Cloud Software Association

The first thing I typically do is set a meeting to sync our marketing teams and chat about calendars and where there's room to collaborate. Marketers like to think in longer term and not commit to too much up front that's then unrealistic to tackle. By talking calendars and what we both have slated, it allows for collaboration and often can make lead to a 2 birds, 2 stone situation. Deliverables typically start with a joint webinar or case study, and then see how you can repackage that in to new blogs, videos, speaking proposals, etc.

I like to treat each partnership as a unique relationship, but in general, I find that activities like (1) Providing Sales Training, (2) Engaging in marketing such as guest blog posts, webinars, eBooks, case studies, whitepapers, events, videos and podcast episodes, (3) Connecting people, such as through Slack, to allow folks on both sides of the partnership to communicate effectively, (4) Scheduling check-ins to help clear any roadblocks

One of the things we did in the first 30 days was to find some common customers and people who were heavy users of both platforms. We would seed the integration with these folks and then seed the idea of a case study. That way in 60-90 days you already have folks who are ready to go vs finding those when you really need them.

the idea of seeding with a case study is great. So here's a question for 'ya: what if there are no mutual customers? This could be a new partnership and the mutual benefit is obvious, but there's no overlapping customers. Or you could be partnering with them because you've successfully developed a partnership with their competitors. But again in both cases there are no mutual customers so you can't prime the pump for a case study..........So what do you do to help validate the partnership?

I think the opportunity is the same. Often with in-app prompts you can identify those users who you think are good potential for the partnership. Give them “Beta” access to the integration and see if they are willing to give feedback and be a case study. Ideally you should have a best use case in mind and those customers should be top of mind already.

Also, soft launching to a certain population of your users and soliciting feedback is a good way to get the same outcome

Segment your sales pipeline by partner too. Track them as a lead source like any other marketing initiative. That will give you visibility on leads, opportunities and ACV attributed to partner referrals and/or partner content depending on the partnership's structure

At FreshBooks I had a goal to make our integrated partners succeed by integrating with us.

I measured integrations on whether or not they could get 1% of our customers to activate on launch, it was a bad sign. Beyond that, they needed to get customer reviews going through the year and see account growth.

We generated continuous partner communication opportunities, but we expected fair trades in return.

So after 12 months, we would know the partners who we loved and partners who were disappointments.

I'd say that it's also a good tool for keeping momentum in the relationship. Without long-term plans and communications, whether around sales, marketing, and/or support, it can be easy for the partnership to stop being "top of mind" for all parties.

excellent point Robert. Totally agree.

having clear goals when discussing the collaboration, and translating them into KPIs (individual for the each partner and then jointly) make the partnership and its development/growth over time (not to mention the commitment) way more effective