618: Mastering Partnerships and Go-To-Market Success | Barrett King

Barrett King, Senior Manager for Go-to-Market strategies for the Global Partner Ecosystem at Hubspot, joins us on the latest episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

A dynamic and accomplished professional with over 10 years of experience in the SaaS industry, Barrett has honed his skills in forging strategic partnerships and executing effective go-to-market strategies.

Barrett’s expertise lies in identifying untapped business opportunities, fostering growth, and establishing successful sales channels across diverse industries. His proficiency in developing and implementing sales and marketing plans has driven customer engagement and retention, resulting in remarkable revenue growth.

Renowned for his unwavering commitment to excellence, Barrett has consistently surpassed sales targets, earning him a coveted spot at the yearly Presidents Club. His exceptional performance in fast-paced and competitive environments demonstrates his unwavering dedication to providing outstanding customer experiences and fostering enduring relationships throughout the business landscape.

Join us as we delve into Barrett’s remarkable journey and discover the strategies that have propelled him to the forefront of the SaaS industry.

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Mastering Partnerships and Go-To-Market Success

Introduction

Jeff: Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast! Our show features successful sales leaders, marketers, thought leaders and entrepreneurs who will inspire you with their success stories. Each episode is packed with practical strategies, as our guests share their secrets to achieving their dreams. Listen in to learn the highlights of their remarkable accomplishments and get tips to revamp, rework, and reimagine your business. Whether you’re a small business owner, marketer, or aspiring entrepreneur, the Conquer Local Podcast is your ultimate guide to dominating your local market. Tune in now to take your business to the next level! 

I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Barrett King. 

Barrett is the Senior Manager for Go-to-Market strategies for the Global Partner Ecosystem at Hubspot. He is a highly motivated and results-driven professional with over 10 years of experience in building partnerships and executing go-to-market strategies for SaaS companies

He is a pro in identifying and cultivating new business opportunities, driving revenue growth, and establishing successful sales channels across a variety of industries. He’s adept at creating and implementing sales and marketing plans that drive customer engagement and retention, constantly exceeding sales targets and delivering results in fast-paced and competitive environments all doing so while remaining committed to providing exceptional customer experiences and fostering long-term relationships across the business. Get ready Conquerors for Barrett King coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

Hubspot

Jeff: Barrett King, welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy day and your schedule to spend a few minutes chatting with us here.

Barrett: It’s my pleasure. I’m excited to have a chat and get a better acquaintance. It will be a fun one.

Jeff: Yeah, Barrett, I’m a big HubSpot fan. In fact, there’s an internal joke going around constantly about my fanboy nature whenever I bring up, well, HubSpot does this, everyone rolls their eyes. And so yeah, now they start parroting me. But the truth of the matter is, you know, for years now, HubSpot’s done a great job of building a culture and a learning brand, a brand of sharing, you know, all the stuff that you guys did and helping other people become successful. And if anything, it’s probably one of the most helpful companies and helpful brands out there, and it’s something that I aspire to build.

Barrett: I think one of the things that we did really well early on, just to comment on that, oh, first off I should say though, do you have an orange shirt you can wear next time? Because you’re not a true fanboy if you don’t have an orange shirt with like a giant sprocket in the middle.

Jeff: I do, but that would bring a little too much ridicule if I wore it. So I just keep it in my closet and I look at it every once in a while.

Barrett: That’s fair. Take selfies or whatever. I mean, I think what HubSpot’s done really well, generally speaking, we democratize this idea of education at scale. And so like, we were very intentional around recognizing that our customers would be more successful, our users, I mean, just everyone throughout the entire lifecycle of a HubSpot interaction would benefit by, you know, consuming content that helped them get better. And then I think ultimately, you know, just to be really I guess, tongue in cheek about it, like it makes sense from an SEO perspective too, if we’re giving away free content and helping people to learn and get better of our platform, it just helps us increase the message reach and improve the way that folks adopt inbound as a go to market. It worked well.

Barrett King’s Background

Jeff: Well, something seems to be working over there and I have a pretty good idea what, and so anyways, it’s great to have you. You had an interesting analogy about how you got into go-to-market and, marketing and partnerships. You wanna share that with the listeners?

Barrett: Yeah, it’s interesting. So my career is more of a generalist, right? So I’m for reference sake for those listening or watching. I’m 38, I graduated college in 2008 when the world sort of imploded if you will, from a financial perspective. And I jumped into restaurants. I have a design degree. I specifically went to school for digital arts and design, but I jumped into restaurants because it was the only job I could get. It was the only opportunity that was out there. And then I was in tech for a while, then back in restaurants. I worked with a fashion photographer at one point. I did all these different things throughout my career. And then something like eight years ago now, I landed in HubSpot. And what I’ve learned over the last particular couple years is that when I speak with most folks, they say things like, “Well, how did you get into partnerships?” Right? Kinda a natural question, especially for someone who talks about this stuff all day long. And I had the worst answers for years. I’m like, well, I did these things and then I ended in partnerships and I just, I need to get better at that story. And so what I realized is that I’m this sort of an amalgamation of a variety of different things. So as I mentioned, been in restaurants and opened restaurants and managed restaurants. I’ve been in tech, I was in marketing at one point. I was in account management, I was in sales. And what it sort of distills down to is when I think about graduation, I can graduate college, everyone graduates if they do at some point, some form of primary education, whether that’s high school or their doctorate. And from that graduation, you get this little green mat, just like the Lego mat that we all have when your were kids, you built your like house or your whatever on. And so I think about that mat as this sort of like, and I’m gonna say generally speaking level playing field, everyone leaves primary education at, and you get different levels, different tiers to that. But generally speaking, if I say it that way, it’s sort of a level field. And some folks end up having this like focus of, you know, they get five of those green, six by six bricks and they’re stacked up, or like there’s, you know, three yellow and two green, and they’re on their mats. And those folks tend to stay focused on those colours, and they go on their, your doctors and your lawyers, and I’m generalizing again, but your focused careers where you spend your entire lifetime developing more of that same color and shape block, and you build this really tall tower, and that’s what you did with your life. I was the opposite. I had put so many different legos and shapes and colours, and I had piled them on my mat. My mat was a little bit messy. And so I realized is like something around, I don’t know, maybe eight or 10 years ago now, I could change the way that those blocks are structured. And so I got better and better and better at this idea of well, what if I move them around? What if I formed what is now as I describe it, a pyramid? And so if you can picture in your mind here, I have a Lego mat, just like we all do. And instead of mine having a tower of a single colour, I have this pile that I turned into a pyramid. And that pyramid has allowed me to grow my career and to scale up and to level up. But more importantly, I know a little bit about a lot because of my varied background. And so I’m more of a generalist than a specialist. But in partnerships, it’s helped me succeed because I can relate to, connect with, and understand a lot more of the folks that I work with. So that’s the way I think about sort of my career into partnerships.

The Path to Partnerships 

Jeff: You know, it’s an interesting path. I had a similar path. I got out of university and I had an economics degree. And the only thing I knew for certain when I got done university was that I did not wanna be an economist in any way, shape, or form which seemed like a bit of a waste of money at the time. But I ended up trying a lot of things too, similar to what you’ve described and sort of landed me in a passion for marketing and so our paths aren’t that different really. So tell me a little bit about your path to partnerships then, and the way that you sort of approach it.

Barrett: Yeah, so partnerships for me were, it was progressive. I didn’t just wake up one day and say, no, it’d be great. I should go into partnerships. When I reflect back and look at the sort of story to get there, I spent a bunch of time when I was in restaurants early on, one of my first jobs after college was I was a host at a restaurant, which they call the hospitality manager, but I was a host. And what I realized is that in order to grow the audience, if you will, as we describe it today, but the guests that were coming in, it would benefit if I could go out into the community. And so I would go to the local fidelity office, I would go to the local like Charles Schwab, it was a financial area in Boston, and I would just walk in and talk to the secretary or the whoever was there, and just say like, “Hey, we’re this restaurant, you know who we are, we wanna host your holiday parties, we wanna host your team meetings, we wanna host more of your events.” And I didn’t know at the time, but what I was developing was partnerships with these organizations where we were putting together these very unique packages and enabling them to come in and have a very specific experience and have a set menu and all these things that we in the industry knew to be commonplace, but for these other folks was beneficial because now they could send their executives and their teams and whatnot down to the restaurant have a very curated, very predictable outcome, which was a great meal, really good environment and atmosphere and whatnot. And that turned into a significant uptick in business. And so I carried that sort of methodology of people, which was always my focus forward. I went into a role at a company where I was developing these marketing relationships. And again, same, it was partnerships. We were selling regional marketing events. And so, you know, I was going into these different regions around the country, and I was selling ad spend on the radio, and I was selling opportunity to do TV show appearances for the clients we had signed, but I was also developing partnerships within the community to bring in different vendors and resources to ensure our events were just absolute home runs. I brought that forward to the next tech company I was at, where I was selling at this point, technology back to the restaurants that I had helped manage. And so what got really interesting is that over time I started to develop this idea that partnerships were nothing specific around it in terms of like, I didn’t go to school for it. It wasn’t something I had to go and like study more on, it was just really about the people. And so as I got closer and closer to HubSpot, if you will, in terms of my timeline, more and more of my career centred around relationship development, the transfer of value, and delivering value early and often. The things that are now a cornerstone of the way that I think about partnerships at scale, at HubSpot and just in my personal life. And so if I look at the kind of big picture if you will, and I simplify this, partnerships for me in particular of where I’ve landed today really was this sort of build-up, this like hill climb, if you will, these stair steps around different experiences that fed into this idea that partnerships as a profession was really what made me feel fulfilled. Because I could sell, I liked selling, sales was fun, but the reason I was good at sales was, you know, in a top rep at times and a high contributor always went back to because I developed really trusting foundational relationships that was about the transfer of value. I had something that I could help X, Y, Z customers with, and I would go and do that work. And so for me, it’s been this interesting progression as I mentioned in terms of climbing that hill and then getting to today where I have partnerships in my title, there’s days that I still talk to folks that say, you know, you’re a partner leader, how do you feel about X or Y? And I have to kind of pinch myself and say, am I really at that point? Because when I think about it, it’s just this continuous progression in terms of how I grow my own opportunity and how, again as I mentioned before, I’ve taken this collection of skills that I’ve developed over time and bringing it forward to the role that I have today.

3-Step component 

Jeff: So rewarding for us, to extroverts to build relationships and to build partnerships, other organizations, especially when all things are clicking. You sort of have a, like a three-component approach to the way that you think about it, don’t you?

Barrett: I do, to some extent, yeah. So like, I think about, you know, first and foremost, you’re focusing on the work itself. So like studying it, being a student of it, and being very intentional around what I do every day. So like, for example, not to… This is not meant to plug my own show, but I have a show, it’s about partnerships, right? And the reason I started that show was simply because when I took on this role, I’m responsible for go-to-market strategy now. It’s something that I’ve been around and I’ve been a part of, but HubSpot’s partner business is a significant portion of our revenue, and it has a huge impact and touches a lot of lives and companies. So when I took on this responsibility, I take it very serious so the first thing I did was go learn. And so I get this methodology around being a student of the work, who’s talking about it? What articles can I read? How can I go listen to somebody who’s telling a story about it? And in any event, I started this show because, for me, it allowed me to go and learn more effectively. I’m glad it’s been helpful for other folks, but most importantly in kinda my first tenant is this idea of being a student of the work itself and then focusing on in terms of like the, if you will, the depth of, and the breadth of the work itself as well. So not being singular, you just kinda said it yourself, but when I think about partnerships, it’s not one thing. There are supporting roles, there are a lot of folks that do work that is hyper-focused on a specific set of skills. But for me, in go-to-market in particular, it’s very abstract. I work with marketing, I work with sales, I work with CS and product, and I work with a variety of folks across the organization in the market. So it requires that I’ve got this flexibility, but also depth in that work and so it’s a kind of second piece for me. And the third is really interesting because it’s about remaining in this place of being a trusted advisor, really focusing on the things that are important to my audience, which means I gotta listen. And so I’d say, you know, in its simplest form, it’s actively listening to the market, to the partners, to your team. But I think more important is remaining in a position where you can facilitate the connection of those different folks because partnerships is not just about do you sell more software service about our customer. There’s a vendor relationship. Partnerships, in my opinion, are developed between every individual we interact with in particular and B2B SaaS. And so fundamentally, you know, for myself as a kind of third tenant, I focus hyper, you know, really intensely, if you will, on this idea of being a thought leader and a trusted advisor to those around me. So that when we do things together, I’m bringing the background of my studies and the knowledge that I’ve gained and things of that nature, I’ve got some depth of some stories and some time in the seat. And then because I’ve been so directive and I’ve listened, ideally, I’m delivering as much value as possible through each one of those interactions.

Challenges in Creating Partnerships 

Jeff: You know, what you’re talking about really resonates with me in the early stages of our company. We decided to sell through channel partners from the very beginning. So creating partnerships was really, really important to what we did. And the process that we went through was really, really important. Interestingly enough, like at the end of the day, what I found out in the marketplace is that there was a lot of people that we were competing against at the time that were really bad at creating relationships. And, you know, some of the things that you’re talking about, they seem like really foundational things in order to create a relationship with another person and another business. But there’s a lot of people out there that don’t get it. And so for the people that get it, it’s really, it’s easy to create an advantage in the marketplace when you’re trying to create tight relationships. So like, in your point of view, what are some of the hardest things in creating partnerships in today’s ecosystem? Because, you know, things are always changing and then not just the business climate, but also the technologies and the way people interact with each other, then they did in a few years pass. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you’re seeing in creating tight partnerships now?

Barrett: I think you hit on one of the first points that’s top of mind for me, and that’s how dynamic things are right now. You know, there’s, I don’t know who to quote on this. There’s something I read today, forgive me if you’re listening to this and you’re that person, thank you for saying this, but they were talking about in an article I read, were talking about how things are moving so quick and that people are talking about the future constantly. Here’s what’s next. Here’s what’s next, right? Go look at AI, go look at all these different things that are I think in some ways driving innovation, but also hindering is probably the right term, but slowing down perhaps progress in terms of deep relationships. So the first is like, everyone wants to move fast. And I think that’s a, you know, it’s a good thing for technology sometimes, it’s a hard thing for relationship building and partnerships. The other thing, from a programmatic perspective, is very specifically, there’s typically a significant roadblock in terms of total business buy-in to partnerships and how to win. Because it’s not a direct correlation between action and output, it’s action, time, development, more work, more action results, and a little more results. It’s a kinda longtail experience with partnerships. There is a quick time to value this intangible ROI you can get. I think that’s one of the kind of primary things that I see most often in terms of just, market happens. And the third would be, I think probably the most common, which is that people don’t understand that partnerships aren’t single dimension, right? So like, we can use HubSpot, we started there, with HubSpot as a great partner program. When we talk about it, even internally, we say partner program, and for some folks that means agency partnerships. For some folks that means integrations, for some folks it’s app partners, for some folks it’s strategic, kinda the upmarket, if you will, those more, you know, like ISVs and folks of that nature. So I think what’s important is identifying specifically what partnerships means to you, defining that new organization and sticking to it. So I think about that as setting a guiding light. And that’s the thing that I, you know, most commonly talk to folks about. And then I see myself is just that in terms of a challenge, it’s this disjointed experience. We’re gonna go to market over here, go to market over there, but really clearly defining is partnerships, our go-to-market, or a part of our go-to-market. And it doesn’t have to be, sort of one statement that you make, that could be geo-specific, that could be vertical-specific, but defining the swim lanes, is that kind of third pillar in terms of the challenge that I see a lot of folks struggling with.

Go-to-Market Strategies for SaaS Companies

Jeff: Do you create sort of a hierarchy of ways that people can work with you based on the amount of friction that it takes to actually get something done? You know, what we’ve found in the past is you can propose strategic partnerships with businesses, but then, when everybody goes home from a discussion to a conference, everybody’s really busy. And the more friction, the more work it takes to move something forward, the less likely it is that it’s gonna happen. So like do you create a hierarchy of ways that you can start with baby steps working with you guys and then taking it forward from there?

Barrett: In terms of building the actual like program and the partnership itself? Is that how you’re thinking about it?

Jeff: Yeah, that’s it.

Barrett: Yeah, I, you have to look at the gap first. You gotta go look at, like, at its very core, what is the thing that you are doing in tandem with this partner that delivers value to your customer? I talk about that as like the intersection of value. I picture a triangle whenever I describe this in terms of like you and your customer and your partner. And if you can figure out that nice little trifecta, the intersection of all those three parties and how value transfers between them, that is the most fundamental thing, which comes from observation. And I think the challenge is that most folks wanna make the assumption, business leaders, you know, CROs, CEOs, et cetera, that they know the answer, love a good CRO. It’s like, “We’re gonna do this, and this is the only way to win.” I think you have to listen to the customer first. I go, in my opinion, to the root of the problem or the root of the solution, and I say, “Mr. and Mrs. Customer, what are you focused on? What are you challenged with? What are the things that you need done to service our platform and help you grow your business that we’re not actively supporting you in?” Those are my earliest partnerships, and I usually find that that’s a good first step to sort of architect up, if you will, the landscape of what’s going on in your customer’s life cycle without your direct involvement.

LAER – Listen, Acknowledge, Explore and Respond

Jeff: So what I heard you, I think I heard a framework there. So it sounds like you listen to the customer, you said explore the gap and then take an action and figure out what the customer actually needs to get done.

Barrett: No, you’re right, you’re spot on. You have to document, you have to be intentional about it. I think the thing that you see happen quite often is that at least in the folks that I talk with, you start the process because you feel like you need to do something. And as you do that, you don’t reflect, you don’t look at where you’ve been or look at where you need to go to. And one of the things that I have learned in my career, even at HubSpot in my years here, is that deciding how high you’re flying, your elevation over the problem is, you know, absolutely fundamental. Just a cornerstone of success in terms of how when you look at a problem or go for a solution, you approach it. And I think when you take and incrementally break down these different components and you say, wanna listen to the customer and observe the gap, it’s the action step that most people wanna default to. There’s this tool in end sales, right? When I was the head of sales training here at one point for partner, and one of the things that I uncovered and I used in our trainings was this idea of LAER, it’s L-A-E-R, it’s listen, acknowledge, explore and respond. Talk about a framework. It’s been around for a very long time. But LAER was really interesting because the fundamental science of it said you needed to listen, acknowledge and explore, ideally three times before you respond. But most people in particular sales reps and partner reps listen sort of, kind of right loose language a little bit. And then they don’t really acknowledge and then they never explore and they go right to respond and you miss this life cycle of actual depth that you get from it. I think that is, for me, kinda the fundamentals of partner program and partner relationship development. It’s the scientific method. You need a hypothesis, you need to formulate an experiment, you need to run the experiment, study the results, formulate an opinion, and either run a new experiment or be able to know that by actioning in the beginning, you get that outcome every time.

Practical Tactics for Building Partnerships

Jeff: And it’s in that exploration where you really begin to understand the use case that the customer really needs and the job they need to be done if you will. Interesting. That’s it. That’s helpful.

Barrett: And how to reinforce it.

Jeff: So that’s another help. So we’ve got two helpful frameworks and thinking about partnerships and then the exploration thing there. Talk about some useful and practical tactics that you employ when you’re putting together partnerships or into the core work that you do.

Barrett: Well, I think the thing at maybe the onset is being open-minded, which is the most like buzzy thing that I could say to answer your question and you know, maybe a little bit played out, but I think it’s important to be acknowledged. To acknowledge and be conscious of this idea that we don’t have all the answers. There’s a lot of folks in the industry right now in partnerships that say they have the answer. And if, you know, if any of all listen to this and you’re thinking to yourself is Barrett talking about me, I’m probably talking about you. Because the truth is, there are some good answers out there, but the profession, while it’s been around for a very long time, is still in its infancy in terms of perfection. And so I think being open and being intentional around how you listen is very important. The other is like, seek out people that have answers, but more specifically, and this is, you know, to me as an individual, important, seek out answers different from the ones that you already have come to. So be intentional around seeking out and sourcing folks that are talking about things that you don’t necessarily agree with or have answers to in that sense. So diversified thinking is really important. And then, you know, in terms of tactics and the kind of functional component of it, I think every day looking for your cross-functional opportunities, which again, sounds a little bit buzzy, but it’s very true. Partnerships is typically not the most direct organization in the business while you are working with another organization, because of that, there’s a proximity challenge, which is that they don’t work for you, they work with you. And so if you’ve got a collective value, as I mentioned earlier, you’ve got a collective goal and a plan, that’s all well and good, but ultimately the transactional value of why you should spend time together comes from all the other stuff that you deliver on. So one of the things that I always think about is, what else can I do? Very simply put, like what else can I do to support, to help go-to-market? Like what are the other things that I can do in terms of delivering, you know, tactical, tangible, outcome-based value? And then again, most importantly above all of this, document everything. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to folks and even my own experience in my career. And you go in and you’re like, well, what are we doing with this? And the answer is like, well, you know, Billy or Sally or whoever over here, they’ve got the knowledge. And you’re like, cool, great, that doesn’t help me though ’cause I can’t replicate Billy or Sally. And so fundamentally capturing institutional knowledge and being intentional about making it scalable. We started off talking about HubSpot’s Academy and how the kinda decentralized knowledge here makes a big difference, I’m probably drank too much of the Kool-Aid, and that’s probably why I think this way now, been here for a long time. But I really believe that the more you can capture, the more you can distribute and kind of democratize information and enable everyone around you take a baseline and then learn and grow from it, the more successful you’ll be. And that’s one of the things I really lean on.

Jeff: By the way, you know, the first thing that you mentioned there, being open-minded. Like I can see it’s so important so many times, you know, even myself when I’ve been looking for partnerships, but I’ve observed many people they’ll go into, especially at in environments like conferences, and they’ll go into a situation and they’re looking for a very specific thing in a box. This type of partnership or this type of thing. And unless you’re open-minded about exploring different types of things, there’s so many opportunities that’ll pass you up because you won’t realize that actually until you really explore what somebody’s looking for, more times than not, you’ll find out that there’s opportunities out there that do fit a lot neater in your box than you would’ve thought if you weren’t open-minded in the first place. At least that’s what I found in my experience. And to me that was just forcing myself to be more curious, to have more conversations, and go a little bit deeper into things.

Barrett: It makes a difference when you use, I think about it like, I guess a question for like rules, right? Like rules of engagement or things like that quite often. And I’m always very cautious of anything that’s that concrete, anything that’s that black and white. I’m actually a bigger fan of guardrails.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Barrett: So I think you can set guardrails really wide, right? And just say like, “Operate within this general area,” and you’re gonna learn more that way.

The Process of Building Partnerships 

Jeff: A hundred percent. I can totally buy that. So you’ve been doing this for some time. So do you have like a process for building partnerships that speaking of putting something in a box that you can refer to.

Barrett: We touched on this a little bit, but I’ll double-click. The first thing that I go to whenever I talk to somebody, you know, early founder to like several hundred million in revenue, that tends to be my kind of sweet spot. The first thing they usually say to me is, how do I build a partner program like X, they wanna emulate something else. And I think there’s something valuable about having a north star. And what I usually wanna do first is break down. What about so-and-so’s partnerships program or their ecosystem or whatever they call it, what about that do you want to emulate? And like nine times out of 10, it’s like, I wanna generate that much revenue. Like, cool, all right, what else do you like about it though? And I try and break down, I think about this in very small pieces. I try and break down the things that are incrementally, but fundamentally most important to the organization is trying to go and build something like this. And you know, I think probably there’s probably a stat around this, but seven to 10, eight at a 10 time they wanna talk about revenue. How do I generate more revenue? And I think the thing that I go to first is like, “Well great, revenue aside, whatever the value is that you are looking from the partner, what do they get from you?” And some leaders have thought of this, a lot of them have not. That’s the first thing that I wanna go and get to. That’s kind of my breakdown if you will, in terms of observing and then actioning all the way down to the fundamentals. Now that I know that a partner benefits because they get to do, again, we can use HubSpot ’cause we’ve all talked about at this point, I don’t usually, but we will, early on we observe at some of our most successful customers were working with marketing agencies. We engaged with those marketing agencies. We found out that they were using our software to deliver their services. And so their customers were, happier, have better ROI, more successful like we had a great marketing platform early on. We have a great suite now it’s a different ecosystem at this stage. But if I keep it at its simplest form, that observation birth what I still believe selfishly is one of the best agency-based partner programs in the world. We’ve diversified, we’ve got SIs and GSI and a bunch of other folks, ISVs that do the work now. But it all stemmed from that observation, the action, and then some of that kind of tactical stuff in between. And so I think in terms of the box you described, the framework, getting to where your customer gaps are, as I mentioned before, leaning into where by working with somebody else they benefit and then connecting back that benefit to what that organization needs. And for our case, to use an example, it was that the agencies had a variety of tools they were using to do the thing that our single tool could do. So we could help them to consolidate. We also could do something very specific, and this is the piece that I wanna be hyper-clear on. And that’s, we help them build a business model in a box. Like it’s the one thing that really stood apart and still does for our ecosystem. And that’s this idea that by working with our tool, you can build inbound services as we’ve called them for years, that are scalable, repeatable, predictable. They are high-margin people do really well and they deliver an outsourced amount or outsize excuse me, amount of value to the end customer. And so naturally, if I’m an agency or you know, system integrator or some sort of a consultant in the CRM marketing, customer service tools space, why wouldn’t I wanna work with a company that has figured out not only how to solve the customers I mentioned early on, how to deliver value to me, the actual partner, but the third piece make it easy. So many people wanna go and engineer some big burley, whatever, just keep it super simple. And you know, there’s a guy, Blake Williams, he’s in the partnership space, brilliant guy who’s on my show a long while ago, and he had a very specific comedy. He said, “You don’t own your customer’s trust.” He said, “Your partners own that trust. You get to borrow it, add something to it and deliver it back through those partners, to those end customers.” And that really stuck out to me as the kind of cornerstone, the fundamentals of how do you really build this thing from the ground up.

Measuring Efficiency of Partnership Channel

Jeff: You know, I saw a great framework speaking, another framework that Mark Roberge was talking about in one of his chats where you measure go-to-market fit by your go-to-market channels and then your customer segments. You look at the unit economics and you figure out in which areas, channel market and product and customer fit where you have go-to-market fit and where you have product market fit. And then you focus in those areas and you know, the primary channels you’ve got direct like an inbound, you’ve got outbound, you’ve got partnerships. I was gonna ask clearly building a robust inbound, the unit economics around inbound are amazing. Takes a long time to get there for a lot of people because you’ve gotta build the content and you’ve gotta build that moat that takes an investment. Outbound is great because you’re picking your customers, but there’s an art to it. I’m just wondering, when you look at the unit economics around partnerships, how do they stack up in terms of volume, in terms of efficiency to the other go-to-market motions?

Barrett: I’ve seen metrics in the three-to-one, five-to-one, seven to one return just in terms of the outsize opportunity set. What’s interesting is that it’s all relative to the sophistication and size of the organization. And so, like, you know, HubSpot or a similarly sized company, you know, the returns tend to be different as you get bigger, right? It’s the same as any motion is in any go-to market dependent on size. But fundamentally, if you look at its core, partnerships should represent a minimum of 3x, I would say 3x. If your direct team is carrying a million-dollar quota, your partner team should carry 3 million. Because theoretically, if you’re doing your job right, those partners should be delivering a 2, 3, 4, or 5x return against every dollar. What’s interesting is it’s not always the case. It all depends on how much surround sound you’re building around those partnerships and then how much, frankly, those partnerships are meant to deliver back to you. If it’s a pure resell, you know, distributor-reseller relationship, it’s usually a pretty high multiple. That’s where you get your like six, seven, eights. You haven’t even seen tens like one to 10 ratio, which is bananas. When it’s much more, yeah, like migrate, implement, integrate more people, heavy human capital centric, the ratios go down, that’s where you get your like 2, 3, 4, even five to ones, still incredible. ‘Cause if you imagine you can hire, you know, one Barrett and Barrett can produce three times what the nearest direct sales rep does or marketing dollar does, that gets really interesting, really quick.

Advice to Build Partnerships or Focusing on Go-to-Market

Jeff: Very, very interesting. So one takeaway, one bit of advice you have for someone that wants to build a partnership program and/or focus on go-to-market. What’s the one piece of advice you wanna leave behind?

Barrett: That’s interesting. A parting thought here for me, I think it’s I don’t wanna do the whole like David and Goliath thing, I think it’s an easy analogy. I think it’s more selfishly like what I’ve done is learned a little bit about a lot. It’s maybe good at business. It’s helped me in my career. It’s helped me develop strong partnerships. I like to read, I like to consume information, I like to learn. I watch, you know, crappy TV shows and I spend my time doing meaningless things too but I try and think about it in a very simple way, which is, it’s about a work-life blend. There’s no balance. And you know, if I bring that forward and I say there’s no balance because balance implies everything is 50-50 and it’s not. Some days I work harder, some days maybe I don’t work enough. I bring that into partnerships and that’s something that I would encourage as kind of like a founding thought of how do you specifically lean into it. Go and learn a little about business, learn a bit about marketing, and a little bit about sales. Don’t spend every waking second doing it. And that’s why I said it’s not about balance in terms of every day I’m gonna learn all these things, but I spent my life learning a little bit about a bunch of different things that I can bring in to go-to-market conversations because fundamentally go-to-market is such a diversified role. The fact that I know a little bit about product and how to build, a little bit about marketing sales, yes, those different components come together off my Lego mat, into my Lego pyramid I described earlier on and gives me a leg up to be more valuable in every conversation that I have. So build your mat is my takeaway.

Getting in Touch with Barrett King

Jeff: For a short talk that had an awful lot of takeaways in it. That one note is a great note to end on and a great takeaway for anyone that wants to build the partnerships program and focus on go-to-market. I thank you for your insights and thanks for taking some time outta your busy day to share with us in the Conquer Local Podcast. If people wanna get a hold of you, Barrett, how do they get a hold of you? How do they follow up with all of the cool things that you’re doing?

Barrett: Yeah, LinkedIn. I think for folks like us, it tends to be LinkedIn. You search Barrett J King on LinkedIn, you can find me directly there. Feel free to DM me, I’m happy to have a chat. I’ve talked to a lot of folks that way. I also have my own show, it’s called “Outcomes.” You can find it on all the popular things you’d expect, YouTube, certainly Spotify and Apple. It’s about partnerships and I focus on having, you know, diverse conversations with folks that have been there, done the work, and really have a story to tell about it. So you wanna learn about partnerships, you go there, you wanna chat with me, go check out LinkedIn.

– Sir, it’s been a privilege spending a few minutes to chat with you and great to get to know you. I hope we have a chance to do this again in a not too distant future.

Barrett: Same, looking forward to it. Take care.

Conclusion

Jeff: It was so awesome speaking to Barret. Clearly, I’m a Hubspot fan. And yes, I have really earned that reputation. Adopting inbound as the go-to-market strategy and focusing on SEO can build long-term stability and growth when developing partnerships and marketing relationships in different regions. The plan – build scalable, predictable, and high-margin inbound processes. 

By the way, I loved Barrett’s summary of LAER which stands for Listen, Acknowledge, Explore and Respond. A really helpful and simple model to follow. 

If there’s one tip we could leave you with – in order to build successful partnerships, it is important to focus on developing vendor relationships and being a thought leader and a trusted advisor. Barrett also mentioned, keep an open-mind, seek out answers different from the ones you have, and deliver tactical support to partners. Lastly, having a valuable north star metric can help partners build a business model in a box, leading to benefits such as scalability and high-margin. 

If you’ve enjoyed Barrett’s episode discussing Building Successful Partnerships and Go-To-Market Strategies: Keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives: Episode 431: Outcome-Based Selling, with Phil M. Jones or Episode 354: Customer Deciding Journey, with Tim Riesterer who is one of my favourites.

Until next time I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome!