Tech Partner Playbook for Agencies
“Partnerships are a bit like a bank — you can’t expect to make a withdrawal before making some deposits first. You shouldn’t go into partnerships with your hands out expecting to immediately receive leads. Partnerships are a long game that pays off once nurtured. Take time to figure out the ideal tech stack for your target customer and work out your ideal partners from there.”
Rachel Jacobs — Ecommerce Partnerships
Recognize their unique being (Darin at Irish Titan)
Partner channels are their own special snowflake. They’re sales, but not. They’re marketing, but not. They’re both of those, but not, and they’re more. Partner channels are sales related in that they involve activities that generate leads. They’re marketing related in that they involve activities that generate awareness. But they also build internal competencies, build external relationships, and play an important part in creating a lasting market presence that lives outside of typical sales and marketing activities.
Ensure a true spirit of ‘partnership’ (Darin at Irish Titan)
It’s important to embody a true sense of partnership, with an intent to provide your partner as many leads as you hope for them to provide you. Take a hard look in the mirror to ensure that you’re not going into this focusing on only getting leads for yourself. If you are, the tech partner will quickly sense that and the partnership will become more transactional in nature, and likely bear no fruit. One way to demonstrate a true spirit of partnership is to do joint account mapping, collectively going through each other’s account AND prospect lists, and see what mutual referrals or co-selling opportunities may exist.
Plan co-marketing events (Darin at Irish Titan)
Partner channels have long legs — they’re more like farming than hunting. It’s beneficial to establish a quarterly cadence of co-marketing activities (webinars, hosted events, etc.) with sequenced partners. Doing these activities over an extended period of time will result in deeper relationships with your tech partners, thought leadership, and ultimately, lead generation.
It’s all about relationships
Partnerships are people-to-people, and the strength of the partnership between an app and agency is based on the strength of the relationship between the tech partner and the agency’s assigned partner representative, so don’t keep it all business. Find out how you can be a beneficial partner/colleague outside of just lead exchanges.
Assign a responsibility (Adam at Blend)
By assigning responsibility to one or two team members, this ensures that you’ll get the best from partnerships. This person(s) should be the main point of contact for your tech partner and should also be the one who coordinates co-marketing, training and updates from your business. The performance of this can be measured by exposure and leads generated per partner.
Have a partner onboarding and management process (Adam at Blend)
Before partnering with a tech partner, make sure you get a clear understanding of how they can support you through training, onboarding clients and co-marketing. When you do partner, try to agree a plan for the next two quarters at a minimum, as well as scheduling regular check-ins. The more organised you are, the higher the likelihood you’ll be top of mind for opportunities with the partner.
Build a Google spreadsheet
Create a Google spreadsheet of your current list of active/receptive clients to share with select tech partners. Spreadsheet should have a list of used technologies (the builtwith chrome extension is a good identifier of apps used). The spreadsheet should also be populated with new potential clients in the pipeline. If an app company has already spoken with a new potential lead to the agency, this may be a great way to get intel or build trust, by having the app company vouch for the agency.
Develop a scorecard (Chloe from Brightpearl)
Create a scorecard to track some of the important activities, number of leads sent from tech partner, number of leads sent to them, have recurring calls been set up, when did we last co-market, have they enabled us, have we enabled them, etc. This is helpful for tracking partners- and also for identifying areas needing improvement in certain relationships.
Set goals
Meet regularly to discuss business opportunities: this should be a two-way street, with referrals regularly being passed between the two of you. Set achievable and agreed goals for your tech partner. This should be in proportion to what you’re bringing to the table.
Lunch and learns
Do lunch and learns, also known as enablement/educational sessions. This is an opportunity to present an agency’s skillset via an enablement deck to an app partner’s sales team via a zoom call. This should be a reciprocal offer, creating the opportunity for a tech partner to present to the agency’s sales team and/or dev team.
“Sometimes we do an educational lunch where we present and sometimes the agency presents to our team a mutual case study/client. We send lunch for the tech partner’s time.”
- Nicole Baqai, Strategic Partnerships | Gorgias.
Review calls
Set up weekly or monthly review calls with your tech partner to discuss new potential clients in the pipeline and those ready for an introduction. As mentioned above, seek to find any mutual connections where a tech partner could drop a compliment on the agency’s behalf to build trust. Discuss new features to the agency that can then be highlighted to clients. Discuss co-marketing opportunities, such as blog, content, events, and event sponsorship.
Attend app events and keep on top of updates
Show your support and expand your knowledge on the tech partner’s app’s offerings by attending their events, webinar, or physical, where/when you can.
Battlecards
Not applicable for every tech partner, but it’s a good idea to create a battlecard which contains a price list for setups. For example, with Privy, an agency can charge to create an array of popups, bundled up with different pricing options.
Enablement deck
It is essential that an enablement deck is given to all tech partners which shows the list of services the agency offers, as well as ideal clients (industry vertical and ARR) and case studies. Importantly, it’s imperative to have a dedicated slide that is focused on the app in question, for example, showing what work was done to increase revenue from a ReCart or Spently implementation.
Tips from Tech Partners:
“It’s a matter of figuring out what makes each [agency] partner tick and making sure that you are aligned and supporting them.”
- Roddy Smith, Senior Growth Specialist | Spently
“I try to touch each of my partners at least once a month, whether that’s a LinkedIn message or comment, an email/ call, a lead I can send (when applicable), newsletter, co-marketing opp we work together… and then for the partners, I try to make about three touchpoints a month.’’
- Chloe Fisher, Channel Account Manager | Brightpearl
“I love my job! I get to meet really great people [agency partners] and understand what their goals are and mutually help one another. I hope that they feel the same way and at the end of the day, we all want to grow our business together, side by side.”
- Nicole Baqai, Strategic Partnerships | Gorgias
Additional Resources:
Scorecard Template (coming soon)
Partner Tracking Template (coming soon)
