PRINCIPLES

The mistake business leaders make all 👏 the👏 time 👏

The biggest mistake you can make in business is caring about the things your customers do not.

It dilutes your focus and leads you down useless rabbit holes.

Stop wasting money.

Stop wasting time.

Stop chasing all the wrong opportunities.

Obsess over understanding your buyer and making their lives better.

It really is that simple.

TACTICS

The art of ecosystem orchestration

Ecosystems are largely untapped goldmines. They’re promising but not yet predictable.

Allan Adler (Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners) believes it’ll take the right strategy (ecosystem orchestration) paired with the right tactics to uncover the full potential of ecosystems.

To quote Sun Tzu,

In today’s daily we’ll dive into the strategy aspect to help you dominate the decade of the ecosystem.

Strategy

Allan Adler calls ecosystem strategy, ecosystem orchestration.

And I love that imagery. When you orchestrate, you arrange things in a particular order to achieve a desired result. The ecosystem is too complex to be controlled, but it can be orchestrated.

A great ecosystem strategy includes 3 ingredients:

1. Map of the territory

   Go-to-market is on the fritz and our buyers don’t want to be a part of a funnel. Before you can level up your GTM, you’ve got to understand the problem.

   
   Check out this deep dive into the state of outbound sales to get you started.
   
    

2. The 6 value layers of an ecosystem
    

   Ecosystems aren’t just a transactional channel. According to Allan, in every ecosystem, there are 6 ways to drive value that need to be a part of the whole strategy.
   
    

   1. Innovation

   2. Influence

   3. Selling

   4. Value realization

   5. Competitive advantage

   6. Sustainability

   
   One mistake some companies make is only leveraging one of these value layers — maybe the only value they see in an ecosystem is co-selling. That leaves a ton of potential revenue on the table.
   
    

3. Orchestration
    

   At this stage, you’re arranging the variables in your ecosystem to produce repeatable results. 
   
   The goal is to look at your value layers and ask: how can I drive results in this value layer, and what needs to be true for the results to be repeatable?
    

We’re not going to get into ecosystem tactics today, but check out Allan’s new column for both strategy and tactics to see how he’d drive repeatable ecosystem results.

Or listen to Allan’s session from the Nearbound Summit to learn more.

MEME OF THE DAY

Because no person with any sense would ever trust too many 5-star reviews...

Thanks for the meme, George Mack!

FUN EVENTS & STUFF YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

• Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is Nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.

• Dec 13th, 2 PM EST —Navigating Change: Dealing with Uncertainty, Restructurings, and Its Aftermath— Join Faisal Mirza (Director in Strategic Partnerships at Adobe) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) and they discuss how to manage through changes in the organization and deal with its aftermath. Register here.

• Feb 5-7th in Miami — Impartnercon 2024 —  Partnerships are the future of growth. Join partner leaders to learn what it means to build the future of business, together.  Register here. 

• March 19-20th — Affiverse’s Amplify Summit — Join them for a 2-day virtual event to help affiliate businesses amplify their performance. Learn about digital, partnership, and affiliate marketing. Register here.

SHARE THE MOVEMENT

Sun Tzu gave us the formula — Strategy + Tactics — share this with someone who’s looking for guidance in partnerships.