AMA: Segment Former Group Partner Marketing Manager, Alexandra Sasha Blumenfeld on Partner Product Marketing

Build joint customer stories and clearly showcase the value you + partner deliver. It might seem basic, but the way we've found to get buy-in and attention from the partner's sales team is by 1) Driving joint wins (this is typically done in partnership with the BD team) 2) Documenting those wins in the form of case studies or customer webinars where you highlight the joint solution and how it unlocked business impact for the customer 3) Providing enablement via one-pagers or lunch and learns on how the partnership will help the team reach their goals faster (does your solution help speed up the sales cycle? remove friction from the buying process? provide a fix for a product gap? increase deal size? etc) 

Great question! At my former company Segment, there were two categories of partners: * Technology (ISV) partners * Solution (SI/agency) partners The go-to-market is slightly different for those two categories, but a few lessons learned that are relevant to both are: 1) Incorporate the voice of your customer in everything you do. Building a compelling joint narrative is key to successfully going to market with partners. The best way to do this is through mutual customers. Anecdotally, our most successful campaigns are when a customer webinar or event is at the center. 2) Align to partners sales motions (and make sure they align to yours). It might seem obvious, but as you build out GTM plans and think through prioritization, pick the partners with sales motions that align with yours. This makes getting buy-in from key cross-functional stakeholders easier and accelerates GTM efforts. 3) Deliver value to their sales team. The most successful partnerships I've seen are those where the partner sales team is excited about your solution to the point where they start bugging marketing and execs to do more together. Partner marketing can influence the relationship by building out customer stories or taking the initiative to create enablement collateral that then is shared with the field. When the partners' field team starts paying attention to your solution and have unlocked the value your solution provides to both customers, but also their sale (eg answering 'what's in it for me' - does it accelerate the sales cycle? increase overall deal size?) then you will typically see the rest of the GTM pay more attention to you.

I think the skills are analogous: 1) Customer storytelling Have a compelling customer story to lean on makes my job infinitely easier 😅 Especially if you have a technical product or solution and may not be a technical product marketer, having the customer tell that story themselves can help engage your audience with the language/visuals they expect. Plus, it's great social proof and gives sales and customer success collateral to help close deals and give current customers ideas on how they can broaden the use of your product. The caveat is that the story needs to have substance. A compelling story should dig deeper into the 'how' and 'why' while also providing tangible business results. (One of my favorites is this G-loot customer webinar) 2) Messaging and positioning Partner product marketers need to not only be an expert within their product, but you also understand how partner products fit into their solution/ecosystem and bring those two values together. An example that comes to mind of a great joint value prop clearly stated is the Slack and Zoom integration - They have clearly stated the 'better together' and value props of why using the two solutions is better than one. 3) Cross-functional leadership Partner marketing not only requires cross-functional work within your internal organization but also requires cross-functional work externally. At any given time a partner marketer can be found working with external counterparts and executives within BD, marketing, product, and sales. These many different touchpoints require being able to adapt how you communicate context to the partnership/initiatives in relation to their roles/company and why they should care/work with you (all while doing the same with your internal stakeholders). 4) Data-driven decision making Being able to think analytically and tie metrics to your decisions helps to get buy-in for partners and activities you work on. Especially if you are trying to prove the value of this function, it's important to consistently track and share progress on metrics your cross-functional stakeholders care about (eg product adoption or pipeline)

I typically see the partner marketing team tracked on pipeline numbers and opportunities. That said, I think it depends on your partner marketing strategy and your marketing/BD team goals as well. Ideally, we try to balance activities that will influence in-quarter impact where we will see an immediate impact on pipeline (eg digital events, gated content) with activities that are more strategic/longer-term that will see an outsized impact a few quarters (or years) out. eg working with larger partners where you have to establish the foundation, build relationships, build strategic product capabilities/integrations etc.

It depends on what the campaign or asset is. As a platform, we try to be as tool agnostic as possible. That said, there are certain times where adding a partner adds value/context to the narrative or campaign. Things to consider: * Can the partner provide subject-matter expertise and enhance the narrative? * By positioning your brand alongside this partner can it provide credibility to your campaign? * Will the partner unlock additional reach with the target audience? An example where it made sense to include partners was our Platform of Independent’s campaign. The inclusion of partners bolstered our narrative AND extended our reach.

The way that I have done this in the past is by showing repeatable impact to our bottom line. First, I recommend setting up a process to ensure you are diligent in reporting and have accurate attribution in place. Then you can start testing out the different levers as you look for repeatable pipeline impact. I suggest working closely with your cross-functional counterparts such as BD, product, and sales to ensure you are all working on the same initiatives to see an outsized impact.