How to Find Compatible ISV Partnerships
"We don't need to work with them. They're a smaller analytics company, we have a partnership with IndustryBigName and IndustryHugeName."
Vanity metrics might make you feel safe, but they can be a trap. Many organizations get comfortable with poor or mediocre results on what matters because they're getting positive feedback on their vanity metrics - social engagement, logo size, number of meetings. If it's not converting into dollars in a trackable way, it might be a false sense of security. In particular, prioritization of big name logos can be impressive on a page, but customers weigh more factors than brand establishedness alone.
Here are five factors that predict partner performance better than a notable logo:
Customer alignment - partners that share a common general ICP or a segmented ICP can more effectively target and tell stories. If there's a mismatch, it's better to catch it early than to wait til it comes time to implementation and you're on the hook for delivering outcomes that can't be delivered.
Ease to work with - big vendors can be a gigantic pain to work with. The relationship has benefits, but they're often so bureaucratic that they are less able to act quickly on opportunities or make necessary changes.
Product use cases - a whitespace analysis is helpful to go through before embarking on a partnership journey with a third-party. It's not necessarily true that a larger product fills a gap better than a niche industry player. The latter may have integration with industry tools, workflows, and platforms that the larger vendor "doesn't have time to handle right now"
Storytelling - large organizations often rely on case studies and social proof to sell the value of their offerings. The larger the partner logo, the larger the scope of services - and the potential for much greater distance between customer pain and ability to speak to it. Smaller vendors, especially newer entrants, often capitalize on this to tell stories that better resonate with the ICP.
Integration - larger platforms often want to own the entire chain instead of accepting the reality that there are only so many links they can effectively own. You'd better hope the current APIs and hooks they have are good enough - because they probably won't accommodate change requests into the roadmap in any reasonable amount of time. Capable smaller vendors make this a part of their reason for being, integrating with whatever they can to grow their platform, so the incentives are on their side to build integrations.
These are a sampling of the factors we consider when helping organizations build Partnerships Infrastructure. Organizations win more when they lead with partners - our engagements get them going.
Reference guide for the metrics that matter in building effective partnerships.