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Hot off the presses: new Partner-Led Growth research!
Like all the GTM motions, Partner-Led Growth has probably been around as long as there have been sales.
You could imagine a scene in Istanbul in 1472 at the famous Grand Bazaar where the merchant selling silk partnered with the one selling thread to refer business to each other. A copperware artisan might have formed an alliance with local inns or guest houses to send shoppers in exchange for serving ware.
Today, it’s a little more complicated. A Byzantine jeweler probably didn’t have to show his CFO how much pipeline resulted from the partnership with the local metalsmith, much less whether it closed at a higher rate than business referred by the village matchmaker.
But you’re in luck, because our mission is not to teach you about ancient selling techniques, it’s to make Go-to-Market simple!
And our latest work to achieve that mission is a new, hot-off-the-presses report about the state of Partner-Led Growth!
You might have a partner program, but are you doing Partner-Led Growth?
According to our research, 66% of companies claim to use a Partner-Led Growth strategy as one of their GTM Motions.
We say “claim to” because having a Partner-Led Growth strategy is a lot more than just having a partner program. Partner-Led GROWTH means it is a core strategy that every aspect of your GTM team is involved in, from sales to marketing to product to customer success.
A recent study from Hubspot found that 77.6% of all organizations and 92.6% of enterprise companies have a partner program. But they certainly don’t all have a Partner-Led Growth strategy.
Why consider Partner-Led Growth?
In our GTM Benchmark report, 82% of companies report a significant slowdown in their sales velocity.
But check out these stats:
Partner-sourced opportunities have a 46% higher win-rate
Partner-influenced opportunities have a 99% high win-rate
Partner-sourced opportunities show an 11% shorter time to close
If you are running a partnerships program, are you seeing similar results?
If you are not, you are not alone.
Partner-Led Growth can be complex. There are lots of kinds of partner programs and there can be tracking challenges. Lots of companies with partner programs aren’t realizing their full potential.
5 Kinds of Partner-Led Growth
We recognize five types of Partner-Led Growth programs.
Channels
Channel partners can include distributors, value-added resellers (VARs), system integrators, consultants, agencies, and other intermediaries.
You’re looking for people or companies who have established relationships with the target customers or expertise in specific industries or markets.
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a network of interconnected companies, organizations, and individuals that collaborate and depend on each other to create value and to support mutual growth.
Some of the strongest ecosystems are built on overlapping or adjacent use cases, workflows, and shared data that enables customers to do things they can’t do with only one solution.
Referral Programs
Referral programs are initiatives where existing customers or other close partners recommend a company's products or services to someone they know.
Usually they make the referral in a way that directly endorses the product or service as a solution to a problem a company is actively trying to solve. It is common for a successful referral to result in incentives or rewards.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where affiliates (individuals or other businesses) broadly promote a company's products or services and earn a commission for each sale or lead generated through their efforts.
Affiliate marketing is most common in driving freemium products, lower-priced products, or more transactional purchases of any size that don’t require a buying committee or a consultative sale.
Reseller
Resellers are third-party companies or individuals who purchase products or technology from a company and then resell them to end customers, usually adding their margin to the product price.
There can be a wide variety of how these transactions occur (for example, on the reseller’s paper, provider’s paper, white labeled, bundled with limits, and specific rules around when it goes from reseller to a direct seller).
Register for our next Leadership Summit on Fixing Sales in 2024!
Our last Leadership Summit of the year is upon us, and we’re turning our focus to CROs and how to fix sales in 2024.
Clearly the old sales playbooks aren’t working anymore.
According to Sales Hacker, only 46.7% of sales reps globally meet quota. Our research shows 81% of companies say sales velocity has slowed this year.
Join us on November 30 from 1-4 p.m. ET for a virtual leadership summit for CROs, CEOs, and sales leaders on how to fix sales in time for your 2024 SKO.
Explore why once reliable sales plays no longer deliver desired results with keynotes and panelists including:
Jacco Van Der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design
Alina Vandenberghe, co-founder and co-CEO of Chili Piper
Todd Caponi, Founder, Speaker & Workshop Leader, Sales Melon
Shawn Herring, CMO at airSlate
Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing at Vidyard
Jill Rowley, Strategy and Evangelism for Nearbound
Thomas Keefe, Demandbase
Catie Ivey, VP Sales, Walnut.io
Adam Jay, co-founder, Revenue Reimagined
Ed King, CEO of Openprise
Matt Millen, Co Founder and President, Regie.AI
Don’t rely on old, outdated sales plays. Join us for fresh ideas that will invigorate your 2024 plan.
Register even if you can’t make it live so that you’re on the list to receive recordings, slides, and replay links.
Have a great week!
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
