So, You Think SAP is the Right Partner for You. Here’s What You Need to Know.
Are you a part of SAP.iO’s startup portfolio? Maximize your partnership with SAP using these 3 tips from our latest conversation with Max Schmitt, Partner Manager at parcelLab.
It takes two. For SAP, partnerships and cultivating an impressive open innovative ecosystem are crucial to its success. For startups looking to partner with SAP, who find that a technical integration with SAP is critical in their strategic roadmap, joining SAP.iO Foundries is certainly the fastest way to get a foot in the door. After the 3-month Foundry program where the SAP.iO team is a hand to hold, what happens next? What makes up the secret sauce to SAP partner success post-Foundry? We spoke to Max Schmitt, Partner Manager at parcelLab, a leading Operations Experience Management platform and SAP.iO startup, to find out.
1. Get your skin in the game: Make your relationship with SAP a strategic priority
It’s not just about the three-month program: Startups who want to be successful with SAP need to be strategic about their relationship with SAP before, during and after they’ve completed a Foundry accelerator program.
Similar to most startups, parcelLab manages many different partners, such as various suppliers and software vendors. Max shared that early on, parcelLab decided that SAP would be one of their strategic partners, and therefore dedicated a partner manager to invest the necessary time and resources in order to maximize the partnership. It’s important to remember: joining one of the SAP.iO Foundries accelerator programs is the fastest way to launch a relationship with SAP and join SAP’s partner ecosystem. It is just the beginning, and a partnership is a long-term strategic investment of time and effort.
Your startup needs to decide if channel sales is a part of your business model, and the role SAP’s partner economy can play in it. An IDC study predicts that by 2024, the SAP partner opportunity will expand to $260 billion, driven by SAP’s own cloud growth.*
So, how can you capture your piece of the action?
- Do your homework. Even for an SAP veteran like Max, it is still quite a feat to master the SAP universe and lingo. Try to understand SAP and learn to speak the SAP language. Find out what strategic initiatives SAP is doing, and how your solution is relevant. Stay on top of SAP news, website, events, and updates.
- Know your benefits. There is so much support that is offered to SAP partners, so make sure you know about what you deserve to have! Max gave the example of using the SAP BDF (Business Development Fund) where some of his GTM efforts can be reimbursed. Learn more about the partner support you can get here.
- Actively monitor the SAP Store cockpit. Keep track of opportunities you are working on with SAP and respond to email notifications. For more on how to use the cockpit, click here.
- Work with the SAP partner team to understand what it takes to progress as an SAP partner and what you need to deliver in order to move along the SAP partner progression. As you strive to go from Validated Partner to Spotlight Partner, understand what is necessary to move along the track and have a champion in your corner that can help push you forward.
- Collaborate With Your Partner Experience Manager. Every startup listed on SAP store is assigned a Partner Experience Manager from the SAP Partner team whose goal is to help you succeed as an SAP partner! Max gave a major shoutout to his partner experience manager who has been super helpful to parcelLab in their journey. Max and his partner experience manager set bi-weekly syncs to discuss targets, partner progression, and general relevant updates.
To find out who your Partner Experience Manager is:
Login to PartnerEdge website
Scroll down to “Manage My Partnership”
Click on “Contacts” to display your SAP contacts.
Key Takeaway: The partnership with SAP needs to be a priority for you, the startup: expect to put in the work. Without watering the seeds after the Foundry program, nothing is going to grow!
2. Manage (your own) expectations — It’s a give & take, with a long road ahead
As Max said, startups should not expect to join the program and then 3 months later, think that every SAP customer will want to buy their solution.
Acceleration with SAP.iO IS a quick win. A partnership with SAP is NOT. Partnering with SAP is a strategic investment which will require time, resources, and building plenty of relationships. Great things take time, and if you want a successful partnership with SAP, you must be patient and persistent, and clear about what you want: SAP will be able and willing to provide. Just because you launched your partnership, built and integration, and went live on SAP Store quickly does not mean that the partnership will progress at the same speed: these are all stepping stones in the partnership journey.
“As a nimble startup, you need to internalize the fact that you can risk more by innovating quickly, whereas SAP will not reorganize their entire strategy,” said Max.
Your startup’s strategic alignment with SAP is critical: where does your startup fit into the puzzle of a customer’s existing or future tech landscape? Communicate your value proposition so that SAP and SAP customers are crystal clear on why your startup solution is the one that will solve SAP customers’ problems.
Key takeaway: Be super clear about what you want to get out of your partnership with SAP & be in for the long haul.
3. Relationship, relationship, relationship : Master the art of engaging with the field
Let’s be clear, SAP Account Executives focus on selling SAP software and delivering value for their customers. They also love working with partners that know how to play the game. Partners that can clearly position how their solution extends SAP and do their own demand generation in an account. SAP Account Executives are looking to partner with partners, not run a sales process for a partner. If you can clearly articulate the value of your solution for specific customer, have references, and validated interest with the customer directly the SAP Account Executive will be more than willing to support all the way and can potentially offer insight into who the decision makers are, where the budget sits, or how to navigate procurement.
How can you best work with SAP Sales Executives?
- Understand who you are talking to. Who is this person, what matters to them, and who are their customers?
- Be kind. Be honest, do what you say you will do, and understand who you are talking to.
- Embody the win-win. Max emphasized having the constant mindset of “How can we help each other and convey how can we support each other?” #revenueshare!
- Cut to the chase. Forget the noise and fluff. Make sure the right people see your SAP Store listing, and let them know you are a SAP partner.
- Grow your own SAP ecosystem: Ask if they have other colleagues who may be interested and want to hear about your solution — grow your own SAP network of contacts!
- Be the Linkedin Lord: You can easily find the right person to reach out to on Linkedin. While not everyone will get back to you, Max shared that he had a lot of success in connecting via Linkedin; many are interested in hearing about innovative topics and will be willing to connect.
Once You’ve Engaged, Nurture Your Relationship With Your SAP Contacts
- Newsletter, baby! No need for anything fancy — just , create a quarterly newsletter for your SAP-only network with relevant updates, success stories, new integrations, and marketing activities. Max says that parcelLab’s newsletter keeps it simple, straight-forward, using bold headlines with 3–4 bullets per headline, and a 1-minute read MAX!
- Don’t forget: Bad timing happens. Sometimes you might meet an account executive who isn’t able to position you at the moment: perhaps they are negotiating a 7-digit deal, and this is not the time. Keep track and stay connected with that person and re-approach them when they are done with that deal.
Key takeaway: Get ready to ramp up your schmoozing skills, as you will be investing a lot of time and energy in cultivating a variety of relationships in the SAP ecosystem.
And there you have it, friends. Some tricks of the trade on what you need to know when partnering with SAP, from one of our most successful SAP.iO startups, parcelLab, and their Partner Manager Max Schmitt.
As we said from the beginning, it takes two: Max provided critical feedback for SAP.iO as well. SAP.iO and the SAP teams Max has worked with have gone above and beyond to help parcelLab succeed, but there is still room to improve. On our end, we will work on setting clearer expectations about the program and its outcomes with our partnering startups, and will work to simplify the long-term SAP partnership journey.
