#52: Unlock More Revenue Retention with Partners 🔐

Great Customer Success Managers are trusted advisors.

• They help customers crystalise their goals
• They guide the customer on the path to success
• They support the change management process
• They drive accountability for the execution

But they don't do the work FOR the customer.

For some customers that's perfect. For others, it's not enough.

It's common to find customers who lack the resources and expertise to execute Success Plans. They get stuck and never get the expected value of the product.

The solution?

Service Partners.

This newsletter is here to help you set the foundations of a successful strategy where your Customer Success Team improves NRR by working with partners.

The NRR Impact of Service Partners

I spent the first 4 years of my career in Customer Success building a business that helped SaaS customers implement solutions, onboard and train users and build vital bespoke integrations.

The results of working with us were undeniable!

Retention was 4 to 10 points better than the average customers in these SaaS businesses.

While there's a lot of data on how partners help drive sales growth, we don't have as many sources looking at the retention trend.

But in every company where I led CS, this pattern has repeated itself.

HubSpot is no different, our solution partners have a hugely positive impact on our NRR.

But these results shouldn't be surprising... 

• We did all the hard work of tailoring the product to their use case
• We integrated into their main systems to make using these products seamless
• We delivered all the training for the team and in case of any questions
• We managed the change management across all levels of the organisation
• We were there to help them iterate as different phases rolled out

That's where most customers fail, they never get off the ground. Because the people running them have an actual job to do, and it's not implementing software.

And onboarding is even harder when customers are expanding into new products. This is why so many fail to activate features of their new tier or solution (I discussed this at length here).

So why is it that a strategy to collaborate with partners is not more of a priority for CS Leaders? 

It's time to learn how you can make this a reality in your business.

How To Work With Partners

Many servicing partners are also reselling partners.

When they bring customers to your business, they have a detailed Statement of Work of what will be delivered, when and how much it will cost.

These customers might not get assigned a CSM on your business as they are considered to be fully managed by partners.

But to drive the NRR improvements I talked about, we want to be proactive in matching customers with partners. And the situation gets tricker when you are bringing a partner to service an existing customer.

You need to:

1. help people find the right partner
2. define how you will work together
3. ensure everyone has access to the right information so you can collaborate
4. align incentives to drive results for the customer

Let's dive into each of these areas...

Find The Right Partner

It's hard for CSMs to keep track of all the partners they have and their niche.

At HubSpot we built a 'Find A Partner' tool that evolved from being a spreadsheet to being a customer-facing tool where partners can build their pages, allowing for CSMs and customers to search for suitable partners. And a huge plus is the ability for customers to leave reviews.

Some categories to consider when you are building a partner directory:

• Location
• Languages
• Industry
• Use Cases
• Partner Certifications
• Integration Specialisation

Don't sweat if you can't invest in a fancy website to host it. Just make sure the information is easily accessible, consolidated and up to date. An internal page or document will do to get you started!

Working With A Partner

The CSM might already have a Success Plan, EBRs and other regular engagements with the customer.  So how do you fit the partner into your model? 

It all starts with defining roles.

You don't want your CSM to take the role of a Project Manager, overseeing everything that the partner does. You also don't want the partner creating side conversations about renewals.

You want to be clear about the type of engagement:

• Is it a once-off service? If yes, then the engagement will have a start and end date. That means a CSM can set expectations for how to work together over that period.
• Is it a retainer? If yes, then this is a longer-term engagement and figuring out how to work together throughout all customer lifecycles will be key.

I like using a DARCI matrix to help articulate the roles. 

• Decision Maker: The Customer
• Accountable: The CSM
• Responsible: The Partner (be specific about the Scope of the Work here)
• Consulted: All Parties
• Informed: All Parties 

The customer's goals and metrics of success should be clear to the partner from the get-go.

And the partner services should feed into the Success Plan, and not be a completely different structure. In many cases, partners will bring expertise and that might change the Success Plan. 

That's not a bad thing. We just need to make sure the Success Plan is the one place where the goals and milestones are recorded. 

It's the same for EBRs!

If you decide to run an EBR (here's how to), you want the partners that have retainer-style relationships to be part of the conversation, as their work is a huge part of driving value for that customer.

Setting The Right Systems

One of the most common complaints CSMs and partners have when working with partners is the lack of visibility on what's happening with those customers.

You're working in two separate systems, so it's not easy to get one picture of what's happening. 

Your first step is to create a space where CSMs and Partners can collaborate.

Great Partner Portals Offer:

• Access to data people need to deliver and measure results (ie., usage, consumption and outcomes data);
• Ability to share information (ie. engagement notes, project plans, success plans);
• Ability to flag risks or opportunities to the group.

There's no point in hiding any information that can help your customer be successful from partners. Gainsight wrote this great post on this (not sponsored).

When the partner is finished with their work, access to that customer should be cut off to ensure data security.  

Align Incentives To Drive Results For The Customer

CSMs are likely to share when things go wrong, and not so much when things go well. This is why partner programmes tend to get a bad rep in CS teams. 

The silver bullet to ensuring partners are aligned and delivering great results is to make sure their success is attached to:

• driving value for customers (measure with value metrics)
• improving usage and adoption (measure with usage and health metrics)
• delivering a great experience (measure with satisfaction metrics)
• creating successful renewals (measure with GRR)
• growing customers (measure with NRR)

These metrics should be part of how partners tier up in your partner programme.

Oh and don't forget to reward partners for this effort with higher commissions and more deals.

Creating a partner programme is not an easy feat, but you can start small with a few servicing partners, to pilot the concept. That way you can gather the data you need to decide if this is the right strategy for you.

I've seen massive gains, and I believe you can too!

See you next Friday!