Video Transcription
Partnership and alliances can make a huge difference in growing your professional services organization through strong referrals and qualified deals. But nothing happens automagically in partnership. Just because you sign a contract doesn’t mean your pipeline will suddenly be busting with opportunity. Partnerships require a unique approach, and if you’re thinking of making partnerships a core component of your business growth, you will need to radically rethink the role of marketing in your organization.
Hi, I’m Jennifer Zick, Founder and CEO of Authentic®. Our community of fractional CMOs helps growing businesses to Overcome Random Acts of Marketing® and confidently take the next right step to build revenue.
We work with many professional services firms, some who have grown all through the efforts of their executive networks, referrals and the retention of great clients, but who see great opportunity in partnering with large tech providers or other partnerships to create qualified leads.
I myself spent 15 years of my career in partner and channel marketing on the professional services side in collaboration and partnership with salesforce.com clearly a technology giant, and I’ve learned a few things along the way as we’ve helped our clients navigate those relationships as well.
What I’ll tell you is that marketing efforts take a completely different tact when you’re working in partnership, but the fundamentals of great marketing, which is clear messaging, consistent storytelling, deep relationship building and exchange of value are still true. The thing is, you need to change the teeter totter in your business.
If 80 or more percent of your marketing efforts today are going to direct digital demand and demand creation through your existing sales efforts and qualifying those leads as they come through and moving them through the pipe, you’ll have to think differently about how you work with a partner who can actually open doors for you that are more qualified and further in the sales process, you’ll need to start thinking of your partnerships as a key stakeholder relationship that you need to manage from a marketing perspective. And that means creating content that serves them well so they can open the doors for you to those new client opportunities.
In most cases, when a partnership really gets humming along, you’ll need to shift that 80% of your marketing investment over to 80% investment in serving your channel partners well to create new opportunities and then cascading those marketing content pieces, whether they’re client success stories, thought leadership, whatever that might be, into your direct go to market strategy rather than the other way around.
So if you need help figuring out how to make partnerships really work to create high quality opportunities that set you apart and set you up for a lot of new revenue and you need to know how to balance your limited resources of marketing, spending, leadership, execution, all the things that go into making your marketing program work. We’re here to help.
We understand the dynamics of continuing the revenue that you have today, maintaining those strong relationships, and slowly but thoughtfully transitioning your marketing dollars and your marketing efforts from the balance of go to market selling to partner and channel selling.
It can be a really powerful lever for your business, and we’re here to help you make those transitional steps in a way that builds confidence and results. Reach out. We’d love to learn more about your business and help you take the next right step to build revenue.
