Mark Roberge, founding CRO at HubSpot and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, shared some really good insight into partnership scaling strategies on The GTM Cheat Code podcast.
Here are the ones that stood out to me:
1ļøā£ A strategic partnership only works when you solve a problem keeping your partnerās executive team up at night. HubSpot did this for Marc Benioff, Salesforceās CEO, when they helped it fill its solution with inbound leads. Salesforce customers had been complaining that they liked the software but had no leads inside it to make the most of it. HubSpot provided a solution that let Benioff and team sleep a little better at night.
2ļøā£ Agency and Solution partners are not as motivated by a revenue share of 20% on a $300 AOV as they are on a great partner multiplier - how much a partner generates for every dollar of revenue you earn through them. In Microsoftās case, for every $1 of Microsoft revenue, partners who provide services generate $8.45 and partners who develop software generate $10.93. Do you know your partner multiplies and are you sharing it with your partners?
3ļøā£ A key unlock for HubSpot was aligning their partnersā approach with customer retention. Instead of setting up their partner tiers around revenue-created thresholds, they set them up around customer retention and success. Partners elevated their status and moved up the tiers (bronze, silver, gold) by achieving certain customer retention rates. This is an approach that I donāt see a lot of partner programs taking and it's so intuitive when you think about it because retention is the ultimate measure of success in SaaS.
And shout out to Peter Caputa for sticking to his conviction that HubSpotās Agency program could scale even when internal leaders didnāt think it would work!
The full episode is worth a listen - Iāve linked it in the comments
This post was originally shared by Olayiwola Ogungbemile (He/Him) on Linkedin.