Over the course of 2022, partnerships and ecosystems have evolved into a GTM strategy that has the massive opportunity to shift how companies operate.
This year you’ve acquired the know-how on enabling your internal teams (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Product teams), and your C-suite on the value of partnerships.
Despite the macroeconomic downturn, you’ve witnessed the transformation of partnerships from a revenue by function to a revenue channel.
“In 2022, we understood the importance of partnerships as a function. 2023 is going to be the year of the partnership leader, how do we make them successful by equipping them with tools and support (think a global platform for success) to perform as industry benchmarked leaders.” -Asher Mathew, Co-founder of Partnership Leaders.
Throughout the year, key players in the industry like Allan Adler, Jessie Shipman, Jay McBain, and Blake Williams (just to name a few) shared that:
- Referred businesses have 70% higher close rates (Extole).
- When leveraging partnerships and ecosystems, business have 67% higher closed/won rates (Marketo).
- 84% of B2B decision-makers start the buying process with a referral (Saasquatch).
With outbound and inbound getting less efficient and pricey, Nearbound—your ecosystem—is the key to unlocking sustainable revenue.
This community is getting stronger. As a result, hundreds of content pieces were published, numerous events took place and thousands of partnerships were created during the year.
Let’s recap.
Partnerships and Integrations
According to The State of Partner Ops and Programs, 65% of organizations view partnerships as a key element to their business, 77.6% of all organizations, and 92.6% of enterprise companies have a partner program.
We know that year by year the number of partnerships and integrations keeps increasing, and that it’s hard to stay on top of them, but here’s a sneak peek of the partnerships and integrations that were created this year:
Partnership Alert
- SEMRush, an SEO tool, partnered with Stillio, a website screenshot software. This partnership will help users boost their search engine rankings while also getting an overview of their SEO traffic performance.
- HubSpot partnered with Airwallex, a cross-border payment, and financial platform. This partnership will create a connection between banks to reduce the fees for foreign exchange and ease the payment process.
- Salesforce partnered with WhatsApp to help users chat directly with customers, and offer a new way to increase customer engagement, accelerate sales, and drive better customer support outcomes.
Integration Alert
- Gong, a revenue intelligence platform, integrated with Snowflake, a data cloud company to add unfiltered AI-enriched customer data to business analytics to help revenue leaders make data-driven decisions.
- G2, a business software and services reviews platform, integrated with Zoominfo, a multiplatform operating system. This integration will help the sales team build pipeline to take market share, outreach the right targets, tailor messages, and reduce churn risk.
- HubSpot integrated with ClickUp, a task management solution to help remove barriers in pre-sales and post-sales processes and enable teams to turn HubSpot deals into actionable tasks.
A special mention to SmartRecruiters for partnering with KPMG Australia, and Hireflexm and integrating with HackerRank and Foresight.
Events
Nothing beats making connections and learning from the most qualified people in the industry. More than 100 events took place this year, but there were two that marked a turning point for partnerships.
Catalyst
Bringing together more than 400 partnership leaders from around the world, having more than 20 panels, and speakers like Jay McBain, Shawn Li, Justin Forth, and Mary Vue, Catalyst 2022 became the biggest breaking point for writing the next chapter of partnerships and ecosystems.
Hosted by Partnership Leaders and Reveal, the event took place on August 24th and 25th, in Miami, Florida. During these two days, attendees learned how to prove the value of partnerships and obtained the know-how on leveraging API accelerating tech to scale a partner program, harnessing the potential of their ecosystems, and how to partner with major cloud providers.
In 2023, Partnership leaders will be hosting Catalyst in Denver, Colorado from August 21st to 23rd. This time, it will chart new heights for partnerships, with the goal of enabling the partnerships industry to move up in the go-to-market food chain.
Get your Early-Bird tickets here: https://joincatalyst.com/
PL[x] Summit—Partner Led [everything]
With more than 80 sessions, +100 speakers, and +4000 registrants, the PL[x] Summit became the biggest B2B GTM online event.
Organized by PartnerHacker, PartnerStack, and Reveal. The event took place from November 7th to 11th. Each day was dedicated to showcasing how partnerships can help the Product, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams.
Speakers like Allan Adler, Justin Zimmerman, Carina Conaghan, Jay McBain, Jeff Reekers, Margot Mazur, Phil McKennan, R.J. Filipski, Brad Fiedler, Devon Boyd, Avanish Sahai, Marco de Paulis, and Adam Pasch helped to prove that partnerships are key for all organizations.
Content
One silver lining of this economic downturn is that companies and partnership experts didn’t hold their knowledge hostage, they not only shared it during events but also through some great free resources. They shared insights on market data, GTM strategies, and implementing partner programs.
Here are some of the most remarkable pieces of content from the year:
Jared Fuller, JayMcBain, Sunir Shah, Avanish Sahai, Sameer Singh, Adam Michalski, Allan Adler, and Jessie Shipman mapped the entire process of leveraging partnerships from building trust to ecosystem enablement.
HubSpot, Partnership Leaders, and Canalys teamed up to detail the business impact of partner ecosystems. This report shares insights on which partner types organizations prioritize, the factors that contribute to increased partner-driven revenue, how partner technology is purchased, and the current top partner operations and program challenges organizations face.
McKinsey’s article showcases the role of partner ecosystems in a changing GTM environment and guides you through the four critical pivots in a company’s GTM strategy. It explains the importance of the Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams and how can they collaborate with the Partnerships team to scale your business.
Other great free resources are the State of Cloud Marketplaces by Tackle.io, the 2022 G2 Software Buyer Journey by G2, the State of APIs and Integrations at 400 SaaS by Pandium, the Channel Partner Program Templates by Allbound, the GoToEcosystem by Allan Adler, and the New Era of PLG Growth: The Age of Connected Work by OpenView.
And as a bonus find here Reveal’s free resources like the Collaborative Growth Academy, The Ultimate Partner Program Guide, and The Nearbound handbook.
What Will 2023 Look Like?
Next year won’t be easier than this one, with the current economic climate, high-interest rates, high inflation, and uncertainty, there will be a bigger focus on sourcing pipeline and revenue. This will create a massive opportunity for partnership teams since all GTM teams will want to turn a profit as quickly as possible. It will be the perfect opportunity to showcase the multiplier effect that partnership ecosystems can provide.
“The closer that you, as a Partnership Leader, can get to sourcing revenue for your business, the more you can entrench the partnerships organisation as a critical lever towards profitability.”-Daniel Lancioni, Global Senior Director of Partnerships.
Since companies will search for that continued and sustainable growth, ecosystems will evolve, and teams, processes, and technology will continue on their fast growth trajectory. Partnership ecosystems will be the support center for companies throughout the next 12 to 18 months.
“The need for increased, measurable, predictable and scalable revenue in a faster timeline than ever before is upon us, and we, as an entire industry have a huge opportunity to showcase the power of ecosystems” -Jo Wright, VP of Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success.
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