6 Key Takeaways From Leading Partners That Can Help You Build Better Partnerships
My conversation with Kristi Cox of SpringCM and Matt Bray of Xactly on how they teamed up—and the impressive results
Here at Salesforce, customer and partner success is our number one focus. Hence, we call ourselves “The Customer Success Platform” and take pride in treating our customers and partners as our ‘Ohana,’ or family.
When you think about SaaS business and long-term growth, you must always make customer and partner success your top priority. We have created a customer success community to serve our customers, and a partner community that’s solely dedicated to enabling our partners’ growth, no matter where they are in their journey.
My job provides me with the opportunity to engage with a lot of our amazing partners and be a part of their ongoing journey. One of the main advantages of our partner ecosystem is the network of growing partners with different solutions that cater to various segments and industries in the market. Our partners have adopted not only the Salesforce Ohana, but also the commitment to keeping their customers happy and investing in their partnerships with Salesforce and other AppExchange partners.
I want to point your attention to two of our top partners, SpringCM and Xactly, and their partnership project, ‘Project Unite.’ Below is my conversation with Kristi Cox, Partner Marketing Manager at SpringCM, and Matt Bray, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Xactly.
What does ‘managing success’ mean to your business?
Kristi Cox: We always strive to make sure our partnerships are mutually beneficial, and have mutually agreed upon goals from campaign to campaign or partner to partner.
KC: Communication is key to success, so we make sure to identify the main point of contact at Salesforce and our AppExchange partners, and have regular calls. These calls are meant to align all resources from each partner with the goals and objectives, check in and set expectations on each project from the beginning, so that we are both held accountable throughout our partnership. We set identified metrics and measure these metrics on an ongoing basis to understand how we are progressing or what adjustments needs to be made. Some metrics we look at:
- Leads and opportunities generated from co-marketing and co-selling efforts.
- New business and new customer logos that generate from partnership activities.
What is Project Unite, and what brought it to fruition?
KC: At inception, Project Unite was designed to leverage Salesforce QTC, along with the Salesforce ecosystem, in order to compete against outside Quote-to-Cash vendors. The project was initiated by Matt Bray from Xactly approaching Richard Goodall, Founder of InvoiceIT and SteelBrick with the collaborative idea early 2015. The objective was to establish a competitive differentiation against other Quote-to-Cash vendors in the market by leveraging each others’ network through collaboration. Like-minded Salesforce AppExchange partners saw the opportunity to collaborate on this effort, and committed to driving joint objectives on this initiative forward.
KC: Again, communication and consistency is key, especially with an initiative like Project Unite, where there are many different people involved. We have bi-weekly calls with teams to check in on campaigns or events, pipeline and process. And, as much as we tried to keep it collaborative and equal among all partners, there definitely needs to be a team or person leading the charge. Without having someone step into that leadership or direction role, nothing is going to get accomplished.
How did SpringCM and Xactly collaborate as part of Project Unite?
Matt Bray: SpringCM and Xactly teamed up and built a strong relationship through Project Unite in EMEA, and are now leading the charge together as we bring the initiative to the US. We have been able to co-present and participate in speaking opportunities together at World Tours and Dreamforce, as well as in many Salesforce offices and virtually through webinars.
KC: SpringCM and Xactly are culturally aligned, and the strength of the partnership speaks to the DNA of what makes partnerships great, it’s people. The commitment of the people and trust between two organizations are what customers want to see; it’s not only the product, but the people the customers are buying.
Can you share any results from Project Unite?
MB: Through our partner ecosystem, we were able to share over 7,000 contacts during Dreamforce partner efforts and 1,000 across our EMEA partners generated between commercial teams and the Project Unite Website. Our partner teams have been very collaborative, working on a streamlined shared messaging for our solutions and shared customer stories, which leads to more effective targeting and prospect analysis.
What lessons did you learn along the way?
MB: Gathering customer data was a challenge. We pushed all through CloudSocius, who was the SI we worked with as part of Project Unite to get more input around customer data — but it was challenging. Though they had over 1000+ leads through the website, it was difficult to map where we had overlapping customers or existing customers for one or many of the partners.
MB: Another challenge is partner acquisitions and navigating those relationships post-acquisition (Steelbrick + CloudSocius). We learned to be nimble and always open to change, as teams and companies change quickly in our industry. We also realized that Executive sponsorship and investment is what gives a purpose and allows to get the job done. Without this, we are pushing water uphill!
Key Takeaways:
- Build a joint clear value proposition
- Have a defined mutually agreed upon plan with objectives and set expectations
- Define metrics and measure results
- Find partners that are the right size and cultural fit
- Have executive alignment
- Communication is KEY!
SpringCM helps work flow by delivering an innovative document and contract management platform, reducing the time spent managing critical business documents. Learn more at www.springcm.com.
Xactly Corporation is a market leader in on-demand sales performance management. Learn more at www.xactlycorp.com.
