Looking for a way to drive more leads and sales? When it comes to disrupting your market, building a strong partner ecosystem might be your best bet. Trusted partners that speak highly of your brand encourage warm leads, allow for co-branded content creation and educational opportunities that elevate audiences, and above all — act as an external sounding board for decision making.
Yet, building a partner program doesn’t happen overnight. To create a strong web of companies that have your back, taking the time to foster and nurture relationships is key.
If your company doesn’t currently have a partner ecosystem in place, today is the day to start laying the foundation and Overpass’ very own Director of Channel Partnerships, Tanyette Colon, is ready to help you get started.
During this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Tanyette to discuss why partner ecosystems are vital for startup success and how you can begin to fill the gap within your company.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Tanyette:
Tanyette Colon is not only the voice, heart, and brains behind Overpass' strong partnerships with some of the biggest names in tech today, but she is also the founder of Emboldened Entrepreneur & InFUUSE. With her 20+ years of experience in business and her partner genius, Tanyette has built ever-lasting relationships with companies worldwide using techniques and knowledge that some companies today forget or don't know how to implement.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Welcome back to remote sales live. I'm Jonathan Fisher, your host, glad to have you with us today. One of the most important ways to grow any business services or technology company is through channel partners. Whether through individual consultants or enterprise enterprise initiatives, it's a fantastic way to scale quickly and establish a stable channel of business for the long term. Yet nearly half of all SaaS companies have no established channel partner program of any kind. What's the holdup? And what does it take to fill that gap if that's your company? Well, to help us dive into that important topic today is our very own Tanyette Colon with an incredibly diverse background, which includes hosting a sports radio show in Chicago sales and business development roles for several prominent companies, and consulting with international governments. Tanyette is an accomplished author, business consultant, advisory board member, and she's the founder of the tech company infuse a SaaS communications platform. And best of all, from our point of view, she's the head of channel partnerships here at overpass selling yet, what a great pleasure to have you here on the show with us today.
Tanyette Colon 1:14
It's so fun to be on this side of the screen I'm usually attending. So yeah, I'm a little bit nervous. I won't lie.
Jonathan Fischer 1:23
Because you're passionate about it. We're gonna have a great time together today. Yeah, the quick reminder to our audience, hey, we're gonna have our live q&a At the end of the show. Don't forget that this is a live program. So go right ahead and start sending your questions in via chat. We'll get you some live answers right here right now with our guests at the end of the show.
So Tanyette, let's lead off with what you do in your role as head of channel partnerships, or partner ecosystems as you'd like to see it here at overpass.
Tanyette Colon 1:51
Yeah, channel partnerships is and that's the first thing I learned when I started delving into the world of partnerships. There's so much like the tech world, right? There's so many acronyms, so many different titles, your head swirling as to what is what, by the end of it, because then there's like interpretation that is attached to it. But my whole position here with overpass is to create a partner ecosystem that's thriving, both for the partners that are within it, as well as our customers. So that's really the center point of everything. And when people ask, well, what is an ecosystem? I wrote about this yesterday on LinkedIn, the best example of an ecosystem is nature, right? It's diverse, it's complex. But when when all points connect, everyone's thriving within that ecosystem. So there is no true separation. So you can shift that to business right, as an analogy, that the whole idea behind any ecosystem that you're building should be for the good of all parts involved. So yeah, that's my that was.
Jonathan Fischer 2:56
Yeah, I love that. That's really good stuff. And I want to dive deeper into that. But I think your background is also worth mentioning just a little bit, you have an interesting, as I mentioned in the intro, rather diverse background, there's some experiences that you had, in your previous work and consulting, that have I think you've shared with me have shaped your philosophy of a channel partner ecosystem. Could you tell us a little about one story in particular was really of interest to me, you worked with the Norwegian government? Tell us about that.
Tanyette Colon 3:23
Yeah. And that was less about consulting Catholic. I'm a very passionate driven individual outside of my business life, that I care about whether that's how diversity and inclusion, ability based on personal experiences with fracking and energy development that was happening in the US, I have family in Norway. So I understood culturally, what they care about nature's a cornerstone of a lot. They always take nature in mind, even when they're building, building things, they tend to be sustainable, just, you know, it's ingrained in them. And so what I've learned through that experience was the power. And this will parlay into the things we're gonna be talking about later, because the missing pieces when you're building any form of ecosystem is this trust and the power of human to human dialogue, and heart centered conversation. So I had done a lot of work with the Norwegian government prior to 2017. And why Norway, people are probably asking Norway has the wealthiest, sovereign fund in the entire world. And what that means is that they are invested in every major company in the world. So when they divest in something, you feel the vibrations across the globe. So back in 2017, early 2017, there was something called the Dakota Access Pipeline, it was known as dapple waters. I don't know if anyone was paying attention to the news, but it was an international story. And it was predominantly because there was a pipeline that would be carrying crude oil through indigenous lands and why this was is stark, as you know, in the financial world, there's something called the Equator Principles where they're supposed to look at risk, especially when it comes to indigenous land, what the impact would be a lot of that was bypassed. And second, we had international funds coming into the US and creating basically subsidizing eminent domain on indigenous lands. So Norway's fund was heavily invested in it by early 2017. It was almost right before the decision that the US government was going to make on moving forward with that pipeline. And it was going through some delicate water supplies. And so what I did was I teamed up with an Indigenous women's nonprofit organization. Again, this is not something I consulted, this was my passion point, and having no Norway's philosophy on things, and then I took my skill set, being in you know, a consultant and in sales, etc. And I started cold calling meetings for this indigenous divestment of women coalition, I was going to come into Norway quietly, like a little a team, and have conversations with the people that I was able to set up meetings with. So I was able, in a short period of time, or three weeks or less scheduled meetings with parliament members, the wealth fund committee, some of the Sami representatives, which is the indigenous group in in Norway, one of my contacts at Greenpeace was able to get a lot of media to cover the story. And the biggest coup was being able to get the gentleman who actually manages the wealth fund in the meeting, because prior to that he had only met with ETs, the fund is managed through nordhus Bank was like Norway bank. And prior to that he had only been meeting with like Elon Musk, because Elon Musk comes here, a lot to speak with, you know, with a lot of different people when it comes to sustainability. And so I cold call him and it had been unheard of that he would ever sit in a meeting. But this way that humans are human, and really using your skill set for social impact, which we'll talk about that even in a business perspective for doing ecosystems. So he sat in the meeting, and the assault was when they started hearing about what was happening, you know, because it became a police state on the because the indigenous people who live there started to quietly and peacefully protest, but we had military tanks, in front of our own people. And so when they started hearing those stories, I can tell you, it was like a scene out of a movie.
There was not a dry eye, he was the first one crying in that room. And then I also had a meeting with their biggest bank, which is, it's called DNB. But it's like seeing the City Bank of Scandinavia. And my friend actually had done the financial modeling for for that whole project. But what they missed was a thought, because it was a US that we had done our due diligence, and Citibank was doing that round. Anyway, to make a long story short, it showed the power of what a small group of people can do, because we didn't have millions of dollars to go on some PR, kind of Ron, we were able to get in front of these people through simple Heart to Heart cold call, because there was no other way to do it. They came into the meetings, and in 2019, the funds actually pulled out of any oil and gas infrastructure across the globe. And they started pulling out of infrastructure, actual, like oil and gas plays in different parts of the globe. So there was like a huge impact on that. And then for the women's allegation, because these were women that were doctors, attorneys, you name it, they were well versed. They weren't going on an international tour to talk to other banks about the equator principle and really enforcing it moving forward when it comes to indigenous lands. So I use this as an example to say this looks like an impossible task, right? You're five women going against the Goliath, which is the energy industry, but because we were able to find this spot in Norway that controls so much of that conversation with their investments. So when they pull out of something, it gets the world's attention. And we were able to help, you know, shift that conversation. There's a compounding effect to that. So imagine if we could use that same formula, and how we build business moving forward. It's a it's a way more exciting way, inexpensive way to build business. And that's where business is shifting, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Yeah, I love that. That's a really great story. And I love the fact that you, you aim higher than most people would have even had the nerve to aim and you got through and it's amazing, that human human connection, the power of that. Well, there is obviously a lot of opportunity to grow a company through channel partnerships, and some of the lessons you learn there are definitely going to apply. Let's set the table a little bit. What are companies that do not have a really well designed channel partner ecosystem in place missing out on and why?
Well, we have to go back to where the mindset has been the last the last 20 years which has been, you know, there's been a lot of automation on the marketing side in the last 10. And then if you go 10, before that, there was a lot of digitization happening in the sales side of it, right. So all of a sudden data became the king, people wouldn't make a decision or walk around the corner without making sure that the data lines up. For that decision to be made. It did Empower, going direct, right. But it also created a transactional effect, where all of a sudden partnerships didn't really mean much at that point, right, because you could get it you were empowered to go direct, to to a consumer. What's happening now and I believe COVID accelerated this, a bit is that people are fatigued doubt with with automation, it's dehumanized, the process, there is no value built in that. And we're now living in a world where trust is, is of value. Because just look at what's happening in the world a fair most people don't trust the government, they don't trust their neighbor, there's, you know, there's a deficiency of trust. So when you can build something that is built on gift first and trust, all of a sudden, you can remove the noise of automation. And that's truly where the value is. What happens though, is that for a founder, who, most founders can't comprehend this, because one is, it's not as predictable. In the short run over time, you can start like seeing what's working, what's not, but it's not as predictable as, as direct would be. And also, it's just a transactional mindset. Because there's some level of surrender that has to happen to say, I'm willing to get first I'm truly willing to serve our customers and partners equally. So you know, there's a little bit of a ramp time and up. But again, if you if you look at it from a bigger perspective, it could be very expansive, the best example of it was back in the 80s. And this is in the partner, the partner hacker handbook. And there's also a book like all partnering with with Microsoft, because Microsoft has done it really, really well. And 95% of their revenue comes from partnerships. And a lot of that just has to do with they created value back in that whole PC, gold rush back in the 80s created a value system around the product, right, they became the king and queen, bundling products that would help their customers right. So that's the best example. And then while all this automation and, and sales automation started taking place, the newer examples are HubSpot and Salesforce during the time and everyone and they were part of that right, they were part of making it easier to get to the analytics, etc. They started taking the Microsoft quietly model and creating, you know, partners around their product, which is why they're sitting in a better place better place now.
Jonathan Fischer 12:44
So yeah, yeah, the opposite of Apple. So you can you can certainly take the opposite tack, but I guess you better be a genius designer, and be able to build a very loyal base. But you know, even Apple to this day is somewhat niched in certain verticals where they serve better than others. Meanwhile, the other platforms did take over far more market share. So I think it's a really good case in point. So the opportunity is is huge there. But I'd like to dig a little bit deeper. You mentioned about how this isn't a transactional affair, when it comes to building channel partnerships. Every relationship is kind of its own thing in a way. And yet, we talked so much about efficiency, having a done a process, right process improvement, and these are smart things to be focused on. Is there kind of just is a sharing between worlds there. Do you think that's that's a big part of it? Is there is there sort of an ownership question in the mind or the heart of a founder that may hold them back? Dig a little deeper? Why aren't if over almost half of SaaS companies don't have partnerships. They all know how Microsoft grew. You can't get into tech and not know Microsoft's story, right? Why aren't they doing it?
Tanyette Colon 13:53
Well just think about funding them, the minute they get any form of funding coming, they need to be able to show value ASAP, right? As soon as that that cheque hits their bank account, they need to be able to show so it goes back to this old mindset of transactional, let me get, you know, 20 sales rep. Let me grind it out. Let me automate it. Let me control this, this outcome where partnerships is a longer tail play one that pays off in dividends if you do it really, really well. But but if you have an investor saying I need to see results now partnerships is not going to be the player you bring out initially. To them. It should be part of it from the get go. But most of them are running to the traditional model.
Jonathan Fischer 14:36
Yeah, so there's pressure for leadership pressure leadership or ownership that the shareholders Yeah, so there's, there's one of the things that can hold people back, you got to maybe sell sell the concept up the chain a little bit? Well, maybe part of making that sale is to have the proof of a very effective model. So let's quickly segue then. I mean, Tom yet you've done some great work inside of Overpass and it's a burgeoning initiative. It does have the full supportive leadership. Can you tell us how you how you've been building that give us your principles of starting a channel partner ecosystem from scratch?
Tanyette Colon 15:08
Good question. And I will say that I'm can only speak to it as from the perspective of building it from scratch. And we're still on that journey, because we're only only six months. And one of the first things I did, and this is this is gonna be something that people are like, yes, you know, that, you know, purpose, ethos, etc. But I did, because I knew I needed my North Star, knowing that there's a lot of surrender that has to happen the first few months. And I do come from a sales background, I mean, a book that I built a seven figure book of business, on my own, with a lot of this partnership mindset when I was doing it unknowingly, back then, but the first thing you have to do and this is critical, is create ethos, the ethos is basically going to be the culture and the vibe of what the ecosystem represents. The reason why that's important is because that's going to magnetize in your partners. And it's also going to be your guiding star, when something doesn't feel like a partner doesn't feel in alignment with the vision of what you're building in that ecosystem, then you can walk away, right, because it's just not, it's not a match. So it's a good guidepost to be able to say, and in our case, we wanted to partner up with partners that were equally as passionate to serve our clients the way we are, because we go out of our way to make sure that clients are taken care of. They, they they're receiving love throughout the whole throughout the whole journey. So that was important to us to make sure that they were equally lined up for that, and as well as equally as committed as we are to helping our customers grow. So that was the ethos. And then I went into the social impact. Because of course, with my experience in Norway, and other things I'm passionate about, I've seen what is possible when there is conviction. And I know that everything we do, as humans, I don't care if you're just a salesperson, when you can help any or anybody, it could be just the local clerk at a store, any engagement has an impact, especially when you're in business climate that we're in today. So the social impact for us, I wanted to be clear on what is that, who if we can help every single business that comes to overpass to grow to get there faster. What does that mean to the communities they serve? Well, it creates circular economy, right. So now we start creating a foundational solution to having more communities thrive because more businesses are thriving, a valuable way to look at it. But again, when you look at it from that perspective, it becomes more expansive, you're working towards something bigger than just, you know, just hitting some number. And then in the case of contractors, I mean, we're creating a freedom there, for a contractor to be able to work from anywhere in the world, be more balance, get to choose who they get to share their, their magic with. And I talked about this at one of our partner webinars, even from a social impact of where you're sourcing from there's parts and regions in a world that just don't have the same job opportunities. Now all of a sudden, by sourcing from there we're creating, there's an impact, we're creating opportunities for people to thrive there. So I think it's looking at, you know, company culture, but that also has to exist in every part of your company. And it's not something I say this all the time, it's not something you can fake, you really need to be all in on this. And when you can do that, then partners are more excited to team up with you because they know it's not transactional. At that point, you're in it for the greater good. And we all know when an ecosystem is thriving, all parts are thriving. So it's not like one is giving more than the other by default it all clicks.
Jonathan Fischer 18:41
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So do you kind of do you profile that out in a very intentional way? I mean, is this something that should be? I mean, this sounds like it's part of the process, right? The same way you build like an ideal client profile for your company, overall, you build sort of an ideal partner profile, is that kind of what I'm hearing?
Tanyette Colon 18:58
You do, but then you get off of it. They still transact on you go to heart, and you have to, you have to tell yourself, Am I unwavering on on this, like, Am I in on it? Am I going to embody it because then when you're speaking with someone about it, the trust is going to start to be there because they can feel your passion. And passion is, you know, contagious. So it's no longer about selling anything. It's no longer about, hey, you know, I know if we team up, we can grow our revenue together. It's when we team up, we can co create magic that all of us will be thriving on Yes, revenue will be there, by default, because you're going in there with a greater purpose. Yeah, that's great. So in that spirit of it not being transactional. What are some of the additional full philosophical things that need to be kept in mind going into this? I think I've heard you talk about sort of having this gift first mindset is that is that part of this? Yes. Because and Jerry, Jerry Fuller, who wrote the that recent partner hat hacker handbook, he coined the phrase that crossed is a new data right? Because data was the king for so long now, trust is the queen. Get first is that so you really want to go into it not saying I give you this and keeping score, it needs to be like and and the CEO of HubSpot, they always use the flywheel. So basically what you're doing is you're taking your customer, and then you're taking your partners in the middle as equal parts, and then you're creating value systems around them. So by giving first you're saying, okay, based on where we are on this journey at the beginning, it's that wishlist, right? Because until you go, I call I go out into the wild and see what the market gives you gives back to you, you could say, Okay, what things based on the resources we have today, that we can create some small wins for our customers. And that could be like, hey, they can be a guest on of off sales slide, because that's something that we have, you can't over promise something that you can't, obviously you don't have the resources, or what I did was and I felt was very important. Going back to my ethos with comparing the business was, what if we could create, and this wasn't anything new companies do this, a partner solution exchange, that would be the heartbeat of everything that we do after that to that was something that was tangible for the partner. But then for our customers, we didn't want to degrade them and say, Oh, it's only a deals marketplace, because they've been there. And they've done that done that we want it to what we did was I what I did, was I was very methodical about vetting out who's going to be there, again, the guiding post feeding, being the ethos so that when our customers go in there who are already overwhelmed, they don't have to worry about vetting out the next LinkedIn automation company, the next, you know, sales sequence company, I meet with, with all these companies more than once I get to learn our partners, I get to learn, learn their business, and then and then from there, they constantly go in. And I know that any partner that uses them, I'm not worried about whether or not they're going to deliver at our level.
Jonathan Fischer 22:00
So it's fantastic. It's adding so much more value to the overpass client, because now they have all these additional resources that their beck and call just win the one relationship with us. That's fantastic.
Tanyette Colon 22:12
Well, that's the idea is to make it thriving for them, they're going to you almost have to put be as methodical, and put your cell to walk a mile or two in your customers shoes. Again, this is not, I don't think anything I'm talking about today is going to be like, you know, it's it's almost like a no brainer, but it's easy to bypass it because again, when you go back to the original transactional mindset, everybody's right, every founder is ready to automate something that we don't even know what we're automating into. And what and more than likely, you should only be automating parts of the process, the communications just still stay human. So I utilize that as the first point of really building a foundation for our program. And partners love it as well, because you know, the goal is not to have fit them in there, because then that defeats the feet. By 50. I mean like 50 marketing agencies, because then that confuses our, our customers. And the goal is to take that, that pain away for our customers to be able to go in there and say, Okay, I need abs, see, they go in and they just, they can engage with our partners. And since then, we've added like five or six more additional, like what we call gift first wins, which would be our head of growth, invited us a party education team. So now team gets to learn more about our partners. And what they do, we're going to be launching our Fireside Chats series to have a more intimate conversation with with partners. So it's just over time it starts to develop, again, in alignment with, with what you initially create. That's why I'm so big on that whole ethos and social impact, because it starts layering in the rest of the foundation.
Jonathan Fischer 23:55
Well, I've heard you talk about even, you know, not being afraid to kind of go out into the wild in this phase of things, finding ideal partners. Tell us more about that.
Tanyette Colon 24:04
So that's where you go out and I used to play. So you the whole thing when you're building something, you can not the minute and it's the same startup. Because essentially, I'm building a startup on Overpass like this, building out any kind of partnership division from scratch, it's like a mini startup when a startup, basically you cannot get too attached to outcomes, right? So you can go in and have this preconceived? Oh, you know, I think without a doubt that this is our ideal partner profile, you can put a list together but you can't get a tax that it has to be that way. You have to allow the market to to give it back to you right. So you may have gone in thinking we're it's only going to be an affiliate program and people are going to be sending out links to teethers right and then you go out into the wild and why isn't the law is you know, and to real life and real life partners are showing you hey, we really need it to be more bespoke, but the compounding effect over time To be more grand that way. And so that's that's what I mean, like you have to almost take a few weeks to go in and that discovery phase and have what you think the market where the market is, and then basically validate that for you. And then you start formulating additional there.
Jonathan Fischer 25:18
Over time, you can be a little more systematic in your approach, I imagine but while leaving that flexibility to be creative and be open along the way, does that sound right?
Tanyette Colon 25:29
100%.
Jonathan Fischer 25:30
So Tanyette if we can kind of break down what you said, this is great stuff. Could you take about 60 to 80 seconds, it made me break that down into some action items. And I know in some ways it can be recap, because you've been kind of sharing some things I could definitely see myself going out and taking action on. But in terms of some bullet points, how can our listeners begin to implement what you've been talking about here.
Tanyette Colon 25:53
So once they go through the process of getting clear on why they're why they're building it in the first place, and what ecosystem they want to build, the first place to go on having those conversations would either be a your existing client base. And if that's not the case, it would be be your LinkedIn contacts, because more than likely, you probably have 1020 30 potential conversations there. That could be your next, your next partner. If you've done your due diligence on feeling the pain for your, your customer, you'll be able to get more dialed in in those initial conversations with those potential new partners. And then I wouldn't automate, like I wouldn't automate in these early stages later on, you should of course process has to be there over time to be able to scale any program, but we throw scale around too quickly. And what happens is, if you overwhelm me in an early stage, or you get desperate to scale something, before, it has a chance to fully evolve, you stifle it. So I would say go out and have real conversations, don't worry about automating every single thing. And don't get caught up in transactional numbers, because I would rather have an ecosystem of 100 really dialed in partners than 1000, for which 8% of them are doing nothing. By nothing. I mean, they're not engaged, they don't care about your mission. They're not, they're not dialed in. And and at that point, it defeats the purpose of having won in the first place. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We'll touch on yet. Really a great conversation. And I think there's a lot of greater depth that we could go into on this, how can our listeners take even further steps, you have an event upcoming that people could attend. Tell us about that. So this was part of our vision from like, day one. And now it's now it's time to now it's the time that we're executing it, which was to have more of a fireside chat series, which allows our partners to come in and talk about topics they're passionate about, for this first one. And we're going to be talking about different growth topics. But this firstly, it made sense to do ecosystem. So we have our contact from HubSpot for startups, who's all about gift first, he's going to be on there, then we're going to have one of the team members from partner hacker because they're one of the lead voices right now, and how partnerships are shifting, and what I call the modern day 20s. Because this next decade will be the decade of partnerships. And then we have Maxine who's one of our partners as well from my brain who created this incredible like knowledge marketplace, she will be there as well. So the whole idea is we want to get actionable insights. But we also want to invite people to look at business different through the power of storytelling.
Jonathan Fischer 28:42
Love it. So and what do you call it this event? Again?
It's our it's our fireside chat series, fireside chat series. I love it. If there's a link you can provide me in the chat here as we're in a q&a all good and post that up here in our notes as well for everybody. Well, excellent. Well, I love it. I'm gonna I'm gonna mention our fantastic sponsor of the show now which can Yes, it's overpass.com Hey, do you need to build a team of remote sales professionals fast as the leading solution for hiring pre vetted talent? Overpass has you covered with 1000s of qualified candidates to choose from the overpass platform allows you to filter by industry and experience interview and onboard new hires in as little as two days. create your free account today@overpass.com.
So let's flip over into our q&a. Now if we could, and I do did have a pretty good number of comments coming in from our awesome live audience here. I'm gonna pick one here, Andrew elenberg. As always asked a fantastic question here. He likes to get a little deeper. Is it more about the partner persona per se or the solution that integrates with overpass?
Tanyette Colon 29:53
It's more about if you're looking at the partner and the customer. It's more about solving their pain points.
Jonathan Fischer 30:00
Okay,
Tanyette Colon 30:01
that's, that's really at right when you're looking at your partner persona. First and foremost, you need to look at your customers and where they may be feeling pain before they get to you. And what does the rest of their journey looks like after you? Like shortly after, even if you really wanted to go full 360 Like throughout their whole journey, because a lot of our ICP is obviously, companies that are scaling up their series B, maybe Series A. So what are the pain points, they're gonna feel as they're scaling up with us, we want to make sure that we unblock, right? Because then that means that they're gonna thrive and grow faster, which means they come back around to ask to help them again to continue to grow, but also, you know, unblocking them, basically, to get there faster. Right, right. Have initially question that it's a little bit long, but I think I can give it to us in summary here. Basically, if you're a small startup, and you're dealing with a larger partners, it can be a lot of red tape and dealing with things legally. Is this gonna be a technical issue? Do you have any any general advice you can share on this front for our listeners? Yes, and I am experiencing it. Right now. I think what you have to look at is for that partner profile, it's, I call it this shiny objects, of course, it's great when you can partner with a big company. You know, from a co branding perspective, it looks to pursue quality, if you're a smaller company, one of the things that I'm discovering now is there's a lot of opportunity, similar to when you're looking at the businesses that you're going to cater to, right, whether it's SMBs, middle market, or enterprise, it's the same in the partner world. So in this market, what I would be looking for is somebody made, again, ynx, like 5000, fastest growing, because they're going to be equally as passionate as you are to serve their customers. But they're not quite as big as a billion dollar corporation, where their programs are now so scaled up and dialed in. And so automated, that they're quite, even though they want, they do create the platform where you can self serve, they're not as open some of them to, to doing this. And to his point, a lot can get lost in just all the red tape. So while you're nurturing those especially, there's a huge business case, that you're solving a pain point for that Baker, because there's always a pain point you can resolve when they're that big, you can still nurture that that's a longer term relationship play. But I would look for some partner profiles that are in the middle that are equally as excited and passionate about growing. Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Fischer 32:33
Yeah. And when the other question is Justin mentioned here is that like, even something like sharing leads between companies? That can be an issue? If you're a hate what I'm hearing you say, Tanya, is if you're, if you're a little more peer to peer, or maybe just, you know, a little bit closer on the scale, maybe those are it's not such a big issue bigger companies, they consider that almost like their IP, and it can be a problem. Would you agree? Are there some workarounds on that, tell us more.
Tanyette Colon 32:57
There's some work around towns now. Because there's actually because now this is going to be the decade of partnership. So now there's technology that's coming in to fill some of those gaps. When it comes to lead sharing, you can you can have agreements put in place in a lot of big companies, you sign some level of an NDA. But there's now these account mapping tools back in the old school day, you had to like say, Hey, I have Gary, John, and whatever company and do it all manually, and try to account Mac, you know, between companies now you have like tools like crossbeam and reveal that automate all that, right? They have integration into Salesforce, and HubSpot. And then you sign this agreement within your partners and you can you have like a security measures to say how much information you're willing to share. But by doing that, you can see oh, we have overlapping prospects, or overlapping accounts, or you have accounts that we have potential, you know, prospects that we'd love interest. And now you can get more strategic about not only lead sharing, but also someone brought up integrations, which we will talk about today, which is another powerful way to create a partner ecosystem, it even helps to, like reveal who you should be doing integrating patients with in the first place.
Jonathan Fischer 34:10
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Dennis asks an interesting question as well, kind of segwaying away from that. What's the best way to do what you're talking about before? Obviously, you've come up with one solution, you shared it with us the whole partner channel, or the the, that solution that you came up with? What what are some other ways to leverage partners while offering that that give first that whole? The whole ethos thing that you were talking about there? How did we do that? Give us a little more insight if you would,
Tanyette Colon 34:37
leveraging them for our clients or letting them within the partner ecosystem, a lot of partner match me so because I've taken the time to learn where my partner's goals where their goals are, what are some of their pain points, etc. Whenever I'm partners in if I feel like they could be a strategic match, I'm automatically doing partner matchmaking and that's probably where they Get the most excited have partners say that they whenever they see an email from me they like they go into it. And then we're going to start doing like partner connection and huddle so that they can start meeting each other because they all want to meet each other. So I think that's one way of leveraging partners within the system. As far as I think that's what he's asking. I'm not sure actually
Jonathan Fischer 35:20
why I think you might also be just getting like, like business to business, like how can we actually offer them value? And then maybe make, you know, make certain that that's maybe fully reciprocal? I think, then it's maybe hinting at that. And as you can tell them in the comments if I'm on on track or not. But I think that that can be a challenge, like it may be like to get over the threshold of saying, Hey, you have a great partner, let's offer this great thing to you. But then to go the rest of the way where that circle actually closes again. Now we also have, give us some tips on that maybe, because I think I could see us hanging up there. I could see, yeah, I'll be on your, I'll be on your thing. Right, I'll be on your approved partner, channel, whatever you want to call that. But that's a different story from really avidly doing business together. Business to business, Dennis may be getting at that.
Tanyette Colon 36:05
yeah, yeah, that's where those early wins are important, right to keep them engaged. So that's an cobranding. Many motions you can do with the many webinars, again, they see the most value in the partner connections, because that's, that can bring them revenue. And it has actually, in the case of us, we've had partners connected them where either they're creating missions together, or they're creating revenue together. Yeah, or the revenue have come from that, that exchange. So it's similar to using, you know, what you'd be using in business with referral calls. It's just taking that constituting, within within the ecosystem. Yeah, maybe just so just stick with it and make deepen it enough. And then that trust grows, and the door should open from there. Maybe that's all it takes is just not expecting it to be like, maybe maybe what we can do is maybe forget, hey, this is not meant to be transactional. Like it's not, it's not like old school, quid pro quo. We're trying to build an actual relationship here. And sometimes it takes a little time, deepening that trust. And maybe at that point, things can can blossom into a real full partnership, where Hey, not only are we Yeah, together, offering value the marketplace, but hey, we can really serve each other as well. Yeah, and that's your thoughts? No, no, you're not. And that's a trend that a lot of people are talking about right now, which is the CO selling motions. And not anyone just wants to jump into a co selling motion, right? Because you have to get teams involved with that. Everyone has to be educated up on both sides, both partners have to be equally committed, or you know, it's there's going to be an imbalance there. But you can't get to that point until you take steps of building trust, if you come straight out and say, I will do co solving motion with you. That's not, and I've seen it with partners, they're like, that's why phase it in, here's phase one, here's some some early wins, here's my my vow to you to do everything possible to keep your business in mind as I'm talking to their partners, or within you know, even our own client base. And then it just continues to grow from there. And we have a case now, where we're going to be doing a mini is like a mini co selling motion where she's about to start educating her team and putting us into their sales cycle. This just happened within the last week.
Jonathan Fischer 38:15
That's great. That's great. Well, and Dennis did validate that he's, he's, he's interested in doing more business with some of these partners. I mean, if you're a marketing company, you could use overpass SDRs. All day long. Right. It's it's a perfect fit. And so I think, you know, to to what you're saying there, Tanyette. It's going to take some time. And I'm remembering what you said earlier in our conversation today that, hey, there's been there's a cultural shift happening here. Maybe even internally, maybe we're only just now buying into this whole gift first, treat it organically more like an actual relationship, give it time. Well, that doesn't mean the other company has gone through that same evolution, it may take some time for them to kind of see what we're doing, really, by and fully like, I see it maybe as layers, right? Like the the initial elements of a shared ethos are, you know, this deep, it takes a little longer to see just how deep these things go, and just how much alignment there really is. And in time, it should happen. It seems like to me if we continue with this, but you said now you said this also in the conversation today. This is still fairly new. So I guess we're kind of discovering this together, aren't we?
Tanyette Colon 39:16
Yeah, we are. And I mean, most channels don't seem revenue until 12 months. I mean, we we're we're ahead of roadmap, but the sustainability and the compounding effect comes from my hunch 12 to 18. And to Dennis's point. Yes, absolutely. If you know, marketing agencies have a huge pain point that you can solve, right? That that becomes another motion that you test out into into the world. But before you go there, you have to take those first five to six months to be able to young foundation, so you can support that. Maybe it's an agency promotion, which we're working on, as well to his point.
Jonathan Fischer 39:54
Well, Tanyette, what a fantastic guest you've been I'm not surprised I already knew yet, but I'm so glad to share you with our audience. And you've really helped us today, get some really great actionable advice to our listeners. So thanks again for being our guest today, Tom yet.
Tanyette Colon 40:08
Thank you for having me.
Jonathan Fischer 40:10
And thanks to all of you for attending and being a part of our fantastic and ever growing audience. Tell your friends, bring them back. We're here the same time, same station next week. We'll see you then signing off. Take care everybody. Bye bye now.
