Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:01:08 PM
    Good morning!

    We had a great opportunity August 15, 2018 to ask Scott Edison, Vice President of Business Development at Bench (LinkedIn) anything in our Slack community.

    Scott is one of the most experienced business development executives in SaaS. Our members certainly took him up on the opportunity. Below you'll find a summary of the conversation.

    Want to schedule 1:1 time with Scott? Ask for an introduction to Scott through our Advisors program.

    Table of Contents

    • Career advice
      • How did you get into BD/Partnerships?
    • Partnership strategies
      • What's the most novel distribution idea?
      • What type of resellers does Bench have?
      • What have you found success with in comarketing?
      • How do you prioritize partnerships opportunities?
      • What kind of revenue splits have you seen with partners?
      • What was the single most effective online channel you harvested from?
    • Measuring success of partnerships
      • What is the portion of revenue coming from partnerships?
      • How to measure the impact of partner sourced, partner attached, and partner influenced?
    • Organizational structure
      • Where should the partnership team (or person) live?
      • How did you structure the BD/partnership team at Bench?
      • How does the product team influence who to partner with?
    • Open or closed ecosystems?
      • Should you allow partners to build competing products?

    Career advice

    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:02:08 PM
    @Scott Edison How did you get into BD/Partnerships?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:03:51 PM
    @Jake Wallace - I began my career in sales at a regional mobile carrier. I happened to meet someone who led BD for new initiatives and was intrigued by the intersection of strategy/product/marketing/sales
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:08:08 PM
    I agree!! Its the strategy part that I love most about Partnerships! being cross-functional and working with many of the teams is extremely fun!

    Partnership strategies

    Ross Mayfield
    August 15, 2018 02:03:18 PM
    Hi @Scott Edison what's the most novel distribution idea you've copied from others recently?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:05:21 PM
    Hey @Ross Mayfield - copied is a good way to frame it. There are few ‘new’ distribution ideas. Right now I’m especially excited about the way we are working with our partners to fill product ‘gaps’ in one another’s solutions
    Ross Mayfield
    August 15, 2018 02:12:56 PM
    thumbsup BD is basically either acquire IP to form whole product, or pay others to distribute for you. Sounds like the deals you are doing are a bit of both.
    Ross Mayfield
    August 15, 2018 02:14:39 PM
    But distribution is always changing. New platforms, channels etc. And tactics that are effective in them. Being early in a new tactic can have it's benefits, like preferential attachment in a new network, or featuring favoritism in an app store.
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:37:42 PM
    Heck yes to that @Ross Mayfield - that “it can be good to be early” technique is one I mention when I teach about distribution through B2B app marketplaces https://www.linkedin.com/in/coopermarcus/detail/treasury/position:295259040/?entityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_treasuryMedia%3A(ACoAAAAA4pMBPbaYYp9xQEUiRHjidcL6AIXoVtg%2C1477524587474)&section=position%3A295259040&treasuryCount=5
    Britt Buchan
    August 15, 2018 02:15:28 PM
    @Scott Edison What type of resellers does Bench have & what is the business model you have found to be most successful?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:21:48 PM
    Hey @Britt Buchan, how are you? We focus on three primary partnership activities; integrated partnerships, sales-focused partnerships, and marketing-focused partnerships. The term reseller has specific meaning and in the world of Saas can be hard to execute. We do have resellers and what I can tell you is that it is super important to have great cultural fit between the partners in order to make this work. Communication is critical as both parties must be committed to making the client experience smooth and satisfying. If you can create a resale partnership that includes strong communication, effective education for reps, easy to use/impactful enablement materials, and buy-in at all levels of the organization you can generate great results
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:29:22 PM
    "We focus on three primary partnership activities; integrated partnerships, sales-focused partnerships, and marketing-focused partnerships." I like that focus!
    Britt Buchan
    August 15, 2018 02:33:20 PM
    HI Scott, thanks so much! Let me know if I am getting too much in the weeds here in this forum. I am also curious if Bench passes the terms of service through partners or licensese direct with end users? Same question with billing, does Bench bill the end user or the partner?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:37:27 PM
    @Britt Buchan -We present TOS to the client. Billing is primarily done by Bench but we do have partners that choose to bundle Bench with their service and we essentially invoice the partner directly each month.
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:18:18 PM
    @Scott Edison With regards to co marketing, what have you found success with that isn't the norm (webinar, blog post exchange, email etc) Video, Facebook lives, Twitter chats... anything new and exciting we should try?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:26:33 PM
    @Jake Wallace - I don’t know that I have anything truly new. We are doing our best to create content ‘campaigns’ that our partners can use to speak to their audiences over a period of weeks/months rather than focus on a single event
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:34:18 PM
    Makes total sense! We're constantly looking to product content that our customers can get value in while providing additional exposure to our Integration partners.
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:19:55 PM
    Also. @Scott Edison How do you prioritize partnerships opportunities? Do you have a system that works for you? Do you use any third party tools to help track success?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:24:41 PM
    @Jake Wallace - My team has begun doing monthly prioritization of new and existing partnerships in order to help focus our energy and set internal expectations for the period. We have ~150 partners of all types and we can’t launch new initiatives with all of them every month…so we’ve tried to get very diligent about stack ranking which ones are likely to be productive based on recent activity, the engagement of the partner etc
    Lauren Kelley
    August 15, 2018 02:21:57 PM
    @Scott Edison Scott, thanks for your insights. What kind of revenue splits have you seen with partners, where a partner is selling your product which is complementary to their product, or a product enhancement, and you do all the upfront product demonstration, and back-end implementation?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:27:45 PM
    Hi @Lauren Kelley - so the question is with respect to a referral arrangement? Partner sends you a lead and you do the rest?
    Lauren Kelley
    August 15, 2018 02:41:23 PM
    My original question was for an actual reseller, who would write the contract on their paper and collect payment from the customer and pay us after the fact. However, we do the bulk of the sales and marketing, and we throw the deal over to them to paper it.
    Lauren Kelley
    August 15, 2018 02:41:48 PM
    And also interested in a pure referral arrangement as well - what kind of splits you see there currently.
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:45:59 PM
    @Lauren Kelley - In ‘traditional’ resale an effective reseller that is able to deliver you a signed agreement could earn 25+% of the contract value. In Saas the involvement by the reseller is often less (no implementation or support) so the revshare is less.
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:47:47 PM
    In terms of referrals, we see both bounty and revshare models working. In terms of the specific share, between 10-20% on MRR is pretty common
    Lauren Kelley
    August 15, 2018 02:52:22 PM
    Thanks, Scott, appreciate it.
    Joel Slatis
    August 15, 2018 02:40:14 PM
    What was the single most effective online channel you harvested from?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:42:59 PM
    Hey Joel. Sometimes being late to the party is a good thing wink In terms of online channels, I would say our most consistent source of new clients comes from marketplaces. If there are marketplaces/appstores that your customers are using, they’re probably a good, low-risk way to try to build distribution
    Joel Slatis
    August 15, 2018 02:47:24 PM
    Thanks much!
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:50:22 PM
    @Joel Slatis long ago I wrote up some advice on marketplaces/appstores for distributing B2B software - see https://cloudassoc.slack.com/archives/C9EBK59M5/p1534358262000100?thread_ts=1534356321.000100&cid=C9EBK59M5 - I hope you find it helpful
    Joel Slatis
    August 15, 2018 02:52:19 PM
    Awesome! Obviously everyone knows about the power of marketplaces today, but best practices are really gems. We're definitely in the big ones (although you never know nowadays when a new source will emerge). We continue to learn as we go forward. Thank you for taking the time to share.

    Measuring success of partnerships

    Dawn Verbrigghe
    August 15, 2018 02:05:19 PM
    @Scott Edison How has the portion of Bench's revenue coming from partnerships changed over time? For example, is it an acquisition strategy you leaned on especially heavily earlier on, while waiting for some other channels to take off?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:12:45 PM
    Hi @Dawn Verbrigghe. Partnerships impact Bench in a few ways; we are always looking at three ‘buckets’ foundational impact (what will our partner activities mean to our growth over the next 12-18 months), Aspirational impact (what if we hit a home run and partnered with the biggest/best in a given space), and opportunistic impact (what can we do to influence results this month?)
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:14:04 PM
    There is an ebb and flow in terms of long vs short term impact, but we spend the lion’s share of our time focused on foundational activities with an eye on growing this channel’s impact. Does that answer your question?
    Gabriel Dillon
    August 15, 2018 02:10:10 PM
    @Scott Edison, question about measuring success from new partnerships initiatives: when kicking off partnerships for the first time, and in a high growth environment, how do you measure the impact between partner sourced, partner attached, and partner influenced?

    How do you communicate the value of each of these to the revenue executive?

    How do you measure individual performance and use that for compensation?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:17:22 PM
    Hi @Gabriel Dillon Oh man. You’ve touched on a topic that can be tricky. Truth be told we track all new opportunities through Salesforce and there are times that new leads get ‘double counted’. We have decided that in the short term we are ok with some overlap and will err towards paying partners for all partner activity (even if attribution is shared) . Does that answer your question?
    Gabriel Dillon
    August 15, 2018 02:20:07 PM
    It definitely answers an aspect of it, thanks!

    I think part of my question comes from working in an environment where it's more difficult to measure the value of partner attached and partner influenced. Revenue rules all, right, and if a partner can unlock a deal for the sales team, it's a win. But attributing that win specifically to the partnerships team is more difficult.
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:21:57 PM
    @Scott Edison have you considered any other tools for managing partnerships? ie Workspan or growsumo?
    George Kyriakis
    August 15, 2018 02:23:49 PM
    @Jake Wallace Jake, at Freshbooks, we use Trello, Slack for managing and communicating with key partners, and for reseller relationships, Salesforce. We use Periscope and Looker for trial and upgrade contribution reporting from our partners. Hope that helps.
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:32:53 PM
    Totally does! I want to begin using Slack for communicating with partners. Its something I'd like to start using when we switch over from Stride/hipchat...
    Gabriel Dillon
    August 15, 2018 02:36:46 PM
    Algolia is using Slack. We've always had a separate organization to manage valued client relationships. We've started adding our more valued partners here too (using the Shared Channel feature, rather than single channel guests). They love the TLC they can get, and it helps make check ins a bit more casual. cc: @Jake Wallace
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:38:52 PM
    I’m another big fan of Slack for real time communications with high value partners
    Colin Pal
    August 15, 2018 03:19:00 PM
    Love the idea of using Slack for communicating with partners!

    We used Mixpanel (with a lot of set up) for tracking success from partnership initiatives. It gave us a pretty good measure of impact between partner sourced, partner attached, and partner influenced. We kept in mind that there’s always going to be overlap but the data was good enough to tell us where we needed to focus our efforts and resources.

    Organizational structure

    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:04:27 PM
    @Scott Edison I had this question on a call earlier today… Where should the partnership team (or person) live? Marketing, Engineering, Product, Sales, or its own department?
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:11:46 PM
    So I was hired onto the Product team. I'm now officially on the Sales team however, I attend many of the Product, Marketing & Sales meetings. I'm also on our Integrations team too. I think it depends on each organization but, an ideal team would be either Product or Marketing IMO.
    George Kyriakis
    August 15, 2018 02:17:49 PM
    Sunir, I've run BD teams that reported into the VP Marketing, SVP Sales, CCO and COO. I've found that regardless, you need the CEO and their team's complete buyin and engagement. With it, you have the support you need to execute and can manage expectations. Without it, different execs have different expectations and you may not be successful. I've had both scenarios simple_smile
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:20:45 PM
    In my roles in BD and Ecosystem, I’ve reported into Marketing, into Sales, into Product Management, and into the Office of the CTO (which is like “R&D” perhaps?).

    Marketing worked the least well - technical integration partners, which are the kinds I focus on, then not to drive a lot of web traffic.

    Sales was 2nd worst - integration partners tend not to drive a lot of revenue or sales qualified leads.

    Product Management and OCTO were much better - they are more “overarching” departments, where the various benefits of integration partners and developer ecosystems can best be realized.
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:33:01 PM
    @Sunir Shah - BD means different things at different companies, but in my experience the most successful BD teams have a direct line to a C-level exec. As the firm’s strategy shifts, BD needs to be both aware and empowered to help serve the objectives of the company. If BD lives in a specific functional silo, focus will inevitably be skewed.
    Stefano Perrotta
    August 15, 2018 02:05:00 PM
    @Scott Edison Thanks for taking the time for all of us! How did you guys structure the BD/partnership team at Bench? Any piece of advice if you are dealing with Channel Partners/Strategic Partners (usually bigger than us)/API partners (usually smaller and more inbound)?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:09:40 PM
    @Stefano Perrotta - lots to dig into there! My approach with building a BD practice is to stay lean. It takes time to figure out what is going to work for your company/product so give yourself plenty of runway by staying small as long as you can. In terms of advice for big players- try to understand the objectives/motivations of both senior mgmt AND the team responsible for execution…sometimes the two don’t match.
    Stefano Perrotta
    August 15, 2018 02:12:41 PM
    @Scott Edison Could not agree with you more on the big players part.
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:15:59 PM
    How I've structured BD in the past is I would be in many of the early conversations with potential partners, mainly Integration partners. We'd get them on boarded with an integration and then train the partners sales team on our product. We had BD reps that would continue to interact with the partners and be the first line of support to them while I was onto our next Partnership opportunity. In total we were a team of 3. Each rep had 10 - 20 partners.
    Stefano Perrotta
    August 15, 2018 02:22:20 PM
    @Jake Wallace So would you say 15-20 is a good portfolio of partners? How big are on average those partners in terms of overall pipe generated?
    Jake Wallace
    August 15, 2018 02:31:29 PM
    @Stefano Perrotta, I think you need to have both.. IMO. I work in MarTech... so how goal is to have as many of our customers marketing tools (that make sense) Integrating into our platform. The more integrated a customer is the less likely they'll walk away. I think we have a good blend. At the end of the day- I'm all for giving our customers options.
    Stefano Perrotta
    August 15, 2018 02:33:41 PM
    @Jake Wallace I totally agree. More integrations, higher LTV, lower churn. We experience the same here at Aircall. But would you say 15-20 are a good number for a single BD? What would they be in charge of?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:35:16 PM
    @Stefano Perrotta - In terms of the right number of partners, every situation is unique. We have partners that are very light touch (they refer to us and use simple tools to self manage) and we have strategic partners that require ongoing support.
    Tyrone Lingley
    August 15, 2018 03:00:01 PM
    @Scott Edison how much does the product team influence you on who to partner with vs. you identifying product partners and having to make the business case to them?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 03:02:27 PM
    @Tyrone Lingley - If the focus of the partnership is either a) a technical integration or b) an attempt to fill a perceived gap in our solution, Product is involved early on. We will often do early exploration wrt these kinds of opportunities, then pull in Product to dig into the details

    Open or closed ecosystems?

    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:04:17 PM
    @Scott Edison On the one hand, it is great to have an open platform, where anyone can come and build anything to extend, enhance, and integrate your offering.

    On the other hand, if anyone can build anything, there is the possibility that someone will build something that competes with one of the platform’s selling propositions.

    In my case, our platform is open core - we have a free, open source version, and a paid version with extra features. My leadership team has expressed concerns that the community will build things on top of our free version that compete with our paid version.

    How do I resolve this tension of wanting to have an open and vibrant ecosystem, with wanting to not help others compete with us?
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:06:47 PM
    @Cooper Marcus - This might require a live conversation, but in my experience its all about execution and follow through. Anyone can copy your idea, but few can do so properly and follow through in a way that satisfies customers
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:09:12 PM
    @Cooper Marcus I spent way too long in the open source maybe has a business model universe… a common strategy is that the paid version is 6 months ahead of the open source version; you are then racing to keep the platform ahead of the ecosystem.

    Another strategy (e.g. Redhat) is to embrace the community ecosystem and not compete with it, but then provide quality control and improvements to what’s out there in the world. Customers are paying you for quality.
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:09:34 PM
    @Cooper Marcus have you looked at other similar companies and any strategy particular appealing to you?
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:17:38 PM
    @Sunir Shah I’ve been looking for analogous companies, and trying to find analysis of this topic written by others - haven’t had much luck, still looking.
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:18:00 PM
    Jabber.com vs Jabber.org was my first exposure to the 6 mo delay
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:18:24 PM
    Another strategy is the copyright license. Is Kong BSD or GPL or Apache or MT?
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:18:26 PM
    MIT?
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:27:34 PM
    Apache
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:30:18 PM
    I learnt the worst strategy is harming your ecosystem; that is a lot of aggravation that gets you nowhere.

    Does your management have peers in the paid open source space? There are a bunch of nuances
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:30:25 PM
    that are unique to OSS
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:32:46 PM
    yep, we have peers, and yes indeed, I’m finding there is lots of nuance - much more so than when I was doing this for Enterprise SaaS simple_smile
    Cooper Marcus
    August 15, 2018 02:32:51 PM
    keeps it interesting!
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:33:29 PM
    10x the politics. Free brings out the best in people. lol
    Scott Varner
    August 15, 2018 03:57:58 PM
    point_up_2 This is so true. Our direct channel is freemium and often times free users are the most demanding.
    Sunir Shah
    August 15, 2018 02:38:07 PM
    @Scott Edison thanks once again so much for offering to be here today!
    Scott Edison
    August 15, 2018 02:39:12 PM
    My pleasure @Sunir Shah I’m also happy to get deeper in the weeds on a 1:1 basis (contact Scott here) if anyone has a specific issue they want to spitball