S-Docs

 Worked with the Cross-Functional Team to create a V1. Partner Program

 Implemented OEM Program, creating an ecosystem within an ecosystem

 Swapped in ISV solutions, replacing competitive solutions from leading ISV’s

 Extend value of Salesforce Native Solution, resulting in Mid 6 Figure ARR, while helping to create hundreds of new customers joint customers via the OEM Partnerships

 Created significant awareness with Key ISV’s in the Salesforce Ecosystem, which created leverage for the direct sales organization

ISV was a leading Document Generation solution in the Salesforce Ecosystem. Engagement with partners was an ad-hoc process, without a clear direction. SaaSPartners dove in immediately assessing the opportunity, challenges and competition. Competitors were well positioned with both ISV’s, Solution Consultants,potential partners had significant teams trained and enabled on the competitive solutions. In addition partners had significant customer adoption of competitive solutions.

After our initial finding, the ISV realized a significant investment would need to be made into creating a partner ecosystem over the long term. The ISV felt they were not prepared to make the investment increating a partner ecosystem at scale over the long term.

SaaSPartners suggested the ISV pivot and focus almost exclusively on creating an ecosystem of OEM partners in the Salesforce ecosystem, essentially creating and App ecosystem within an ecosystem. As part of the strategy SaaSPartner’s agreed to invest it’s time in resources in the program, agreeing to a “Pay for Performance Model”.

Over the ensuing 30 months SaaSPartners pursued signing up ISV’s in the Sales Ecosystem where Document Generation was fundamental to to completing the digital transformation for the partners customers. SaaSPartners signed a dozen OEMISV’s, across multiple solution offering, generating significant and growing ARR, while extending the customer based by hundreds of end user customers.

Highspot

The client was looking to have an audit done of its partner strategy, followed by recommendations for creating a formal Partner Taxonomy and Ecosystem Strategy.

The client was looking to have an audit done of its partner strategy, followed by recommendations for creating a formal Partner Taxonomy and Ecosystem Strategy. The goal of the Partner Taxonomy & Partner Strategy GTM was to identify and grow a robust set of partners, partners that will help accelerate ARR, drive partners originated and influenced MQL’s, SQL’s, pipeline, closed won-revenue, customer success and LTV for each new client influenced by the partner ecosystem. Additional goals included: developing Partner-delivered services and extending from the platform.

SaaSPartners did extensive research, compiled its findings to provide an informed Partner Taxonomy & Ecosystem Strategy. We conducted formal research and reported on our findings from a series of interviews with practitioners, industry analysts, competitorsand customers. The engagement culminated in a second phase “Pilot a new partner category of Digital Agencies.”

In the second phase we engaged with over three dozen Digital Agencies, Hybrid Specialized Consultants, GSI’s, SI’, Consulting Partners in the Salesforce, Hubspot and Adobe ecosystems.

SaaSPartners developed an extended Taxonomy recommendation. Outlining the challenges, opportunities and engagement strategy for recruiting partners, developers and fostering new alliances.

SaaS Partners provided a POV of the Sales Stack Ecosystem relative to their current situation

The Enablement ecosystem was made up of ISV’s, Digital Agencies, Sales Consultants, and other players is still in the Pioneering Stage.

The Pioneering Stage, represented a loosely coupled group of ISVs’, Sales Accelerationorganization, Sales Consultancies, Analyst and end user customers. Further to the Pioneering Stage; Learning/Training ISV’s and Content Centric Sales ISV’s had yet to reach scale and significant market penetration.

The ISV’s who provide adjacent solutions, however, Sales Engagement, CommunicationsPlatforms were widely adopted and penetrated at the Enterprise, Mi-Market and SMB level’s.

Engaging a diverse set of constituent partner types participating in a partner ecosystem;allowing them to lead in creating a thriving ecosystem of partners. Thus they could potentially create a moat for their competitors to cross.

 They would need to execute on short term bets and and make long term investments

 They would need a willingness to pioneer and evangelize the Sales Stack category that will likely result in creating awareness for partners and competitors,“Lifting All Boats”

 Focus on ISV’s, SI, etc. who have already place bets on the Sales Stack

 They may be able to be recognized as “The Leader, at the Center of their Sales Stack category” by all participants

Sift

 OEM Partnerships with Vertically aligned ISV’s are the most successful at executing

 OEM Partnerships take patience, and time to scale

 Horizontal focused ISV’s that provide tools needs OEM partnerships to expand into important niche markets

 Category Leaders or VC backed startups are best positioned to succeed

 Vertical ISV’s that are Founder led create the most value with amazing exits $$$

 Failed to respond to request for product updates

 Did not properly enable the partners team

 Lack of cross functional support and execution

 Did respect the partner and let channel conflict arise internally, between direct sales and partner organization

Simply put Tool OEM’s did not invest in supporting the partnership, took it for granted, did not understand the nuances for success.

SaaSPartners Founding Principal was involved in dozens of successful OEM partnerships while at Adobe and within the Salesforce ecosystem. He witnessed firsthand why some partnerships failed and other thrived.

Want to learn more? How might an OEM Partnership increase the revenue and value of your organization? Do we have product market fit for an OEM Partnership?

MaestroQA

MaestroQA is a leading provider of QA Solutions for helping improve CSAT, Agent Engagement, and overall Agent Performance in the Call Center. With hundreds of customers across the globe, MaestroQA as a “Best of Breed” offering that has been deployed by world renowned customers across retail, commerce and B2B companies.

MaestroQA was seeing accelerated CoSell opportunities with its Go to Market partners. Zendesk, Salesforce and several other Customer Service solution providers were seeing interest from their customers in addressing workforce engagement and opportunities to improve agent performance.

MaestroQA had an urgent need to engage in the CoSell motion, SaaSPartners was brought in over a holiday weekend and immediately began engaging in the field with partners and end user companies.

 We quickly began executing via direct outreach to partner constituencies that resulted in the sourcing of several opportunities that converted into multiple 6 figure opportunities that closed within the first 6 months.

 We were invited to work with a strategic partner to enable their entire commercial sales organization across the North America

 We helped source and hire a connected A Player VP of Alliances, who brought her playbook and posse of partners with her

 We helped elevate a partnership to “Strategic Growth Status”, that ultimately resulted in MaestroQA being recognized as “Breakout Partner of the Year” by Salesforce at Dreamforce 2022