first, conversion-heavy approach to their top-of-funnel content. They’d start with the question, “What do we want to say,” but today company-first content doesn’t cut through the noise.

Today, the best brand-building content answers the question, “How can we serve our ecosystem and customer” and it does this by partnering with those your buyer already trusts, those who have already gotten to the promised land your customers are seeking.

Customers guard their attention and only consume immediately relevant and valuable content. That’s why partners are critical to a company’s success at this stage of the bowtie.

Partners shift the focus from the company to the customer and ecosystem, expand reach, and enhance the value of content by providing broader expertise.

That sounds nice in theory, but how do you implement it?

Step one: Use Reveal

Here are the ways Reveal can help in the aware/attract stage of the bowtie:

Determine which partners to co-market with
Validate the fit of your potential co-marketing and cross-pollination efforts
Identify specific account lists to target with your program
Understand audience demographics
Expose additional data (engagement data, health scores, etc.) to further filter targeted lists

Learn more.

Step two: Action nearbound

Plays in the aware/attract phase have broad appeal. They’re often free and accessible, making it easy for people to share.

Plays include:

Articles on broad topics
Industry trends
General data visualizations
Podcasts with well-known guests
Paid ads
Press releases
Free e-books and guides with general content
General templates and checklists

Keep reading to learn how to overlay partners to the rest of the bowtie.

Keep reading the article here.

FROM THE ECOSYSTEM

CEO of Retention.com on the nearbound future of the BDR

Two words. BDR influencers.

Adam Robinson believes,

In a world where prospects are doing their own research and the best, most authentic content is being served to the most people, who is doing demand creation and demand capture?

He believes BDRs will build audiences around a set of ideas. They will become known and trusted in an ecosystem, and use that trust to surround their potential buyers with influence.

Whether or not you believe Adam is correct about the future of BDRs, he's right about one thing: in the Nearbound Era, pipeline is created when you surround people with those they trust.

Reply to this email with your thoughts and we'll include them in next week's dailies.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Stuff you don't want to miss!

TODAY—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.
TOMORROW—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

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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