What is Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG)? | Drive Revenue with Partner Ecosystems

Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG) is the go-to-market motion that focuses on partner ecosystems as the primary way to attract, convert, and grow customer relationships.

The power of ELG

ELG turns your partner ecosystem into your company’s most efficient and scalable source of revenue growth.
The customer relationships it generates have higher contract values, close faster, see higher win rates, and expand more meaningfully over time.

The stats behind Ecosystem-Led deals:

More likely to close

faster time to close

less likely to churn

Transform your funnel with ELG

Target

Identify new addressable market via your ecosystem

30,000

companies prioritize with data

Engage

Uncover new pipeline with Ecosystem-Qualified Leads

53%

ELG opps are 53% more likely to close

Differentiate

Segment and personalize based on ecosystem signals and insights

48%

ELG deals have 48% larger ACV

Acquire

Accelerate deals with ecosystem motions and recommended plays

46%

Deals close 46% faster using ELG playbooks

Retain

Drive retention with “better together” partner value

58%

ELG-sourced customers are 58% less likely to churn

Expand

Build additional value for the customer with relevant partner offerings

48%

ELG deals have 48% larger ACV

Target

Identify new addressable market via your ecosystem

Engage

Uncover new pipeline with Ecosystem Qualified Leads

Differentiate

Segment & personalize based on ecosystem signals and insights

Acquire

Segment & personalize based on ecosystem signals and insights

Retain

Drive retention with “better together” partner value

Expand

Build additional value for the customer with relevant partner offerings

30,000

companies prioritize with data

53%

MORE LIKELY TO CLOSE ELG OPPS.

48%

Larger ACV WITH
ELG DEALS

46%

faster close time using ELG PlayBooks

58%

MORE LIKELY TO CLOSE ELG OPPS.

48%

Larger ACV WITH ELG DEALS

They’ve gone all in on Ecosystem-Led Growth and scored big wins

Meet the leaders turning partner data and collaboration into new revenue

“If you want to get the money out of the house, you can take a battering ram and knock in the front door, or you can ask somebody on the inside to unlock it for you. Crossbeam shows you who’s in the house, and what they’re doing in there.”

Blaine Trainor

Global Vice President, Partnerships and Alliances, commercetools

“When I first used Crossbeam, I thought ‘this is the freakin’ coolest thing I’ve ever seen’. It accelerates the time to value, because the value is in the conversation. Ecosystem-Led Growth is about building these relationships that really make a difference throughout the marketplace."

Keith McManigal

Former Sales Director, Netskope

“My belief is there is no such thing as a true inbound lead. Someone who comes to your website to request a demo is doing it for some reason. When we dig into our inbound leads, 85-90% of the time, they came in because a partner mentioned us to that prospect.”

Don Otvos

Former VP of Business Development and Alliances, LeanData

ELG Playbooks

Ecosystem-Led Sales

Check out Ecosystem-Led Sales

How Gong x Chili Piper’s pipeline-acceleration partnership fuels their customers’ sales — and their own

Gong and Chili Piper’s new integration gives their customers’ sales cycle a kick; co-selling it is their own secret ingredient for accelerating deals.

Stop Increasing Your Sales Activities. With ELG, You Need Fewer Opportunities to Hit Quota

Using traditional sales tactics in. down market, you need 125% more open opportunities to hit quota. Using ELG, sales teams need fewer open opportunities to hit quota thanks to an increase in win rate and ACV and a decrease in sales cycle length.

Don’t Waste Your Prospect’s Time on Discovery. Speed Up the Sales Qualification Process With Partners.

Are you speaking with the right stakeholder? What’s your prospect’s budget? These are questions partners in your ecosystem can help answer before you get on your first sales call.

Ecosystem-Led Marketing

Check out ELG Marketing

9 Micro Co-Marketing Motions for Warming Up a Partnership

How to softly engage in a partnership before committing to a year-long co-marketing timeline.

The Co-Marketing Flip: Get Strategic With Your Partner Marketing Six Months Into the Partnership

Mike Stocker’s partnership maturity curve can help you pinpoint when and why to flip your co-marketing from foundational to proactively driving integration adoption.

Crawl, Walk, Run: The Co-Marketing Framework That Will Keep You Sane

How Twitter, Unbounce, and Sendoso execute co-marketing campaigns that don't overwhelm their teams.

Ecosystem-Led Customer Success

Check out Ecosystem-Led Customer Success

Your Best Deals Could Come From Your Existing Accounts. Here are 3 Ways to Win With Customers.

We analyzed a cohort of 300 Crossbeam customers and learned that there’s $86 Billion in open opportunities on their existing accounts that their partners can help close. When sales cycles are long and costly, customer expansions and upsells could help you win more and spend less.

Want to Improve Activation Rates? It’s Time to Co-Onboard With Partners

Partners can help you boost activation rates among your customers. For example: Your tech partners can include your integration in their onboarding presentations and encourage adoption through in-app messaging.

How Gainsight leverages partner ecosystems to supercharge customer success

Discover how Gainsight leverages partner ecosystems to boost customer success, increase retention, and drive growth through integrations, ecosystem intel, and ELG event strategies.

Ecosystem Operations

Check out Ecosystem Ops

ELG and the revenue team: How to break down silos so every GTM function wins

In a workshop at ELG Con, Pavilion’s SVP, Marketing and Growth Kathleen Booth led sales, marketing, customer success, and partnership leaders to envision a cross-functional ecosystem-led success story.

Your ELG buy-in playbook: How to bring your org’s key players on board

Leveraging an ecosystem to drive sales can only thrive as a joint effort with leadership and every GTM function. Here's some help to bring them onto Team ELG.

Measure and prove: How PartnerOps drives SaaS success

Get into the nitty-gritty of PartnerOps and learn how to define PartnerOps, establish your partner operations, track the right metrics, and leverage the right tech stack.

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