An agency-partner program development strategy

A Partnerships
Strategy Discussion
This presentation is meant to show partner teams
working strategies for new partner acquisition and
enablement in two different stages of program
development.

WHAT YOUR TEAM WILL LEARN
FROM THIS:
THIS PRESENTATION WILL HELP YOUR TEAM UNDERSTAND
WHY "GOING INTO BUSINESS" WITH AGENCIES WHO HAVE
BOTH CLIENT LOYALTY AND TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
TRUST, IS THE BEST GROWTH STRATEGY FOR EARLY-STAGE
PARTNER PROGRAMS. THIS DOES NOT MEAN TARGETING THE
LARGEST AGENCIES. WE’LL EXPLAIN MORE IN SECTION 1.

Contents:
The background will help everyone understand what types of agency-partnerships are on the table, how
Partnerprograms operates, who we suggest targeting, and how these agencies like to work with technology.
BACKGROUND
This next section is very important for all teams because it articulates some interesting facts correlating agency size to
partnership value, and what the real pain points of these agency partners.
PART 1: DATA REVIEW
This is a great section for anyone new to agency partnerships strategy because we show you what to look for and how to
go about initial program viability testing.
PART 2: FINDING "PROGRAM-MARKET FIT"
Whether you are strapped and budgetless, or ready to scale your program, you will need some tools for partner tracking,
enablement and maybe a frontend directory. This section is our recommended partner tech stack for growing programs.
PART 3: CHOOSING A TECH STACK
This section is for programs with multiple active partners for technology/integrations, as well as agencies. We discuss a
strategy for generating more revenue with who you have.
PART 4: OPTIMIZING AN ESTABLISHED PARTNER PROGRAM

Before we start,
here's the
background
THE WHAT, WHY AND HOW TO
"PARTNER" WITH AGENCIES.

A quick bit
about myself.
WHY I'M PRESENTING
Ran my own digital
marketing agency.
2006-2012
Leading marketing teams for three
platforms managing their stacks and
marketing agency contracts.
2013-2016
Consulted with tech startups on
everything from growth to
software.
2017-2019
I launch Partnerprograms.io to show
agencies how to grow with tech partners.
July 2019

CO-SELLING
Your (contributing) “partners” are
anyone who can give you the correct
decision maker > supply an
introduction >> and assist in the close.
RESELLING
those who hold the contract - are
billed for the software, can resell
effectively, and typically those in
the agency or consulting roles.
CO-MARKETING
those who publish great content
with an influential voice and can
benefit from alignment with your
brand OR your budget/audience.
"PARTNERS"
IN OUR
SCOPE ARE
DEFINED
AS:
Agencies and Consultants
EXPERIENCED INDIVIDUALS OR 'AGENCIES' WHO ARE TRUSTED TO ANALYZE, ADVISE,
AND HELP A COMPANY WITH ANYTHING DIFFICULT CHOICES, CAMPAIGNS,
STRATEGIES, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENTS OR IMPLEMENTATIONS.
REFERRAL AND
IMPLEMENTATION
PARTNERS
Your (contributing) partner =
Anyone with a book of business
comprised mainly of your ICP.

Understand how agency-tech
relationships are segmented:
Tools which the
agency typically does
not need/use (or
possibly is often priced
out of) for internal use.
CLIENT-ONLY
These are tools that
the client never see's,
logs into, or knows
the agency uses. Any
white labeled tools
are an example.
AGENCY-ONLY
These are tools which
agencies typically use
and so do their ideal
clients for the same
purpose. CRMs and SMM
tools are great examples.
EITHER

Part 1:
Review some
data.
WE SURVEYED OVER 200
AGENCIES AND COLLECTED 31
ANSWERS, AND OVER 1700
DATA POINTS TO LEARN
WHO/HOW/WHY THEY
PARTNER...

60% +
OF ALL SURVEYED
AGENCIES
PARTNERED WITH
AT LEAST ONE TECHNOLOGY.
100%
OF SURVEYED
AGENCIES OVER 50
EMPLOYEES
PARTNERED WITH AT
LEAST ONE TECH.
https://partnerprograms.io/resources/the-agency-partner-analysis-project/
MOST AGENCIES PARTNER WITH AT
LEAST ONE OF THEIR TOOLS.

SURVEYED
AGENCIES UNDER 20
EMPLOYEES
REPORTED HIGHER
REVENUE
ATTRIBUTED FROM
PARTNERSHIPS ON
AVERAGE.
EFFECTIVELY, THIS
MEANS THE
AGENCIES YOU MAY
WANT TO FOCUS ON
ARE SMALLER THAN
YOU WOULD HAVE
THOUGHT.
WE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT THE
VALUE OF SMALLER AGENCY
PARTNERS...

SMALLER SURVEYED
AGENCIES REPORT
UPFRONT COSTS AS
THE PRIMARY
REASON THEY
AVOIDED PARTNER
PROGRAMS.
CONVERSELY,
LARGER AGENCIES
ARE MORE
INTERESTED IN
REFERRALS AND
ALIGNMENT.

45%
OF AGENCIES SURVEYED NEED
TO DIVERSIFY SERVICES.
72%
OF AGENCIES NEED
TO FOCUS ON NEW
BUSINESS
STRATEGIES.https://databox.com/major-marketing-agency-challenges-2018-hubspot-agency-growth-report
FINALLY, IT'S CRUCIAL TO
UNDERSTAND WHAT AGENCY
PARTNERS ARE CONCERNED WITH:

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Part 2:
Finding
"Program
-Market Fit."
ORGANIC DEMAND > PMF >>
FORMALIZING

REFERRAL AND
IMPLEMENTATION
PARTNERS
Anyone with a book of business
comprised mainly of your ICP.
CO-SELLING
Anyone who can give you the
correct decision maker > supply
an introduction >> and assist in the
close.
RESELLING
Those who can resell effectively
are typically those in the agency
or consulting roles.
CO-MARKETING
Your (contributing) partner = Those
who publish great content or have
an influential voice and can benefit
from alignment with your brand OR
your budget/audience.
WHAT TO FOCUS ON AT
THIS STAGE:

Ecosystem
viability
1. Your ideal prospects (not partners, actual
customers) are going through a major
adjustment.
2. There is a lot at stake around the decision
to implement you or a competitor.
3. Your prospects are involved with an
agency or consultant to advise them on
this transition.
4. And finally, your product should solve a
MATERIAL need.
FIRST, GET THE TEAM TO
UNDERSTAND THE CRITERIA
NECESSARY TO NEED A PARTNER
PROGRAM.

Pre-
Outreach
steps
TO BEGINNING YOUR
PROGRAM
Search for your competitors' domain name
+ "partners" or "partnerships".
RESEARCH COMPETITOR PROGRAMS
Focus on what the partner sells now, and
who they currently partner with.
DEFINE IPP'S BASED ON SERVICES, KNOWN
PARTNERSHIPS, AND TECH STACKS
A SaaS these agencies know of (and use) that is not a competitor
and works in a funnel or workflow with your solution.
FIND A CO-SELLING AND CO-MARKETING PARTNER
Focus on what the partner sells now, and
who they currently partner with.
PULL A LIST OF TARGETS, RESEARCH THEIR
SERVICES AND NON-COMPETITIVE PARTNERS

Build a co-
marketing
strategy
first
Create a budget (a marketing dev fund for co-
promotions).
Total your user or prospect data which you are
willing to involve in this co-marketing agenda.
Look for SaaS in top zap's created list, solving a
pain point trending in google trends, anything
agencies are being asked about by their
clients (e.g. intent data, data visualization, tax
compliance, influencer marketing...).
Reach out to the potential co-marketing
partners with the idea to showcase how your
tools work in tandem to solve for _____.
After you secure a co-marketing partner, reach
out to agencies who sell services similar to
the workflow you're going to highlight with an
offer to be a part of the campaign.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Now that you have targets and a
co-marketing partner
CREATE YOUR PARTNER INCENTIVE STRUCTURE
First, determine who,
when and how you will
funnel referrals to the
agencies. i.e. An
implementation partner
qualification program.
What is your referral
commission - and how
are you going to track
it?
Can you create content
/ events / promotions
which help them in any
way?
What level of support
are you going to
provide each partner
type, and is that
required, white labeled,
direct...?

Outreach for test partners
Create content with
your new co-
marketing partners
(other saas + agency
influencer) showing
the value of the
workflow service
and retarget your
IPP list with ads.
FRIST, NURTURE
After you've hit them
with a couple of
impressions, it's time
to send connection
requests with add
notes asking if they
sell/support the
type of service you
have been
marketing.
LINKEDIN
Emails can begin at
the same time -
making sure you are
using copy that's all
about an intro call to
discuss alignment on
a new program
which supports their
sales and lead gen
initiatives.
EMAIL AND CALL
REQUESTS

A simplified version of
the process:Determ
ine w
hatservices
agencies
can
build
using
yoursoftw
are.
STEP
1
Establish
IPP's
and
a
co-m
arketing
hook
to
offerthese
agencies.
STEP
2
Reach
outto
IPP
agencies
in
ournetw
orksw
ho
are
interested
in
m
ore
M
RR.
STEP
4
Create
training
contentshow
ing
how
agenciescan
setup,sell
and
supportthisnew
service.
STEP
3

Do you have Program-
Market Fit?
PARTNERS ARE ON COURSE TO OFFER NEW SERVICES ON YOUR SOLUTION:
AND, OR, PARTNERS ARE SUBMITTING FOR REFERRAL CREDIT REGULARLY:
PARTNERS ARE EAGER TO SUBMIT THEIR PRODUCT FEATURE NEEDS;

That's part's 1 and 2.
BOOK A TIME
partnerprograms.io/meet
EMAIL ME
alex@partnerprograms.io
READ SOME ARTICLES
partnerprograms.io/resources

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Part 3:
Choosing a
tech stack.
PRM, LMS, DATA,
ENABLEMENT...

Your
Partner
Program
Tech Stack
Partner teams should have control over their
operations and tech stack to move quickly.
Here are options for PRM, data, partner
directories, content and enablement your
team will need to scale a partner program.

Top of
funnel
stack
You will need SEO for partner keywords, third party
sales/marketing influence, data and data management,
and a directory. Crossbeam to influence your partners to
share accounts with your sales team, API Deck is a
powered integrations directory with automated-landing
pages which are indexed automatically, PartnerPrograms.io
(yes, we have to add ourselves) for assisting in the
influence of partner conversion, and Partner Page for your
agency directory. Airtable and Stacker to create a frontend
for your agency directory. Finally, Wappalyzer to find sites
using tech / integrations.
ACQUISITION

Mid-Funnel
Stack
You will need to attribute referrals, track partner data, payout,
manage influencers, and scale TCMA campaigns. Here is an
awesome stack in order to achieve it all (not, choose
PartnerStack, Everflow or PartnerPortal based on use case.
ATTRIBUTION

Bottom of
the funnel
Now, you have partners signed up and you are tracking their
activity. It's time to encourage them to refer more. We
recommend Mighty Networks to house your community (as
opposed to Facebook or LinkedIn) and learning content,
Thinkific as an LMS to house your certification courses (only
if you do not have a large enough community to need a
community management platform like Mighty Networks).
And Partnerprograms.io to help with enablement training
course content and support :)
ENABLEMENT

USING YOUR
DIRECTORY
FOR SEO AND
PARTNER
ACQUISITION
This was an AMA where one of our
most seo-savvy tech partners shared
how to setup your directory to
acquire more leads from search.

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Part 4:
Optimizing an
established
partner
program.
ANALYZE > FORMALIZE >
SCRUB AND OPTIMIZE

Agency partner FAQ's
ANSWERS TO HAVE TO ATTRACT QUALITY PARTNERS:
When and how does
the agency partner
get referrals from
you?
Where is the agency
required - where are
their billable hours?
What sales training
and co-sales support
is your team going to
provide?

THEIR EXPERIENCE
They believe the investment in Netsuite is
worth it because of their ecosystem, but will
only look into other tools when necessary Or if
they are fully-supported in the process.
Size: 10 employees
Clients: Retail, Hospitality
Annual revenue from partnerships: ~$80,000
Services: Netsuite, SuiteCommerce, Bronto
implementation
Alex, CEO of Old
North Collective
PARTNER STATUS:
Netsuite, Pendo, FullStory, Bronto
POSITION
Alex has recently put his agency on
track to become a top Netsuite partner
and double-down on mainly providing
implementations and support for their
businesses. therefore, integrations with
Netsuite are all of interest.
CASE STUDY:

WHY THEY CHOOSE NOT TO
PARTNER
Lack of alignment all around,
Remaining unbiased / agnostic,
Clients needs change too frequently
Size: 200+ employees
Clients: Any Statups, Any SMBs, Enterprise,
Consumer Brands, B2B eCommerce, D2C
eCommerce, Local Retailers
Annual revenue from partnerships: unknown
Services: PPC / SEM, SEO, Social Media
Management, Content Marketing, Graphic Design,
Videography, B2B Lead Generation, Email
Marketing, CRO
POSITION
If we're going to leverage a tool, we're going to want
to work closely with them to ensure we have the
support as a partner and not just a customer. This is
imperative because we do a lot of business with
each marketing technology. When we look at new
partners, we look based on individual clients needs
one at a time as they come in. However, we get a ton
of inbound and of those, we choose who to consider
based on larger strategy/goals of our services.
Ashley, VP of Partnerships.
at Hawke Media
PARTNER STATUS:
https://hawkemedia.com/partners
CASE STUDY:

Would they be good partners
FOR EARLY-STAGE programs?
KNOWS HIS CLIENTS BACKEND INSIDE/OUT.
ALEX IS LOOKED TO FOR OPERATIONAL GUIDANCE.
HE ALSO WORKS ON CUSTOMIZING LARGER SITES, ECOMM AND CONSUMER BRANDS.
THEY WILL INSPIRE FAITH BY ADDING A QUALITY LOGO AND BACKLINK.
BUT THEY HAVE OVER 100 SOLUTIONS PARTNERS.
AND THEY DO NOT WORK ON CLIENTS OPERATIONS OR BACKEND.

Connor and the
Aptitude 8 agency
PARTNER STATUS:
Salesforce, Hubspot Diamond,
Outreach.io, InsightSquared
POSITION
Their business is built around Hubspot
and Salesforce implementation. And
ancillary tools are being referred to, but
not implemented, resold or "pushed".
THEIR EXPERIENCE
Portals are useless.
Add-on tools do not know how to co-sell.
Add-on tools do not have a trained POC for
them to send referrals to.
CASE STUDY:
Size: 10 employees
Clients: Mid-Market software
Annual revenue from partnerships: ~$50,000
Services: CRM implementation

Gabi and the
Trujay agency
TECH STACK
HubSpot MA/HubSpot CRM, Xero, Asana,
Klipfolio, IntegrateHQ, PandaDoc,
Dedupely, DiscoverOrg, ZoomInfo
POSITION
HubSpot Solutions Partner - Platinum Tier
WHY THEY HAVE NOT
"PARTNERED" WITH MOST TOOLS:
We prefer to remain unbiased / software
agnostic,
Dealing with Partner Managers is a
headache,
The program setup is just too
complicated.
CASE STUDY:
Size: 21-50 employees
Clients: Mid-Market - Enterprise software
Annual revenue from partnerships: ~$100,000+
Services: CRM Implementation / Integration, API
Integration Support, Data / Analytics

How to enable
agencies like
these:
STEP 1 = SHOW HOW YOU HELP
THEM EARN NEW BUSINESS
At this level, these agencies need to know
exactly when and how to achieve
"implementation partner" status. Have a
clear roadmap, tiers and timeline for getting
the agency partners into the round robin (or
exclusivity over a region/type)
implementations system. Make that the
focus of initial calls/pitches.
STEP 2 = GIVE THEM SOMETHING
TANGIBLE TO SELL
Agencies won't sell ancillary tools. They
may recommend it, but they won’t “sell” it.
Show them a complete build using your tool
they can sell as a package.
STEP 3 = INSTILL TRUST IN
SALES SUPPORT
Nothing looks worse then when the
client gets bounced around after
being referred to a partner. Make sure
the partner has a POC who
understands the playbook and is
there for sales support..
STEP 4: GET THEM INTO A 'CIRCLE'

NOW THAT YOUR TEAM KNOWS
WHO/HOW TO ENABLE, WE NEED TO ADD
STICKINESS TO OUR PROGRAM.
Circles are better than rows - An analogy applied to partner program strategy.
VS

Circles are inherently sticky.
Here's what they're made of:
A
B
C
A. YOUR SOLUTION.
B. ANOTHER SAAS
WHICH ADDS VALUE.
C. AN AGENCY
PARTNER WHO CAN
IMPLEMENT YOUR
SOLUTION IN THIS
CONTEXT.
A NEW SERVICE
TO SELL

COMPREHENSIVE
SERVICE TO OFFER
THEIR CLIENTS
Your partnership
offer is now
something
tangible for their
clients in the form
of a relevant
service ready to
sell.
IDEAL PARTNER
AGENCY
CONVERSION
In our experience,
agencies will take
on software in
stages and become
better partners
based on the end
goal of the service
revenue.
A B C
A B C
Now, the target
agency partner is
selling a new
service to their
clients which
includes your
software and
your support.

A B C
A B C
A
B
C
A NEW SERVICE
TO SELL

AN EXAMPLE
Above is a link to an example circle
we built for agencies. And below that
is a video better-explaining the
thought process.

BOOK A TIME
partnerprograms.io/meet
EMAIL ALEX
alex@partnerprograms.io
READ SOME ARTICLES
partnerprograms.io/resources
That's all :)
Partnerstack.com
MENTIONS:
Agency Partnerships Report
Partner program promotions
APIdeck.com
Crossbeam
Xamplify

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