EULER

Transformative product are rare. Incredible cultures are even more so. Last week I attended Gong’s Partner Day at their Customer Summit and I can safely say they have both. Here’s why I think Gong is a generational company: 1. A Complete Lack of Ego From the CEO down to the sales reps, every Gong employee I met was kind, thoughtful, and passionate. Despite their incredible product, team, and growth they remain grounded and humble. 2. Focus Gong is not trying to be all things to all people. Their technology is so powerful they could easily move into a plethora of areas, but they stay ruthlessly focused on the problems they feel confident solving and the ICP that they solve them for. 3. Data-Driven Listening This may be a factor of building one of the best “listening” technologies on the market, but it’s clear that they’re highly data-driven. They dynamically adjust to feedback, creating a superior customer (and partner) experience. 4. Community Their company culture is infectious, and it’s reflected in their ecosystem. They have an army of excited, loyal customers and partners that are invested and enrolled in Gong’s success. 5. Partnerships You know I have to pause here for a moment… The fact is that there are no generational technology companies that are NOT partner-led. While Gong didn’t start out with this strategy, since Rob Moyer came onboard they have gone all in on it. In just 18 months they have grown to over 250 partners driving a significant % of total revenue contribution and substantially higher ACV & Win Rates. Unsurprisingly, Rob even noted that “There’s a direct correlation between the number of partner integrations a customer uses and their lifetime value. More integrations used = higher CLTV.” In the Summit keynote, their CEO even took the time to call out the fast growth of their ecosystem and the impact it has driven for the business. 6. Product Last, but certainly not least, is the game-changing technology that they have built. Their platform is already transforming the success that revenue teams can achieve, and their roadmap is going to change the way these teams work forever. ___ When this post started out, the goal was just to say “thanks” to the Gong team for having me out. However, I came away so impressed and inspired by their team that I just had to share why. Kudos to Amit and the entire Gong leadership team for building such an incredible company!

Last month our fiercest competitor almost blew up one of our biggest deals ever. Here’s how we came back from the brink of (deal) death: BACKSTORY: This deal was a year in the making. The prospect was a marquee logo for us. After 12 calls, 5 in-person meetings, and dozens of text messages… We were at the finish line in the contracting stage! But then 2 days later, my phone rang… My Champion hopped on the Zoom and was not his usual cheery self. He began… “I feel really bad about this, but *competitor* caught wind that we were moving PRM’s and has come at us HARD. They reached out to everyone on our partnerships team. They even had their CEO reach out to ours. We have to go back to square one and do a full side-by-side evaluation.” CRAP! This was not the news I was expecting. Obviously, I was not thrilled. Our competitor had outplayed us. To their credit, they’ve got their Sales process dialed in. They triangulated the hell out of this deal. They came from the bottom up, the top down, through referrals, everything. But we weren’t going to roll over and die. HERE’S WHAT WE DID: We started over. We put in the work again, but better. We went feature for feature, use case for use case. We brought in customer references that had moved from our competitor to EULER. We proved that we not only understood their problems and pains better, but that our platform (and team) was better suited to solve them. One by one, we won over every stakeholder on the team. Was this an unexpected pain in the a$$? Absolutely. But it was a great learning experience. We learned a lot about our competitor. We learned a lot about ourselves. We proved we could go head-to-head with an incumbent that was pulling out all the stops. We won a marquee customer. And, most importantly, we learned a very valuable lesson... Cover all the angles. The deal isn’t over until it’s over.

In 5 years, I went from Partner Manager to CRO. Here are the 9 hardest lessons I learned while climbing the corporate ladder: 1. Driving Results is Tablestakes This may be obvious, but step 1 is to do a damn good job and drive outsized results. There are no shortcuts here. 2. Set Goals and Communicate Them If you’re ambitious, don’t hide it. If your superiors don’t know you’re looking to move up, they are unlikely to give you the support, guidance, and path to do so. 3. Loyalty is a Double-Edged Sword Loyalty is important, but remember it only goes so far. Be careful and don’t assume it’s always a two-way street. It’s good to be loyal and have integrity, but don’t put too much stock in loyalty from your managers and company. Their priorities (and incentives) are rarely the same as yours. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. No one will have your back more than you. 4. Scale + Efficiency > Everything Whatever your role, the best way to drive outsized results is to scale efficiently by creating processes, collecting data, and optimizing constantly. 5. Don’t Screw Up Hiring The right hires will accelerate growth and “manage themselves”. The wrong ones will drain your resources and hold your team back. Spend the time to hire right. 6. Manage Up As Much As You Manage Down You will never be told that it’s your job to effectively manage up. Well, it is. Especially if you want to make sure those above you know the impact that you’re driving and the job you’re working toward. Don’t expect your results to speak for themselves. 7. Know Your Personal ROI You know how much you cost the business, but you should also know how much value you bring to the business. This is your leverage to move up within your business or into another one. 8. Always Know Your Numbers More and more, leaders of all types need to understand the financials behind their team. Learning to understand, and build, a P&L is critical to being an executive. Finance is the language of business, and it can be your strongest ally or your biggest threat. 9. Don’t Be Afraid to Jump Some people do this too little, some too much. This move should be leveraged to seize incredible opportunities or to escape stagnant (or toxic) circumstances. Remember that, at the end of the day… Actions speak louder than words. Businesses will do whatever is in their best interest. You should do what’s in yours.

If you’re a partnership leader planning for 2025, put this on your calendar! Spoiler: It’s an opportunity to learn from some of today's TOP Partnerships and GTM leaders. On Thursday, December 5th, I’ll be joining an all-star panel of: - Nelson Wang, Head of Partnerships at Airtable + Founder of Partner Principles - Kelly Sarabyn, Director, Product Partner Programs at HubSpot - Jill Rowley, GTM Advisor and LP, Stage 2 Capital Collectively this group has more than 50 YEARS of go-to-market expertise. We’ll take a look back on key partnerships insights from 2024. More importantly, we’re going to leverage these lessons to discuss how to drive bigger outcomes in 2025. If you want to take your partner GTM strategy to the next level in 2025, RSVP below: https://bit.ly/3CO8ciN

99% of companies think of partnerships as an INDIRECT sales channel. But that's wrong. I spoke with an 8x partnership executive who put it perfectly… “Partnerships is actually the MOST direct sales channel there is.” At first I was confused, so I pressed him. He explained, "In today’s world, your partners already have a relationship directly with your prospective customer. Marketing doesn’t. Sales doesn’t. They’re both just firing into the ether hoping something lands. But your partners have already done the hard work for you. There's already a foundation to build on. That's what partners do. We leverage trust." ?? This was mind-blowing. He's so right. Partner teams needs to stop thinking of themselves as second-class citizens. When done right, partnerships is the MOST effective sales channel. Companies who relegate partnerships to the kids table will suffer. In 2025, it's time for partnerships to be taken seriously as a powerful (and direct!) growth channel.

In January, I made 7 saucy predictions for partnerships in 2024. Here’s what I got right (and very wrong): PREDICTION #1: Operational Rigor Becomes Life or Death Partnerships teams will FINALLY become as predictable as sales and marketing. RESULT: 4/5 - It’s clear that data-driven operations is how the best teams have been winning. But… we’ve still got a ways to go to become as predictable as sales and marketing. PREDICTION #2: Quality > Quantity The days of partner recruitment targets are over. The focus will be going deeper, not wider. RESULT: 3/5 - With growing partner competition and shrinking resources for management, quality has been trumping quantity. But… ROI has yet to become a core KPI for most partner teams. PREDICTION #3: Partner Experience (PX) Takes Center Stage Top partner teams will invest time, effort, and budget into creating outstanding partner experiences. RESULT: 3/5 - PX has moved front and center, with traditional partner portals no longer satisfying the needs of partners. However, a recent report from @jay mcbain shows that there is still a lot of work to be done on PX. PREDICTION #4: Evolution and Elevation Partnership pros will take ownership of their development to accelerate their growth and success. RESULT: 5/5 - Partner leaders have really begun to seize the opportunity to develop resources for each other, and uplevel through them in a big way this year. From communities, to courses, to playbooks, the proliferation and engagement of all of these have skyrocketed this year. PREDICTION #5: Hiring Will ?? Up SaaS Winter is over. Expect partner hiring to rebound and many more Chief Partner/Ecosystem Officers to be minted. RESULT: 1/5 - I got this one WRONG. Despite many new CPOs minted, it was a tough year for a lot of partner pros that found themselves caught in layoffs. PREDICTION #6: Data, Data, Data Data-driven partner teams will become the norm. RESULT: 2/5 - Data has entered the conversation to stay, but this will be a slow build until more partner teams are properly enabled with operational support and tools like @Euler. PREDICTION #7: Partner Tech Rebirth Partner tech innovation and adoption will increase. RESULT: 4/5 - The amount of innovative tools for partner teams has certainly grown. However, budgets have decreased and thus wide adoption continues to be slower. 2024 was a pivotal year in the Partnerships Renaissance. There’s never been a more exciting time to be in partnerships. This year was nothing short of inspiring. We’ve made incredible progress as an industry. If 2024 was any indication, 2025 is going to be an even bigger year for partnerships. There’s a lot of work to do, so let’s get it done! P.S. What are your saucy partnership predictions for 2025??

?? Partnerships people: have you heard about EULER?? Last Friday, Greg Portnoy gave me the bells and whistles tour, expertly crammed into 30 minutes to keep me wanting more ?? Here's what I liked: ? Incentive management, including SPIFs through Tremendous ? Automatic creation of invoices for partners' referral commission, saving them time and keeping your finance team happy ?? Ability to literally pay partners their referral commission by matching deals from your CRM with payments made by those customers ? Partner contracting and e-signature within the platform ? Integrations with email and Slack to update partners without needing them to access your portal (let's be honest, they don't want to be logging in) ? In-depth deal tracking and analytics, with the ability to filter and customise partner segments ... And so much more ?? PS. If you liked this post, ?? reshare it with your network & follow me, Theo Burns, for more content about building successful eCommerce partnerships with Bigblue, and growing Fork Agency from zero. ??????

2 years ago, I realized there was a massive technology gap in partnerships. Every *other* GTM team had tools that made them MORE successful with LESS effort. Yet Partnerships had been left out in the cold. Which is ironic… Because partnerships teams are juggling more than anyone else. The average partner manager is doing 15-20 different jobs. They’re managing dozens of workflows across 100s of partners. And they’re tracking this all in… spreadsheets. If they’re even tracking it at all (which most are not). That’s why most partner teams have challenges with… - CRM Attribution - Reporting & Analytics - Pipeline Management - Training & Enablement - Contracting & Onboarding - Keeping Partners Updated & Engaged - Reconciling & Paying Partner Commissions - And more It’s incredibly frustrating, and inefficient, to do all of this manually. It was this frustration that motivated me to build something better for partnership leaders. A platform that enables partner teams of any size to AUTOMATE manual tasks, ENGAGE all partners, and TRACK everything to create scalable partner revenue growth. EULER. An All-in-One Partner Management, Operations, and Analytics platform. The results have been INCREDIBLE.. Euler customers are getting back 30% of time that was spent on manual tasks. RESULT - This time is used to build more partnerships and drive more revenue. They engage 100% of their partners (even if they don't log into the portal). RESULT - Better Partner Experience has increased Revenue Per Partner. They’ve done this all with less effort, and better analytics, than ever before. BIG RESULT - 10’s of millions of dollars in partner-sourced revenue generated. If efficiently growing partnerships revenue is a 2025 goal, go to eulerapp(.)com and book a demo.

99% of external Partnerships meetings are useless. They’re “I love you, you love me” Barney Meetings. Hug & Chugs and Wine & Dines. But they drive no real value for the business. They aren’t fooling anyone. They’re why Partnerships has a bad reputation with C-suites and Boards. Don’t get me wrong… relationship building is a critical skill set. It's the ART of Partnerships. It opens doors, builds rapport, and breeds goodwill. But it’s not enough. Partnership Leaders must focus on the SCIENCE of Partnerships. This requires setting clear GOALS, building hypotheses with METRICS, TESTING them through experiments, measuring the results with hard DATA, and making adjustments to optimize for OUTCOMES. This applies to everything we do. From acquiring partners and solidifying our Ideal Partner Profile, to creating our partner experience and scaling revenue. Have a plan, execute it, measure the outcome, and iterate. Like a scientist. Those that do this, CONSISTENTLY hit and outpace goals. Those that don't, flounder. If we want to be taken seriously in GTM we need to operate seriously. We must become master scientists of Partnerships. Let’s change our approach. Let’s change the narrative. Let’s make the value of Partnerships unquestionable.

Partnerships leaders need help. There aren’t enough documented frameworks for building partnerships from the ground up. That’s why I created “Zero to $30M”, a free 48-page beginner’s guide for building powerful partner revenue engines. This is everything I learned building 4 startup partnership programs that drove +$30M in ARR. PLUS additional insights from some of today's top partnership leaders. Here’s what you'll find in the guide: - Goal Setting, Internal Alignment, and Pre-requisites for Success - Critical KPIs and How to Track Them - Ideal Partner Profile - Partner Development and Acquisition - Incentivizing Partners for Growth & Scalability - Partner Onboarding & Enablement - Partner Activation and Management (for Agency & Tech Partners) - Going-to-Market with Partners - Managing Partners for Outcomes - Partner Success This is exactly what I wanted to know when scaling my first partner program. COMMENT “Guide” below and I’ll send it over. P.S. I can only send the guide to 1st degree connections so send me a request if we're not connected.