{"id":23406908,"date":"2023-05-24T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vendasta.com\/blog\/?p=23406908"},"modified":"2026-09-23T18:43:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T18:43:56","slug":"mastering-partnerships-and-go-to-market-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vendasta.com\/blog\/mastering-partnerships-and-go-to-market-success\/","title":{"rendered":"618: Mastering Partnerships and Go-To-Market Success | Barrett King"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barrett King<\/a>, Senior Manager for Go-to-Market strategies for the Global Partner Ecosystem<\/a> at\u00a0Hubspot<\/a>, joins us on the latest episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.<\/p>\n

A dynamic and accomplished professional with over 10 years of experience in the SaaS industry, Barrett has honed his skills in forging strategic partnerships and executing effective go-to-market strategies.<\/p>\n

Barrett’s expertise lies in identifying untapped business opportunities, fostering growth, and establishing successful sales channels across diverse industries. His proficiency in developing and implementing sales and marketing plans has driven customer engagement and retention, resulting in remarkable revenue growth.<\/p>\n

Renowned for his unwavering commitment to excellence, Barrett has consistently surpassed sales targets, earning him a coveted spot at the yearly Presidents Club. His exceptional performance in fast-paced and competitive environments demonstrates his unwavering dedication to providing outstanding customer experiences and fostering enduring relationships throughout the business landscape.<\/p>\n

Join us as we delve into Barrett’s remarkable journey and discover the strategies that have propelled him to the forefront of the SaaS industry.<\/p>\n

Transcript<\/h2>\n
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Conquer Local. It’s really a breath of fresh air. Good times. I help leaders go from anxiety to authority under pressure. And then let’s go and get it. It’s an ecosystem. The hardest part here is going to be getting me to shut up on this one. Conquer Local with Vendasta, hosted by Jeff Tomlin. Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast. Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get the tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business.<\/p>\n

Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level. I’m Jeff Tomlin, and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Barrett King. Barrett is a senior manager for go-to-market strategies for the global partner ecosystem at HubSpot. He’s a highly motivated and results-driven professional with over 10 years of experience in building partnerships and executing go-to-market strategies for SaaS companies. He’s a pro in identifying and cultivating new business opportunities, driving revenue growth, and establishing successful sales channels across a variety of industries.<\/p>\n

He’s adept at creating and implementing sales and marketing plans that drive customer engagement, retention, and constantly exceeding sales targets, and delivering results in a fast-paced and competitive environments, all doing so while remaining committed to providing exceptional customer experiences and fostering long-term relationships across the business. Get ready, Conkers. For Barrett King, coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast. Barrett King, welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast. Thank you for taking some time into your busy day and your schedule to spend a few minutes chatting with us here.<\/p>\n

It’s my pleasure. I’m excited to have a chat and get better acquainted. This will be a fun one. Barrett, I’m a big HubSpot fan. In fact, there’s an internal joke going around constantly about my fanboy nature. Whenever I bring up, well, HubSpot does this, everyone rolls their eyes, and now they start parenting me. But the truth of the matter is, for years now, HubSpot has done a great job of building a culture and a learning brand, a brand of sharing all the stuff that you guys did and helping other people become successful. If anything, it’s probably one of the most helpful companies and helpful brands out there, and it’s something that I aspire to build.<\/p>\n

I think one of the things that we did really well early on, just a comment on that. First off, I should say though, do you have an orange shirt you can wear next time? Because if you’re not a true fanboy, you don’t have an orange shirt with a giant sprocket in the middle of it. I do, but that would bring a little too much ridicule if I wore it. So I just keep it in my closet and I look at it every once in a while. That’s fair. Take selfies or whatever. I think what HubSpot’s done really well, generally speaking, we democratized this idea of education at scale. We were very intentional around recognizing that our customers would be more successful, our users, everyone throughout the entire life cycle of a HubSpot interaction would benefit by consuming content that helped them get better. And then I think ultimately, just to be really tongue in cheek about it, it makes sense from an SEO perspective too.<\/p>\n

If we’re giving away free content and helping people to learn and get better of our platform, it just helps us increase the message reach and improve the way that folks adopt inbound as a go-to-market and work too well. Well, something seems to be working over there and a pretty good idea of what then. So anyways, it’s great to have you. You had an interesting analogy about how you got into go-to-market and marketing and partnerships. You want to share that with the listeners? Yeah, it’s interesting. So my career is more of a generalist. So I’m for reference sake for those listening or watching. I’m 38. I graduated college in 2008 when the world sort of imploded, if you will, from a financial perspective. And I jumped into restaurants. I have a design degree. I specifically went to school for digital arts and design, but I jumped into restaurants because it was the only job I could get. It was the only opportunity that was out there. And then I was in tech for a while and back in restaurants. I worked with a fashion photographer at one point. I did all these different things throughout my career. And then something like eight years ago now,<\/p>\n

I landed at HubSpot. And what I’ve learned over the last particular couple of years is that when I speak with most folks, they say things like, well, how did you get into partnerships? Kind of a natural question, especially for someone who talks with this stuff all day long. And I had the worst answers for years. I was just like, well, I did these things and then I ended in partnerships. And I just, I need to get better at that story. And so what I realized is that I’m this sort of like amalgamation of a variety of different things. So I’ve, as I mentioned, been in restaurants and open restaurants and managed restaurants.<\/p>\n

I’ve been in tech. I was in marketing at one point. I was in account management. I was in sales. And what it distills down to is when I think about graduation, I can graduate college, everyone graduates, if they do at some point, some former primary education, whether that’s high school or their doctorate. And from that graduation, you get this little green mat, just like the Lego mat that we all have when you’re kids, you built your like house or your whatever on. And so I think about that mat as the sort of like, I’m going to say generally speaking, level playing field, everyone leaves primary education at like, and you get different levels and different tiers to that. But generally speaking, if I, if I say it that way, it’s sort of a level field. And some folks end up having this like focus of, you know, they get five of those green six by six bricks and they’re stacked up or like, there’s, you know, three yellow and two green and they’re, they’re on their mats.<\/p>\n

And those folks tend to stay focused on those colors and they go on their, they’re your doctors and your lawyers and I’m generalizing again, but you know, your focused careers where you spend your entire lifetime developing more of that same color and shape block and you build this really tall tower. And that’s what you did with your life. I was the opposite. I had put so many different Legos and shapes and colors and I piled them on my mat. My mat was a little bit messy. And so what I realized is like something around, I don’t know, maybe eight or 10 years ago now, I could change the way that those blocks are structured. And so I got better and better and better at this idea of, well, what if I move them around? What if I formed what is now as I describe it a pyramid?<\/p>\n

And so if you can picture in your mind here, I have a Lego mat just like we all do. And instead of mine having a tower of a single color, I had this pile that I turned into a pyramid and that pyramid has allowed me to grow my career and to scale up and to level up. But more importantly, I know a little bit about a lot because of my, you know, varied background. And so I’m more of a generalist and a specialist, but in partnerships, it’s helped me succeed because I can relate to, connect with and understand a lot more of the folks that I work with. So that’s the way I think about sort of my career and the partnerships. You know, it’s an interesting path. I had a similar path. I got out of university and I had an economics degree. And the only thing I knew for certain when I got done university was that I did not want to be an economist in any way, shape or form. And which seemed like a bit of wasted money at the time, but I ended up trying a lot of things too, similar to what you’ve described and sort of landed me in a passion for marketing. And so our paths aren’t that different really.<\/p>\n

So tell me a little bit about your path to partnerships then. So partnerships for me were, it was progressive. I didn’t just wake up one day and say, no, it’d be great. I should go into partnerships. I, when I reflect back and look at the sort of story to get there, I spent a bunch of time when I was in restaurants early on. One of my first jobs after college was I was a host at a restaurant, which they call the Hospitality Manager, but I was a host. And what I realized is that in order to grow the audience, if you will, we describe it today, but the guests that were coming in, it would benefit if I could go out into the community. And so I would go to the local fidelity office. I would go to the local, like Charles Schwab, it was a financial area in Boston. And I would just walk in and talk to the secretary or the whoever was there and just say like, hey, we’re just a restaurant, you know who we are, you want to host your holiday parties, you want to host your team meetings, you want to host more of your, you know, your events. And I didn’t know at the time, but what I was developing was partnerships with these organizations where we were, you know,<\/p>\n

putting together these very unique packages and enabling them to come in and have a very specific experience and have a set menu and all these things that we in the industry knew to be commonplace. But for these other folks was beneficial because now they could send their executives and their teams and whatnot down to the restaurant, have a very curated, very predictable outcome, which was a great meal, really good environment and atmosphere and whatnot. And that turned into significant uptick in business. And so I carried that sort of methodology of people, which was always my focus forward, I went into a role at a company where I was developing these marketing relationships. And again, same, it was partnerships, we were selling regional marketing events. And so, you know, I was going into these different regions around the country and I was selling ad spend on the radio and I was selling opportunity to do TV show appearances for the clients we had signed. But I was also developing partnerships within the community to bring in different vendors and resources to ensure our events were just absolute home runs. I brought that forward to the next tech company<\/p>\n

I was at where I was selling, at this point, technology back to the restaurants that I had helped manage. And so what got really interesting is that over time, I started to develop this idea that partnerships were not nothing specific around it in terms of like, I didn’t go to school for it. It wasn’t then I had to go and like study more on it. It was just really about the people. And so as I got closer and closer to HubSpot, if you will, in terms of my timeline, more and more of my career centered around relationship development, you know, the transfer of value, delivering value early and often, the things that are now a cornerstone of the way that I think about partnerships, you know, at scale at HubSpot and just in my personal life. And so if I look at the kind of big picture, if you will, I simplify this, partnerships for me, in particular where I’ve landed today, really was this sort of build up this like hill climb, if you will, these stair steps around different experiences that fed into this idea that partnerships as a profession was really what made me feel fulfilled because I could sell. I like selling.<\/p>\n

Sales was fun. But the reason I was good at sales was, you know, in a top rapid times and a high contributor always went back to because I developed really trusting foundational relationships that was about the transfer of value. I had something that I could help XYZ customer with and I would go and do that work. And so for me, it’s been this interesting progression, as I mentioned, in terms of climbing that hill and then getting to today where I have partnerships in my title. There’s days that I still talk to folks and say, you know, you’re a partner leader, how do you feel about X or Y? And I have to kind of pinch myself and say, am I really at that point? Because when I think about it, it’s just continuous progression in terms of how I grow my own opportunity and how I get, as I mentioned before, taking this collection of skills that I’ve developed over time and bringing forward to the world that I have today. So rewarding for us to extroverts, to build relationships and to build partnerships with other organizations, especially when all things are clicking, you sort of have a three-component approach to the way that you think about it, don’t<\/p>\n

you? I do, to some extent. Yeah. So I think about, first and foremost, focusing on the work itself. So studying it, being a student of it, being very intentional around what I do every day. So for example, this is not meant to plug my own show, but I have a show. It’s about partnerships. And the reason I started that show was simply because when I took on this role, I’m responsible for go-to-market strategy now. It’s something that I’ve been around and I’ve been a part of. But HubSpot’s partner business is a significant portion of our revenue and it has a huge impact and touches a lot of lives and companies. So when I took on this responsibility, I take it very serious. So the first thing I did was go learn. And so I get this methodology around being a student of the work. Who’s talking about it? What articles can I read?<\/p>\n

How can I go listen to somebody who’s telling a story about it? And in any event, I started this show because for me, it allowed me to go and learn more effectively. I’m glad it’s been helpful for other folks. But most importantly, and kind of my first tenet is this idea of being a student of the work itself. And then focusing on in terms of the depth and the breadth of the work itself as well. So not being singular. You just kind of said it yourself. But when I think about partnerships, it’s not one thing. There are supporting roles. There are a lot of folks that do work that is hyper-focused on a specific set of skills. But for me, in go-to-market in particular, it’s very abstract. Work with marketing, work with sales, I work with CS and product. I work with a variety of folks across the organization and the market.<\/p>\n

So it requires that I’ve got this flexibility, but also depth in that work. And so it’s a kind of second piece for me. And the third is really interesting because it’s about remaining in this place of being a trusted advisor, really focusing on the things that are important to my audience, which means I got to listen. And so I’d say, and it’s simplest form, it’s actively listening to the market, to the partners, to your team. But I think more important is remaining in a position where you can facilitate the connection of those different folks. Because partnerships is not just about you sell more software, service about our customer.<\/p>\n

There’s a vendor relationship. Partnerships, in my opinion, are developed between every individual we interact with, in particular in B2B SaaS. And so fundamentally, for myself, as a kind of third tenant, I focus hyper really intensely, if you will, on this idea of being a thought leader and a trusted advisor to those around me, so that when we do things together, I’m bringing the background of my studies and the knowledge that I’ve gained and things of that nature. I’ve got some depth, some stories and some time in seat. And because I’ve been so directive and I’ve listened, ideally I’m delivering as much value as possible through each one of those interactions. What you’re talking about really resonates with me in the early stages of our company. We decided to sell through channel partners from the very beginning. So creating partnerships was really, really important to what we did.<\/p>\n

And the process that we went through was really, really important. Interestingly enough, at the end of the day, what I found out in the marketplace is that there was a lot of people that we were competing against at the time that were really bad at creating relationships. And some of the things that you’re talking about, they seem like really foundational things in order to create a relationship with another person, another business. But there’s a lot of people out there that don’t get it. And so for the people that get it, it’s really easy to create an advantage in the marketplace when you’re trying to create tight relationships. So in your point of view, what are some of the hardest things in creating partnerships in today’s ecosystem? Because the things are always changing.<\/p>\n

And then not just the business climate, but also the technologies and the way people interact with each other than they did in a few years past. So what are some of those biggest challenges that you’re seeing in creating tight partnerships now? I think you had on one of the first points that stopped the mind for me. And that’s how dynamic things are right now. I don’t know who to quote on this. There’s something I read today. Forgive me if you’re listening to this and you’re that person, thank you for saying this. But they were talking about, there’s an article I read, they’re talking about how things are moving so quick and that people are talking about the future constantly. Here’s what’s next. Here’s what’s next, right? Go look at AI. Go look at all these different things that are I think in some ways driving innovation, but also hindering is probably the right term. It’s slowing down, perhaps progress in terms of deep relationships. So the first is like everyone wants to move fast. And I think that’s a good thing for technology sometimes. It’s a hard thing for relationship building and partnerships.<\/p>\n

The other thing from a programmatic perspective is very specifically, there’s typically a significant roadblock in terms of total business buy-in to partnerships and how to win because it’s not a direct correlation between action and output. It’s action, time, development, more work, more action results, a little more results. It’s kind of a long tail experience with partnerships. There is a quick time to value this intangible ROI you can get. I think that’s one of the kind of primary things that I see most often in terms of just market happens. And the third would be, I think probably the most common, which is that people don’t understand that partnerships aren’t single dimension, right? So like, we can use HubSpot. We started there. HubSpot has a great partner program. When we talk about it even internally, we say partner program. And for some folks, that means agency partnerships.<\/p>\n

For some folks, that means integrations. Some folks, it’s app partners. Some folks, it’s strategic, kind of the upmarket, if you will, those more like ISVs and folks of that nature. So I think what’s important is identifying specifically what partnerships means to you, defining that new organization and sticking to it. So I think about that as setting a guiding light. And that’s the thing that I most commonly talk to folks about. And then I see myself. It’s just that in terms of a challenge, it’s this disjointed experience. We’re going to go to market over here, go to market over there, but really clearly defining is partnerships our go-to-market or a part of our go-to-market? And it doesn’t have to be one statement that you make. That could be geo-specific. That could be vertical-specific.<\/p>\n

But defining the swim lanes is that third pillar in terms of challenge that I see a lot of folks struggling with. Do you create a hierarchy of ways that people can work with you based on the amount of friction that it takes to actually get something done?<\/p>\n

What we’ve found in the past is you can propose strategic partnerships with businesses. But then when everybody goes home from a discussion to conference, everybody’s really busy. And the more friction, the more work it takes to move something forward, the less likely it is that it’s going to happen. Do you create a hierarchy of ways that you can start with baby steps, working with you guys, and then taking it forward from there?<\/p>\n

In terms of building the actual program and the partnership itself, as I was thinking about it?<\/p>\n

If you look for the gap first, you’ve got to go look at it at its very core. What is the thing that you are doing in tandem with this partner that delivers value to your customer? I talked about that as the intersection of value. I picture a triangle whenever I describe this in terms of you and your customer and your partner. And if you can figure out that nice little trifecta, the intersection of all those three parties and how value transfers between them, that is the most fundamental thing, which comes from observation. And I think the challenge is that most folks want to make the assumption business leaders, CROs, CEOs, etc., that they know the answer, love a good CRO. It’s like, we’re going to do this, and this is the only way to win. I think you have to listen to the customer first. I go, in my opinion, to the root of the problem or the root of the solution. And I say, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, what are you focused on? What are you challenged with? What are the things that you need done to service our platform to help you grow your business that we’re not actively supporting you in?<\/p>\n

Those are my earliest partnerships. And I usually find that that’s a good first step to sort of architect it up, if you will, the landscape of what’s going on in your customer’s life cycle without your direct involvement. So what I heard, I think I heard a framework there. So it sounds like you listen to the customer, you said, explore the gap and then take an action and figure out what the customer actually needs to get done. No, you’re right. You’re spot on. You have to document it to be intentional about it. I think the thing that you see happen quite often is that, at least in the folks that I talk with, you know, that you start the process because you feel like you need to do something. And as you do that, you don’t reflect, you don’t look at where you’ve been or look at where you need to go to. And one of the things that I have learned in my career, even at HubSpot, my years here, is that deciding how high you’re flying, your elevation over the problem is, you know, absolutely fundamental, just a cornerstone of success in terms of how, when you look at a problem or go for a solution, you approach it.<\/p>\n

And I think when you take and incrementally break down these different components, you say, I want to listen to the customer, you know, observe the gap. It’s the action step that most people want to default to. There’s this, this tool in, and sales, right? I was the head of sales training here at one point for partner. And one of the things that I uncovered and I used in our trainings was this idea of layer, it’s L-A-E-R, listen, acknowledge, explore, and respond. Talk about a framework. It’s been around for a very long time. But layer was really interesting because the fundamental science of it said you needed to listen, acknowledge, and explore ideally three times before you respond. But most people, in particular sales reps and partner reps, listen, sort of, kind of, right, lose language a little bit. And then, you know, they don’t really acknowledge, and then they never explore, and they go right to respond. And you miss this life cycle of actual depth that you get from it.<\/p>\n

I think that is, for me, kind of, the fundamentals of partner program and partner relationship development. It’s the scientific method. You need a hypothesis. You need to formulate an experiment. You need to run the experiment, study the results, formulate an opinion, and either run a new experiment or be able to know that by actioning in the beginning, you get that outcome every time. And it’s in that exploration where you really begin to understand the use case that the customer really needs and the job they need to be done, if you will. Interesting. That’s it. That’s how to reinforce it. So that’s another help. So we’ve got two helpful frameworks, thinking about partnerships and then the exploration, I think there. Talk about some useful and practical tactics that you employ when you’re putting together partnerships or into the core work that you do. Well, I think the thing at the onset is being open-minded, which is the most buzzy thing that I could say to answer your question and maybe a little bit played out.<\/p>\n

But I think it’s important to acknowledge and be conscious of this idea that we don’t have all the answers. There’s a lot of folks in the industry right now in partnerships that say they have the answer. And if any of you all listen to this and you’re thinking of yourself as Barrett talking about me, I’m probably talking about you. Because the truth is there are some good answers out there, but the profession, while it’s been around for a very long time, is still in its infancy in terms of perfection. And so I think being open and being intentional around how you listen is very important. The other is seek out people that have answers, but more specifically, and this is to me as an individual important, seek out answers different from the ones that you already have come to. So be intentional around seeking out and sourcing folks that are talking about things that you don’t necessarily agree with or have answers to in that sense. So diversified thinking is really important. And then in terms of tactics and the functional component of it, I think every day looking for your cross-functional opportunities, which again, sounds a little bit fuzzy, but it’s very true.<\/p>\n

Partnerships is typically not the most direct organization in the business. While you are working with another organization, because of that, there’s a proximity challenge, which is that they don’t work for you. They work with you. And so if you’ve got a collective value, as I mentioned earlier, you’ve got a collective goal and a plan, that’s all well and good. But ultimately, the transactional value, why you should spend time together, comes from all the other stuff that you deliver on. So one of the things that I always think about is, what else can I do? Very simply put, what else can I do to support, to help go to market? What are the other things that I can do in terms of delivering tactical, tangible, outcome-based value? And then again, most importantly above all of this, document everything. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to folks, and even my own experience in my career, and you go in and you’re like, well, what are we doing with this? And the answer is like, well, you know, Billy or Sally or whoever over here, they’ve got the knowledge, and you’re like, cool, great, that doesn’t help me though, because I can’t replicate Billy or Sally.<\/p>\n

And so fundamentally, capturing institutional knowledge and being intentional about making it scalable, we started off talking about Unswats Academy and how they kind of decentralized knowledge here makes a big difference. I’m probably drank too much of the Kool-Aid, that’s probably why I think this way now. Been here for a long time, but I really believe that the more you can capture, the more you can distribute, and kind of democratize information and enable everyone around you, take a baseline and then learn and grow from it, the more successful you’ll be. And that’s one of the things I really mean.<\/p>\n

By the way, the first thing that you mentioned there, being open-minded, I can see it’s so important. So many times, even myself, when I’ve been looking for partnerships, but I’ve observed many people, they’ll go into, especially in environments like conferences, and they’ll go into a situation and they’re looking for a very specific thing in a box, this type of partnership or this type of thing. And unless you’re open-minded about exploring different types of things, there’s so many opportunities that will pass you up because you won’t realize that actually, until you really explore what somebody’s looking for, more times than not, you’ll find out that there’s opportunities out there that do fit a lot neater in your box and you would have thought if you weren’t open-minded in the first place. At least that’s what I found in my experience.<\/p>\n

And to me, that was just forcing myself to be more curious, to have more conversations and go a little bit deeper. It makes a difference when you use, I think about it I guess a question for rules, like rules of engagement or things like that quite often. And I’m always very cautious of anything that’s that concrete and that black and white. I’m actually a bigger fan of guardrails. I think you can set guardrails really wide, and just say operate within this general area and you’re going to learn more that way. 100%, I can totally buy that. So you’ve been doing this for some time. So do you have a process for building partnerships that speaking of putting something in a box that you can refer to?<\/p>\n

We touched on this a little bit, but I’ll double click. The first thing that I go to, whenever I talk to somebody, early founder to several hundred million in revenue, it tends to be my sweet spot. The first thing they usually say to me is, how do I build a partner program like X? They want to emulate something else. And I think there’s something valuable about having a North Star. And what I usually do first is break down what about so-and-so’s partnerships program or their ecosystem, whatever they call it. What about that do you want to emulate? And like nine times out of 10, it’s like, I want to generate that much revenue. Like, cool. All right. What else do you like about it though?<\/p>\n

And I try and break down, I think about this in very small pieces. I try and break down the things that are incrementally, but fundamentally most important to the organization is trying to go and build something like this. And I think probably there’s probably a stat around this, but seven to 10, eight to 10 time, they want to talk about revenue. How do I generate more revenue? And I think the thing that I go to first is like, well, great. Revenue aside, whatever the value is that you’re looking from the partner, what do they get from you? And some leaders have thought of this. A lot of them have not. That’s the first thing that I want to go and get to.<\/p>\n

That’s kind of my breakdown, if you will, in terms of observing and then actioning all the way down to the fundamentals. Now that I know that a partner benefits because they get to do, like, again, we can use SubSpot because we’ve all talked about it at this point. I don’t usually, but we will. Early on, we observed that some of our most successful customers were working with marketing agencies. We engage with those marketing agencies. We found out that they were using our software to deliver their services. And so their customers were happier, had better ROI, more successful. Like we had a great marketing platform early on. We have a great suite now. It’s a different ecosystem at this stage.<\/p>\n

But if I keep it at its simplest form, that observation birthed what I still believe selfishly is one of the best agency-based partner programs in the world. We’ve diversified. We’ve got SIs and GSIs and a bunch of other folks, you know, ISVs that do the work now. But it all stemmed from that observation, the action, and then some of that kind of tactical stuff in between. And so I think in terms of the box you described, the framework, getting to where your customer gaps are, as I mentioned before, leaning into where by working with somebody else, they benefit. And then connecting back that benefit to what that organization needs. And for our case, to use an example, it was that the agencies had a variety of tools they were using to do the thing that our single tool could do.<\/p>\n

So we could help them to consolidate. We also could do something very specific. And this is the piece that I want to be hyper-clear on. And that’s we help them build a business model in a box. Like it’s the one thing that really stood apart and still does for our ecosystem. And that’s this idea that, you know, by working with our tool, you can build inbound services, as we’ve called them for years, that are scalable, repeatable, predictable. They are a high margin. People do really well and they deliver an outsourced amount or outsize, excuse me, amount of value to the end customer. And so naturally, if I’m an agency or a system integrator or some sort of a consultant in the CRM marketing customer service tool space, why wouldn’t I want to work with a company that has figured out not only how to solve for the customers I mentioned early on, how to deliver value to me, the actual partner, but the third piece, make it easy.<\/p>\n

So many people want to go and engineer some big burly, whatever, just keep it super simple. And, you know, there’s a guy, Blake Williams, he’s in the partnership space, Berlin guy, who’s on my show a long while ago, and he had a very specific comment. He said, you don’t own your customer’s trust. He said, your partner’s own that trust. You get to borrow it, add something to it, and deliver it back through those partners to those end customers. And that really stuck out to me as the kind of cornerstone that the fundamentals of how do you really build this thing from the ground up? You know, I saw a great framework, speaking of another framework that Mark Roberge was talking about in one of his chats, where you measure go-to-market fit by your go-to-market channels and then your customer segments.<\/p>\n

Look at the unit economics and you figure out in which areas channel market and product and customer fit, where you have go-to-market fit and where you have product-market fit, and then you focus in those areas. And the primary channels, you’ve got direct, like an inbound, you’ve got outbound, you’ve got partnerships. I was going to ask clearly, building a robust inbound, the unit economics around inbound are amazing. It takes a long time to get there for a lot of people because you’ve got to build the content and you’ve got to build that mode that takes an investment. Outbound is great because you’re picking your customer right, but there’s an art to it.<\/p>\n

I’m just wondering, when you look at the unit economics around partnerships, how do they stack up in terms of volume in terms of efficiency to go-to-market motions?<\/p>\n

I’ve seen metrics in the 3-to-1, 5-to-1, 7-to-1 return, just in terms of outsized opportunities set. What’s interesting is that it’s all relative to the sophistication and size of the organization. So HubSpot or a similarly-sized company, the returns tend to be different as you get bigger. It’s the same as any motion is in any go-to-market dependent on size, but fundamentally, if you look at its core, partnerships should represent at minimum 3x. I always say 3x. If your direct team is carrying a million-dollar quota, your partner team should carry 3 million because theoretically, if you’re doing your job right, those partners should be delivering a 2, 3, 4, 5x return against every dollar.<\/p>\n

What’s interesting is it’s not always the case. It all depends on how much surround sound you’re building around those partnerships, and then how much, frankly, those partnerships are meant to deliver back to you. If it’s a pure resell, you know, distributor, reseller, relationship, it’s usually a pretty high multiple. That’s where you get your like 6, 7, 8, 7, even 10s, like 1-to-10 ratio, which is bananas. When it’s much more, yeah, like migrate, implement, integrate more people-heavy, human capital-centric, the ratios go down. That’s where you get your like 2, 3, 4, even 5-to-1s. It’s still incredible because if you imagine you can hire, you know, one Barrett, and Barrett can produce 3 times what the nearest direct sales rep does, or marketing dollar does, that gets really interesting really quick.<\/p>\n

Very, very interesting. So one takeaway, one bit of advice you have for someone that wants to build a partnership program or focus on go-to-market. What’s the one piece of advice you want to leave behind?<\/p>\n

That’s interesting is a parting thought here. For you know, for me, I think it’s, you know, I don’t want to do the whole like David and Goliath thing. I think it’s an easy analogy. I think it’s more selfishly like what I’ve done is learned a little bit about a lot. It’s maybe good at business. It’s helped me in my career. It’s helped me develop strong partnerships. I like to read. I like to consume information. I like to learn. I watch, you know, crappy TV shows, and I spend my time doing meaningless things too. But I try and think about it in a very simple way, which is it’s about work-life blend. There’s no balance. And you know, if I bring that forward and I say, there’s no balance because balance implies everything is 50-50.<\/p>\n

It’s not some days I work hard or some days maybe I don’t work enough. I bring that into partnerships. And that’s the thing that I would encourage is kind of like a founding thought of how do you specifically lean into it? Go and learn a little about business. Learn a little about marketing, a little bit about sales. Don’t spend every waking second doing it. That’s why I said it’s not about balance in terms of every day I’m going to learn all these things. But I spent my life learning a little bit about a bunch of different things that I can bring in to go to market conversations because fundamentally, go to market is such a diversified role.<\/p>\n

The fact that I know a little bit about product and how to build, a little bit about marketing, sales, yes, those different components come together off my Lego mat into my Lego pyramid I described earlier on and gives me a leg up to be more valuable in every conversation that I have. So build your mat is my takeaway. For a short talk that had an awful lot of takeaways in it, that one note is a great note to end on and a great takeaway for anyone that wants to build the partnerships program and focus on go to market. I thank you for your insights and thanks for taking some time out of your busy day to share with us in the Concord Local podcast. If people want to get a hold of you, Barrett, how do they get a hold in?<\/p>\n

How do they follow up on you or follow up with all of the cool things that you’re doing?<\/p>\n

Yeah, LinkedIn, I think for folks like us, it tends to be when you search Barrett, Jay King on LinkedIn. You can find me directly there. Feel free to DM me. I’m happy to have a chat. I talk to a lot of folks that way. I also have my own show. It’s called Outcomes. You can find it on all the popular things you’d expect. YouTube certainly, Spotify and Apple. It’s about partnerships and I focus on having diverse conversations with folks that have been there, done the work, and really have a story to tell about it. So you want to learn about partnerships? You go there, you want to chat with me, you go check out LinkedIn. Sir, it’s been a privilege spending a few minutes to chat with you and great to get to know you.<\/p>\n

I hope we have a chance to do this again in the not too distant future.<\/p>\n

Same, looking forward to it. Take care.<\/p>\n

It was so awesome speaking to Barrett. Clearly, I’m a HubSpot fan and yes, I have really earned my reputation.<\/p>\n

You know, adopting inbound as a go-to-market strategy and focusing on SEO can build long-term stability and growth when developing partnerships and marketing relationships in different regions. The plan? Build scalable, predictable, high-margin inbound processes. By the way, I love Barrett’s Summary of Lair, which stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore, and Respond. Really helpful and simple model to follow. If there’s one tip we could leave you with, in order to build successful partnerships, it’s important to focus on developing vendor relationships, being a thought leader and a trusted advisor. Barrett also mentioned, keep an open mind, seek out answers different from the ones you have and deliver tactical support to partners.<\/p>\n

Lastly, having a valuable North Star metric can help partners build a business model in a box leading to benefits such as scalability and high margin. If you’ve enjoyed Barrett’s episode discussing building successful partnerships and go-to-market strategies, keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives. Episode 431, outcome-based selling with Phil Jones or Episode 354, customer deciding journey with Tim Reister, who is one of my favorites. Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome.<\/p>\n

On the Canadian Prairies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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