A quick recap of the NbD this week:

• Another valuable lesson from HubSpot 

• What penguins, inbound, & outbound have in common

• Don’t let your platform go to 💩

• The path to trust is paved with good connections

• Keep the wind at your back

Recently published

• The Ultimate KPI Smackdown: Partner-Sourced vs. Partner-Attached

• Revenue Leaders Expecting 100% Growth, Rank AI as their #1 Investment by Jonathan Burg

• The Biggest Deals Closed with Nearbound

• Nearbound Podcast #133: Navigating Strategic Alliances - Xiaofei Zhang

• Friends with Benefits #21: A Masterclass in Purposeful Networking - Scott Leese

• Howdy Partners #57: Managing Chaos in Partnership Programs - Negar Nikaeein

It’s time to show up to the partnerships moment

Tyler Calder, CMO at PartnerStack, shared the following about his upcoming Nearbound Summit session, Revenue Renaissance: Why Marketing & Partnerships Will Lead Revenue in 2024, and why the current market feels all too familiar: 

I hit the workforce in 2007, and the market was f***ed.

It was a financial crisis, but that crisis acted as a catalyst. Market forces came together to spawn the sharing economy. It was the beginning of smartphones and all of the app-based startups that followed. It led to financial reform…. Kind of.

It was also the moment that marketers had been begging for — a seat at the table. 

Companies needed to be more efficient, and the smart ones realized that marketing was so much more than just delivering eyeballs... 

And with that came the attention marketers had been craving from leadership. But most marketers weren’t ready to get what they wished for. 

Working agency side, I saw many of our clients swap out their Heads of Marketing. These marketers that were demanding the attention of leadership finally got it, but they weren’t ready for it. They went from complaining about not having a seat at the table, to complaining about being let go because leadership “didn’t get marketing”.

Here’s the thing — leadership got marketing. They understood the power of it. They just didn’t believe that the current crop of marketing leadership could deliver on it...

Partnerships feels like marketing did in 2007. We’re in a market that’s a little bit f***ed. Companies are realizing that partnerships have been delivering the type of efficient growth the market demands, they just haven’t been doing it at scale.

Look at LinkedIn though. Partnership folks complaining leadership doesn’t understand partnerships. Demanding more budget. More people. More time to make it work.

Here’s the thing — leadership gets partnerships. They understand the power of it. They just don’t believe that the current crop of partner leadership can deliver on it.

A generalization? Sure. Unfair? Maybe. 

But that’s the sentiment I’ve heard from investors and startup founders. It’s absolutely a repeat of what I witnessed in 2007-2009 with marketing.

Partnerships is having its moment, but we need to show up. Some are, but in the eyes of investors and the C-Suite, most aren’t.

The most successful customers we have at PartnerStack are the ones that have connected Marketing and Partnerships, forming a powerhouse of a revenue engine.

We can learn from what marketing went through in 2007-2009, and we can learn from the playbooks being executed today by the best of the best in SaaS.

That’s what this session is about. Hope to see you there.

You can read Tyler’s full article here.