6 Ways to Nurture B2B Partnerships

A partnership works when both parties are aligned on the nature of the relationship and partnership end goals. Litmus, for example, partners with all the big marketing automation vendors—Oracle, Salesforce, HubSpot—and that relationship helps Litmus scale, tapping into new audiences to teach them how to leverage their partners tools, and help their partners run impressive joint email campaigns while they’re at it. To achieve such a symbiotic pairing, it starts with establishing clear, transparent objectives and constantly measuring against those goals via quarterly business reviews or regular check-ins.

Building trust is another foundational element in partnerships. As Denise shared, “If you don’t have the fundamentals of trust, you’re not going to be able to drive pipeline together. You’re not going to be able to have one voice in the market together.” One way that Appian over-delivers for its smaller reseller partners who may not have a dedicated marketing team is by offering them “campaigns in a box” as well as access to Appian’s creative team. A great way to solidify a strong partnership.

This is a simple as putting your money where you mouth is. If you want your partners to invest time learning your solution and selling it to their customers, then you’ll want to support these efforts with marketing development funds (MDF). These funds express commitment and if spent correctly, will benefit both parties. And the bigger the partnership, the bigger the MDF.

Competing against Amazon, Google and Microsoft, Wasabi has seen some impressive growth while raising millions in funding. Wasabi is doing what its competition isn’t—leveraging partnerships to disrupt the market. Wasabi’s Technology Alliance partnership program adds about 350 new channel partners a month, and after two years of existence, the program now has over 5,000 partnerships. How do they manage it? Through a super simple partner portal and simple positioning, something the hot cloud storage brand does best. As Michael explains: “It has to be super simple in terms of the value proposition and the message. If it isn’t then complexity enters, it just adds time, and ultimately can kill deals.”

Active partners should be in the know about go-to-market changes. If you roll out a new product, your partners should be the first to know about this and part of the launch plan. Denise discussed how, when Appian creates a new thought leadership piece, the brand is more than happy to let partners chop it up, add their own branding, and feature Appian jointly: “We work really hard to enable the partners so that they can carry the message over to the market and their customer base.”

A successful partnership program will result in more pipeline, faster conversion rates, and a whole new level of brand evangelism—so that’s where you want to measure, ideally using multi-touch attribution. Of Wasabi’s 5,000 partners, over 93% of them actively produce revenue for Wasabi, which Michael says they monitor through KPIs and bring to other key partner conversations. And as he explains, they won’t be slowing down on the PX front anytime soon: “Especially as an emerging company, we continue to have to invest heavily upfront in them, and then the returns come back. Our pipeline conversion rate is the perfect proof of how that investment is paid off.”