How to Measure the 5 Kinds of Partner Programs
66% of B2B companies have a partner program, and more than 25,000 companies are already using Crossbeam or Reveal. How are you measuring the success of your partner program?
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This week’s research note includes:
GTM Research: The 5 kinds of partner programs and how to measure them
Better Together: Register now for our first Better Together executive forum in Atlanta!
ROI Study of the Week: Unlocking customer-led growth with Totango + Catalyst
GTM Events: Events you should know about
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GTM Research: 5 Kinds of Partner Programs and How to Measure Them
A weekly deep-dive into new GTM research and insights
The Crossbeam and Reveal merger was big news in our office.
A merger between two partner-focused tech companies that will enable our clients to better manage their partner programs? It’s like a Russian nesting doll of partner deliciousness.
Partner programs are having a moment.
According to our research, 66% of companies use a Partner-Led approach as one of their GTM Motions, and a recent study from Hubspot found that 77.6% of all organizations and 92.6% of enterprise companies have a partner program.
By 2024, more than 25,000 companies had adopted either Crossbeam or Reveal to automate account mapping, share CRM data across their partner ecosystems, and equip their go-to-market teams with partner data and relationships.
PartnerStack reports that partner referrals are only 10% of pipeline but account for 31% of revenue!
Sangram will be talking to Bob Moore, co-founder and CEO of the newly merged Crossbeam + Reveal TODAY on GTM Made Simple Live on LinkedIn at 12:30 about the merger and all things partner-led growth!
Sign up so the whole series is on your calendar, or join us on LinkedIn Tuesday!
Why Partner-Led Growth?
Companies are struggling: in recent research, 82% of surveyed companies report a significant slowdown in their sales velocity.
Partner-led growth has a proven track record of driving more efficient revenue growth and reducing sales cycle lengths.
When we look at customers of PartnerStack, Reveal, and Crossbeam, we see results like:
99% high win-rate
11% shorter time to close
432% growth in partner-sourced revenue
Are you running a partnership program and experiencing similar results?
If not, you're not alone.
Despite its widespread adoption, many companies with partner programs are failing to realize their full potential
Why?
There are so many different kinds of partner programs (we’ll get to that). And even if you have good partnerships in place, it can be hard to quantify performance because of tracking challenges.
Too often, partner efforts get trapped in a department and run in isolation from other Go-to-Market motions and teams. To unlock its full revenue potential, executives need to understand the following key concepts:
The five types of partner programs
How to measure and track performance
Determining which programs are best for you
Using GTM O.S. to go from program to growth motion
You can learn about all of these concepts in our report: Understanding Partner-Led Growth, available to everyone on our research hub.
5 Kinds of Partner Programs and How to Measure Them
Channel
Channel partners can include distributors, value-added resellers (VARs), system integrators, consultants, agencies, and other intermediaries who have established relationships with the target customers or have expertise in specific industries or markets.
How to measure channel partners:
Production (dollar & logo) by partner
Production by partner orientation (e.g. VARs vs. agencies)
Impact of attach rates on key revenue metrics (ACV, churn, LTV)
LOE from your organization to support
Ecosystem
In an ecosystem-led growth model, a B2B company focuses on building strong relationships and strategic partnerships with other companies that complement its offerings. This can include companies that provide complementary products or services, technology or data providers, consultants, distributors, or any other organization that can help enhance the overall value proposition for customers.
How to measure ecosystem partners:
Distribution of participants
TRM potential / penetration by partner
# of leads/opptys/win rates
Impact of attach rates on key revenue metrics (ACV, churn, LTV)
LOE from your organization to support
Referral
Referral programs are initiatives where existing customers or other close partners recommend a company's products or services to someone they know. Usually they make the referral in a way that directly endorses the product or service as a solution to a problem a company is actively trying to solve. It is common for a successful referral to result in incentives or rewards.
How to measure referral partners:
# referrals, ICP qualified, and # of Opps by partner
ACV of referral-based deals, velocity and win rates
Top referrers program definition and measurement
LOE from your organization to support
Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where affiliates broadly promote a company's products or services and earn a commission for each sale or lead generated. Most common in driving freemium, transactional or lower-priced products, that don’t require a buying committee or a consultative sale.
How to measure affiliate partners:
Onboarded, engaged, first deal (speed of activation)
Deal volume by partner with ACV, win rate, sales cycle length
ICP adherence, average CAC, Churn
Affiliate partner cohorts by dollars sourced (best and worst)
Total possible volume
Potential expansion (more affiliates or more production)
Reseller
Resellers are third-party companies or individuals who purchase products or technology from a company and then resell them to end customers, usually adding their margin to the product price.
How to measure reseller partners:
Reseller attach rate
ACV, velocity and win rates
Customer success of indirect vs direct relationships (usage/retention)
Opportunity cost of indirect relationship with customers (i.e. what would it cost to sell direct)
LOE from your organization to support
A Need for Partner Ops
In order to make sure you’re maximizing your investment and realizing the full potential of partner revenue, we strongly suggest creating a partnership ops department.
The cost of underinvesting in partner ops could be dire:
GTM is Better Together: Register for Atlanta!
“GTM is Better Together” is a revolutionary new vision that the future of GTM is better together with unified teams, tech, and trust. This is a weekly feature where we will share the latest announcements related to this important initiative.
Join us on August 28 for our kickoff executive summit in Atlanta!
Tickets come in pairs (so you can bring a colleague from another department).
We are offering pairs of tickets at no cost if you meet all three of these criteria:
You’re a senior GTM Leader (marketing, sales, customer success, product, RevOps, or the leadership team)
You work for an enterprise company
You are a customer of ours and/or one or more of our partners for this event (Demandbase, Clari, On24, Vidyard, Totango, Catalyst, MadKudu, G2, Technology Advice, or ZoomInfo)
If you meet the first two criteria but are not a customer of any of those companies, you can apply for a ticket here:
ROI Study of the Week: Totango + Catalyst
GTM Partners’ ROI studies are third-party validated assessments of Go-to-Market vendor solutions that are primarily focused on how to get the most out of an investment in technology. Centered around use cases (as opposed to stack ranking vendors), these guides are intended to provide readers with a data-driven analysis of what problems the solution is intended to solve and how well it delivers on those promises. To learn more about our ROI studies, book a meeting here.
Unlocking Customer Growth
Companies can no longer be solely focused on new acquisitions to scale the way they once were, it’s just too expensive and unpredictable. Revenue growth by retaining, upselling, and expanding existing customers is the most consistent way to drive efficient growth.
To achieve this growth, driving customer value throughout the customer journey is paramount. Today’s customer success teams are untapped revenue centers, and need to be enabled and empowered to deliver measurable value to customers.
Traditional growth strategies are proving inadequate, paving the way for a new philosophy: Customer-Led Growth (CLG).
About Totango + Catalyst
Totango and Catalyst have merged to create a unified customer success and growth platform designed to help businesses manage the entire customer lifecycle to protect and grow revenue. The integration merges Totango’s enterprise-level customer success capabilities with Catalyst’s innovative growth strategies, providing a powerful combination for driving customer-led growth.
The combined platform focuses on consolidating customer data from various systems to enable accurate reporting and forecasting. It also supports the implementation of automated workflows and playbooks, which help scale successful strategies across the customer base.
Key features that customers love include advanced customer health scoring that focuses on outcomes instead of vanity metrics, Playbook objective analytics, and revenue forecasting. The platform is powered by advancements in AI that were built to deliver powerful customer insights and optimize post-sale revenue activities such as renewals, upsells, and cross-sells.
By leveraging the strengths of Totango and Catalyst together, businesses can better protect and grow revenue, improve team efficiency, and improve their GTM strategies through enhanced data visibility. Driving more value from an existing customer base is essential for achieving sustainable, predictable growth in a competitive market environment.
GTM Events
A list of upcoming events of interest to GTM professionals
August 28, Atlanta: GTM is Better Together
September 10, Boston: GTM is Better Together
September 18-20, Boston: INBOUND 2024
October 14-16, Austin, TX: Pavilion’s GTM 2024 (use code GTMPARTNERS20 for 20% off your ticket)
October 16, Austin: GTM Made Simple Roadshow
October 22, NYC: GTM is Better Together
November 20, San Francisco: GTM is Better Together
Are you a B2B company between $10-100M in revenue who needs help with your GTM strategy and execution? We’d love to chat.
We so appreciate everyone who has read this far. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it, or if there are topics you want us to cover, let us know! You can send it to sarah at gtmpartners dot com.
Love,
The GTM Partners Team