Mark: Hello and welcome to the Partner Strategy Network podcast. I'm Mark Sochan and I'm here with Wesley Coelho. Hey Wesley, how you doing today?
Wesley: Hey Mark, doing well. What are we going to be talking about today?
Mark: Well, today we're going to talk about who you should talk to if you want to start a strategic partnership with a big tech company. A lot of software startups make the mistake of thinking that the partner alliance team is the best to start a strategic partnership discussion.
Wesley: Sounds like a good place to me, what's the issue? Why is that a bad place to start?
Mark: Well, it's counter-intuitive sometimes, but often the partner alliance team are the gatekeepers who manage the incoming interest from outside prospective partner companies, they aren't there to help you navigate the organization. Instead, they're there to bring order to chaos and screen and qualify companies.
They create various hoops and barriers to screen partners, make them fill out forms and applications and make a business case for why you should be considered for partnership, to prove your value, and sometimes to commit, to expend dev resources, to do product integrations. And in the worst case, they'll charge you a fee of thousands of dollars to join the program without any guarantees of go-to-market leads or access to the customer.
Wesley: That sounds pretty nasty. And so if that's not the place to go within the organization. Where should you start?
Mark: Well, if you're looking to form a strategic partnership, the best place to start is the product team, the chief product officer, the VP of products, directors of product managers. They're the guys that own the product strategy and have the authority to form a strategic partnership, an OEM or reseller partnership that compliments their whole product.
It's the product managers that make the decision to build versus buy what's core to the strategy and what partnerships could be synergistic and innovative that either generate incremental revenue with existing accounts or can help with innovation to be more competitive, to win new accounts.
Wesley: Okay. So that makes sense that the product team is where you want to target. How can you get in touch with that product team?
Mark: Well, LinkedIn is a great way to find the right product people. You can identify a target list of names and LinkedIn, and then find out if you know people in your network that are connected to these people and ask for an introduction. And I've always found that a warm introduction from a trusted intermediary is always going to get better results than a cold email or LinkedIn message. Quick, short, punchy message. Two or three sentences max, that gets to the heart of your value prop is going to give you the best chance of getting a response.
Wesley: So let's say you've been successful in getting a warm intro they'd bit on your punchy message. What happens next?
Mark: Well, if they respond, typically, you're going to be granted a 30 minute meeting to see if you pass the sniff test.
Wesley: What's the sniff test.
Mark: Well, the sniff test is where they make a quick judgment. If you have something that is a potential interest in merits, a more detailed look, you have to get to brass tacks pretty quickly, a high level value prop of how you're going to help them jumpstart the competition and win the market.
A very quick demo that proves that it isn't just all smoke and mirrors and then time for discussion to get their feedback and view of the market. You'll learn a lot about how the big guys are thinking about the market, so you better bring your, A game.
Wesley: Let's say you rock it on that call and you pass the sniff test. Where do things go from there?
Mark: Well, in the best case scenario, they're highly interested and you move to the next level of deeper business and technical discussions to prove the market viability and technical compatibility of the partnership. Sometimes they aren’t interested and you’re put back into the partner alliance team to go through the hoops and steps, but hopefully you've learned a lot about how to make your product and your sales pitch.
Wesley: that sounds like the ideal path. And I bet it doesn't work that way every time maybe you strike out with the product team or maybe you connect well with the product team, but you want to broaden your horizons. Who else should you be talking to besides that product team? So for example, sales or pre-sales, or maybe a CTO or a VP engineering, what would be the next best place to go?
Mark: CTO or VP of Engineering would also be excellent starting spots. Of course, if you can get the sales team or the pre-sales management interested, that's a great driver for interest. So those are some other avenues you can pursue as well.
Wesley: well, those are some great tips, Mark. And I think it's important to remember that this applies just for strategic product partnerships. The answer is going to be different for a VAR type of partner or a GSI. And to learn more about this, come and join the discussion at the Partner Strategy Network, LinkedIn group.