Delivering Customer Value Through Collaborative Ecosystem Partnerships  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Cross-Functional View Unlocks Stronger Partnerships** - Sandra wears both COO and CMO hats and that gives her cross-functional visibility into partnerships. - That mix helps her consider product, sales, support and marketing constraints when forming alliances. Transcript: Jonathan Wold Because marketing may have a specific way that they look at it. Operations has a specific way. So when you're blending those together, how does that affect how you think about partnerships? Sandra (Grade) From my point of view, it has some very useful side effects because most often, like you said, partnerships are handled by marketing people and naturally their main thinking goes into Everything marketing related. But really good partnerships, they also, they most often include sales aspects to consider. Often you have to involve the product teams because there are technical integrations, for example. You might even end up having to think about how to offer joint customer support and then realize that's not that easy because partners might have completely different workflows, completely Different tools. So my wearing all these different hats provides me with more insights, but also with more influence into all those other areas that might play a role in partnerships. So for me, it definitely makes things easier here. I'm ([Time 0:02:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b2a8604-f7aa-41ca-8720-1d5bfd5aff8e)) - **Choose Complementary Partners With Aligned Pace** - Look for partners that complement your product and share target customers. - Prioritize partners who have a similar working style and pace so collaborations actually move forward. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) Yeah, sure. So GRADE is an entire suite for enterprises, for franchises, and also for agencies who work for these kinds of customers That enables you not just to build websites, but to create entire Website systems where you have, for example, hundreds of websites connected to each other that sync, for example, contents or layouts or designs and things like that. And regarding partnerships, in general, my belief is that partnerships only work if both sides benefit from it. And that benefit, that has to be big enough because building a partnership, it takes a lot of time and work. And people often forget about that or really underestimate the time they need to invest to actually not just build a partnership, but also maintain that partnership. Mean actually building product partnerships it's not so different to building personal relate relationships they just don't work if one partner is more invested than the other or If they have like different goals they follow so what i often see in the wordpress community is that the standard form of a partnership for many in this ecosystem is some form of affiliate Collaboration which is great from my point of view as an addition to to other things but if some affiliate commissions is the only things the partner will will get out of such a collaboration I can guarantee you that it won't bring you the results that you're hoping for because many start these affiliate collaborations because they are looking for additional lead and sales Funnels so they go out there hunting for those affiliate partners and while the idea sounds great it's not as simple as that because even if it starts promising your partners might end Up realizing that actually they have also other things to do and probably more important issues to to think about than focusing how they could send you more leads just to earn a little Commission. So to answer your question, what we are looking for is partners that complement our product. ([Time 0:06:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1bfea598-47ba-4d55-8b6e-12d998f798b5)) - **Prioritize Customer Value And Co-Innovation** - Prioritize partnerships that deliver clear value to your mutual customers, not just reach. - Seek partners you can co-innovate with to build integrated solutions, not only referral deals. Transcript: Tim (BigScoots) I mean I go back to the idea again of value right and not necessarily value for us but value for our customers at the end of the day so we have lots of different client partners and uh and community Partners that offer services and stuff that, you know, will help to promote because one of our clients needs an email service, right, or something like that. And if there's a value, we know that partner, we know we trust their services, their support. They know that we can rely on them to serve our clients better. We would love to have them come on board, talk with us, also be part of what we're trying to do from a community standpoint. At the same time, though, you know, what kind of drives us and that the DNA of BigScoots is to build and innovate with things. So we'd love to go out and work with partners where we can actually share some technology, where we can build something new or different or better, you know, together and mutually as Well for different audiences. ([Time 0:10:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99d0b5af-1774-4f73-b312-98b335e14301)) - **Mediavine Partnership Produced Real Revenue Lifts** - Tim shared BigScoots' partnership with Mediavine that produced integrated hosting solutions and revenue lifts. - That collaboration included direct developer work and joint event activity like at WordCamp US. Transcript: Tim (BigScoots) One partner, you know, hopes we'll get it to bring up on the call, but like Mediavine as an example, you know, BigScoots, you know, started a partnership with Mediavine about a year ago, Where we actually have integrated hosting solutions just for the Mediavine clients who have like ad revenue or ad placement types of programs on there. Package to their clients. We actually work with their developers very directly. We've been basically rolling out a number of different technology integrations that really make revenue lifts for Medivine clients a realistic and real thing, and just basically Innovating and doing great things. That is sort of where we're going with great at this point too. To Sandra's point, we've been building rapport. We've been building great relationships. Our team members have gotten to know each other. We we are actually beginning to use each other's products, which I think is super critical. You guys did an event together as well, which I thought was great. We did an event together. Yeah, at WordCamp US, we did some really great things there. ([Time 0:11:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/748266b2-6f77-428b-a74d-227ce872ccb3)) - **Measure Partnerships By Their Goal And Timeline** - Partnership success metrics depend on the partnership's goal and often show up long term. - Sales KPIs suit revenue-focused deals, while customer-value partnerships show benefits via retention and lifetime value. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) I think that's in in general it's it's kind of a tricky question to answer because um it really depends on the focus of the partnership because partnerships can have really really different Focus part um focus for example if the partnership is mostly about sales then measuring success is pretty easy because yeah just measure the typical sales KPIs. Sometimes the main focus of the partnership is, like Tim mentioned, sharing or adding additional value to your customers. So you might probably not get additional customers or clients through that but you might get have a higher lifetime value and things like that are is nothing that you will see like immediately So the effect of a partnership might not be short term it might not be direct so it really really depends on on what is the goal of the partnership sometimes you also have like several goals. Sometimes it's maybe just to being connected because you can do great things together at events, for example. Sometimes it's a mix of everything. ([Time 0:12:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/87aac4a0-25c9-401d-a19f-f076373cc2c0)) - **Verify Commitment With Proactive Signals** - Test a partner's commitment by seeing if they proactively use your product and introduce you to customers. - Treat early proactive actions (licenses, intros, content) as strong signals to invest further. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) Yeah, what's very important for us, because we've been in too many partnership discussions where in the first call, everything seemed like perfect. Okay, we are perfect fit. We want to do something together. And then at some point, a couple of weeks later, you end up realizing that all the effort is coming from your side. And that happened to us a lot. So we are really looking for partners or are looking for, is the partner someone who is really in for the partnership? So, for example, are they really ready to do the work that is required to build a real partnership and not just like, yeah, we'll put your link on the site and that's it. So, everything they're doing proactively is a good sign for us that this might be an interesting partnership for us so for example simple things like they just buy a great license for For themselves and then use the product themselves or they they connect us with one of the customers without us having to ask for it right at the beginning or they do anything proactively Like whatever like producing a blog article whatever just anything that shows us they are really prepared to put in the time and the effort and they really want this. ([Time 0:17:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0feb0de4-3918-47bf-a1d6-479001cfbf63)) - **Pick Few Strategic Partners Over Many** - For smaller companies, quality of partners beats quantity because each partnership requires active maintenance. - Invest in a few strategic partners who help you enter new markets and bring local knowledge. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) I think what's really, really important, especially for smaller companies like us is like quality or quantity. So for us scaling and in the partnership context doesn't mean to get as many partners as possible because like I said, each partnership is a lot of work, like finding out do we fit together, Then actually doing stuff together, maintaining that relationship that takes a lot of time, calls with each other they take time so you can't do that with 20 different partners if you Don't have that that partnership team already and it's probably just one or two people on the team focusing or are like actually doing the all the partnership work so um the thing how We look at it is we really want to find like a few partners but partners who are really important to us with whom we really work closely together because as you might have seen great is currently Expanding a lot internationally especially to the yes and partnerships are really really important for that because those partners they are already on the market they know the market A lot better than we we do they already have access to the target groups that we want to get access to they know how the market works they have a lot of contact and the network and everything So basically they already have their business here um and we want to go there so it makes completely sense to like not start from from like scratch and find everything out on your own but To collaborate with partners and in exactly the way as tim has described it in a way that makes sense not just for us but for the customers because the solutions fit together that good. ([Time 0:24:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7ff83ad4-057b-4121-8fb0-04ff816619d7)) - **Begin Small To Build Partnership Momentum** - Start partnerships with small, momentum-building activities like events and joint marketing. - Defer large technical integrations until you confirm mutual commitment and maintain team interest. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) In general, I would say start with small things. You might have found the perfect partner who is a perfect fit for a technical integration. But these things, they really need time. So there's chances are high that you will either invest all that time and then at the end figure out okay the partnership won't last for for other reasons or your tech team is fully focusing On on building that technical integration and in the meantime your marketing and sales and partnerships people they just lose interest because they can't do anything other than wait So they focus on on other things so even though your ultimate goal might be that technical integration start with or smaller things like like we did with fixed goods start with um probably Event collaboration start with marketing uh joint marketing efforts because that will not only um get help you get to know your partner better, understand them better, and see if things Work out between the two of you. It would also keep people motivated and things are actually happening instead of just like, okay, we're working on this one big thing that will happen like end of next year or something Like that. And that's how we did it for example because with with fixed goods and we mentioned it before our plan has always been to to get the products together because they they're such a great Fit and we're still working on that we're still figuring out for the best ways to do that but in the meantime we are also doing doing other things that um don't take that much time, that Have quicker results. So that would be one advice. ([Time 0:29:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2a19871f-7985-4d2a-9930-a9ba32ce71f0)) - **Coordinate Behind The Scenes To Shield Customers** - Use shared channels (like Slack) and direct partner-to-partner communication to resolve client issues quickly. - Prevent customers from becoming the middleman by coordinating support and technical troubleshooting together. Transcript: Tim (BigScoots) Fact that we're connected with most of our partners on Slack directly. So even like when clients work with clients, we're talking to our partners back and forth. You know, we're resolving issues for those clients in a cooperative and collaborative way on the back end. And that's so important for not only for the teams to understand and know each other, but to have that immediate kind of give and take back and forth. Because the client shouldn't be caught in that, right? They shouldn't be caught in the middle of those things trying to figure that out or trying to, as your point, get one vendor to advocate, go call another vendor and talk about what's going On, right? Like those partners should be working together on the back end. ([Time 0:37:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4a8725e9-1e6b-488c-9fc9-9e8671f60746)) - **Continuously Nurture Existing Partnerships** - Continually invest time to keep partnerships alive and monitor partner changes. - Stay in close contact so product shifts or personnel moves don't let the relationship drift apart. Transcript: Sandra (Grade) Yeah, probably one thing we start, we talked a lot about how to build such a relationship and how to start. But I think it's also really important to not forget about how to continue and how to keep an existing partnership thriving. And I can just go back to my exam. Perspective before. Always remember like product partnerships are not that different from personal relationships. So it needs constant investment of both sides to keep things working if you don't want to grow apart. So if things are working great, don't stop focusing on it because make sure you always stay in close contact with your partners and be aware of any changes that might affect the partnership Because your partner's goals might be changing over time. They might release new features that will change their product focus. Your contact person there might leave the company. If you're not close you might might end up missing these kind of things and you might up drawing apart just as it happens in personal relationships so if you you really need to keep being Invested keep showing interest keep asking how they're doing what's on their mind, what's important. ([Time 0:38:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e09fc4cf-0e9d-42e8-80d6-ee4c970caf01))