Partnerships Outperform Traditional Go-to-Market Models in Efficiency and Growth

The low-to-no-inter­est era in the finan­cial mar­kets has end­ed. This devel­op­ment push­es VCs to do a dou­ble-take on the indi­ca­tors of suc­cess and forces SaaS busi­ness­es to adjust their go-to-mar­ket strategy.

The val­u­a­tion of SaaS com­pa­nies now weighs heav­ier on their effi­cien­cy. For com­pa­nies in the B2B sec­tor, it means show­cas­ing high per­for­mance and busi­ness growth with low­er input. The over­due lib­er­a­tion from tra­di­tion­al go-to-mar­ket mod­els, as Brent Adam­son (coau­thor of The Chal­lenger Sale) sug­gests in his arti­cle “Tra­di­tion­al B2B Sales and Mar­ket­ing Are Becom­ing Obso­lete” (pub­lished in Har­vard Busi­ness Review / hbr.org), does just that.

A part­ner­ships strat­e­gy proves high­er effi­cien­cy and scal­a­bil­i­ty than tra­di­tion­al go-to-mar­ket mod­els through lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal ecosystems.

 

Increased revenue at lower costs 

Work­ing with a chan­nel part­ner expands the sales reach expo­nen­tial­ly and often grants access to estab­lished cus­tomer rela­tions. The high­er qual­i­ty of the gen­er­at­ed pipeline and, con­se­quent­ly, high­er con­ver­sion rates result in low­er cus­tomer acqui­si­tion costs. Part­ner­ships open new doors and release resources to invest in fur­ther growth.

 

Increased innovation and value creation 

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vice part­ners allows com­pa­nies to focus on their core activ­i­ties, pos­i­tive­ly impact­ing cus­tomer adop­tion and reten­tion. These inte­gra­tions enhance the solu­tion’s val­ue through new fea­tures, offer­ings, and con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the customer’s tech­nol­o­gy stack.

 

Increased exposure to market participants

Part­ner­ships cre­ate expo­nen­tial expo­sure in grow­ing ecosys­tems and allow com­pa­nies to con­nect to a big­ger audi­ence at a faster pace. Com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from the net­work effects phe­nom­e­non, which lifts the val­ue and attrac­tive­ness of a prod­uct or ser­vice through the grow­ing num­ber and qual­i­ty of the ecosys­tem participants.

 

Reduced risk through revenue diversification

Diver­si­fied rev­enue streams gen­er­ate and accel­er­ate growth through the con­cept of an “extend­ed sales force”. Chan­nel, tech­nol­o­gy, and mar­ket­ing part­ners pro­vide addi­tion­al rev­enue streams beyond a com­pa­ny’s prod­uct and ser­vice port­fo­lio mak­ing com­pa­nies more attrac­tive for invest­ments. “A com­pa­ny with 50% part­ner-gen­er­at­ed rev­enue is a safer invest­ment than a com­pa­ny with 100% sales-gen­er­at­ed rev­enue.” (accord­ing to Andreessen Horow­itz’s Sarah Wang, Cross­beam Supern­ode 2022 onstage interview).

Col­lab­o­ra­tive work­ing means a com­mit­ment to mutu­al growth. Part­ner­ships set up the right way boost effi­cien­cy to anoth­er lev­el and extend sales and prod­uct teams beyond one orga­ni­za­tion. It’s a win-win all around!