Customers want partnerships
When you build a base that anyone can use, things really get exciting.
You’re not just building products with potential use cases now, you are building into the future.
Customers want products that play nicely with other products. They are looking to buy products that will work now and in the future.
When you build with partnerships in mind, you give customers a reason to buy now and down the road.
Unlikely book recs
Today’s book rec is from Chris Messina.
While there are a few books I love, have read more than once, and would like to see everyone read (Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers, Daniel Graham’s Think Again, Jeff Hawkins’ A Thousand Brains, and Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus are all extraordinary reads) but the one that’s been the most life-changing, and eye-opening, for me right now is David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
Like many ecosystem professionals, I didn’t exactly take a direct path to career success, having served in the Army, then becoming a cop before getting my MBA and getting into the business world.
Even then, I started out in marketing for a small agency before stumbling into business brokerage/M&A before the 2007-08 crash.
I then wound up in the affiliate marketing world for several years (completely by chance) before moving to SaaS where I discovered my passion for solving puzzles and developing ecosystems.
Range is a look at how people who are perceived as “late starters” and with diverse backgrounds thrive in a world where hyperspecialization is increasingly becoming the domain of artificial intelligence.
Our ability to pull from that range of experience and bring anecdotal problem-solving to unique situations allows us to bring the kind of perspective to the table that others simply can’t.
I was turned onto this book by the CEO of a company with which I was interviewing, and even though they decided to go in another direction, I will always be thankful to him for bringing this knowledge into my life.
Partner ops taking center stage
If the partnerships moment is here, the partner ops moment is also here.
Like it or not, Partner Managers get stuck setting up tech products, doing reporting and analytics, and calculating partner commission.
Our friends at Hubspot, Canalys and Partnership Leaders put together a Partner Ops Survey with some data that can help you make a business case for better support in 2023.
Happenings
Dec 2 - First Friday - PartnerHacker and Superglue present: The European Partner Moment at 10 AM ET (4 PM France/Germany, 3 PM UK). Register here.
Dec 7 - Predictions 2023: Channel vs Ecosystem - Justin Zimmerman, Scott Brinker, and Jay McBain will meet up to discuss their partner predictions for 2023. Join them!
Share the PhD
Know someone who needs to get their PhD in partnerships? Send ‘em this newsletter.
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