5 tips to level up your partnership with an app marketplace
Putting your best foot forward, whether you’re a startup or enterprise
Over the last few years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with SaaS companies wanting to partner with Xero and other apps from our 800-strong app marketplace. For many businesses, the decision to partner is a simple one. You can bring new product features to market quicker, you’re likely to reduce churn, and you can reach customers you would not usually be able to access on your own, allowing you to grow faster.
In my time at Xero, we’ve seen countless examples where partnering with a platform can help apps solve big problems for their customers. For example, popular tradie app ServiceM8 realised that by partnering and aligning closely with Xero, they didn’t need to build accounting functionality and can focus their efforts on expanding their core offering. It’s a win-win for both partners, and ultimately provides great outcomes for the end user, which is why customers love them.
So how can you stand out from the crowd when it comes to approaching a marketplace for a partnership? While there’s no magic formula, there are some things you can do that will make a positive difference.
In short, it’s less about the tech and more about the people in your team and how well they build and enable relationships with the platform and beyond.
1. Identify what you bring to the table
The most important factor to consider before approaching a platform is why they should spend their time and effort on you, among all of their existing competing opportunities and priorities. What’s in it for them? Stop asking what your partners can do for you, and consider how you can help your partner win (which of course ends up benefiting your customers). Ask yourself why they would be motivated to work with you, and what opportunities you can offer them in return.
Sometimes it can be as simple as being easy to work with on a day-to-day basis. Is your team well structured, with clear responsibilities? How do you communicate and demonstrate mutual wins and success? Are you willing to check in regularly with them to see how you can help them achieve their objectives? Are your developer and support documents clear and simple to follow?
Identifying what it is that makes you stand out from all the other app partners will make it easy for your app to be top of mind when opportunities come their way.
Over the past few years, we’ve been increasingly partnering alongside solutions specifically for accounting and bookkeeping firms, such as BGL or NowInfinity. We provide the practice tools and they solve the corporate compliance — both essential on a daily basis. It’s an organic partnership fit, because we’re talking to the same audience, offering solutions that complement each other to help firms improve how they go about their day-to-day operations.
2. Be deliberate, transparent and open
Often partnerships are sought out around a surface association — they aim to associate their logo alongside your brand — thinking this will bring waves of new customers their way. But this approach won’t win you any favours or produce ongoing results. My advice is to really dig deep to unpack their motivators, and what’s important for them to win.
For this reason, I try to avoid meetings for the sake of it, and seek a deeper connection. That means creating a clear agenda, providing pre-reading where appropriate, asking who needs to be in attendance and making sure there’s actionable takeaways and next steps. It’s important to respect everyone’s time and be transparent early on about what you want out of the meeting or partnership. Often, the partners who have put the time and thought into this are the partners who grow alongside us faster.
3. Develop strong relationships
To make the partnership successful, you need to invest in it over the long term. Make sure your team gets to know your partners team structure in detail and understand their motivations, what they solve and their positioning in market. Aim to go beyond the original point of contact and try to build relationships with teams across a number of areas across the business. The more the platform understands your business, the more you’ll be considered for opportunities across multiple touch points, from sales and product to senior leadership.
Platforms are not 2D, so to harness true partnership success you need to treat the platform like an extension of your family, and focus less on a partnership built around logo and brand association which won’t produce tangible results. Our long-standing partners have built such good relationships with our team that some of them have ended up working there at later stages in their career. It’s a smart move that keeps the ties close and keeps the businesses moving forward, side by side.
4. Embrace the power of community
The level of attention your business gets will also be impacted by whether you have a strong community around you. Partnerships don’t just have to be vertical — think horizontally as well. What partners could you connect with that will benefit you both? Growing your community should be seen as a long-term goal — to drive net promoter score and help people get to know you, and each other.
For example, at Xero we realised that we were often having parallel conversations with our app partners. Why were we doing this, when we could bring everyone together to share their own learnings and challenges? So we harnessed the power of the ecosystem community through fortnightly app community hours, discussing topics including COVID-19 business environment, the impact of reduced physical events, building a brand online and driving customer advocacy.
And yes, we had pets in the background, children wandering past, Amazon deliveries arriving and storms creating blackouts. But that’s just part of the new norm we all collectively face.
By joining events like these and getting proactively involved, or creating your own, you can build your own community and become well known in other communities. This reputation will serve you well when working with a platform, especially if there are opportunities for the platform to get involved and share their expertise among your audience. Never underestimate the power of a strong community. They’ll help your business, and the business of your partner, so you both win.
5. Build advocacy beyond loyalty
Think about your favourite coffee shop, restaurant, or holiday destination. There’s a reason you tell all your friends about it, or maybe even take them there. Now take a step back and consider what that reason is. How can you be that in a partner? What would that mean if your partners talked about you in that way? What can you do to create that reality for your business?
Bringing your community on your journey and getting them excited about what you’re doing will help them become brand advocates. This can be a phenomenal way to extend your reach, talk to new and mutual customers, and solve big problems together. As a result, you’ll be able to grow your network at scale and have a community of advocates who are effectively selling and endorsing your product and brand for you in the market. And that is gold to a platform.
The need for digitally connected solutions has never been greater, and there is no doubt that platforms are actively seeking partners to help solve complex problems for their customers. In my experience, I’ve learnt that you’ll unlock a strategic advantage if you consider what’s in it for them, embrace the power of community and build advocacy among your partners. As a result, the platform is naturally going to want to work with you more, and you’ll start seeing doors open for you and your teams in the future.
