Ecosystem-Led Growth: Revolutionizing Your Go-To-Market Strategy

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandy Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Jill Rowley. Jill has 24 years in B2B SaaS with the majority of it being in go to market technology. Jill was born sales, bread marketing and bleeds customer. Jill was an early employee at Salesforce Eloqua and she's the former chief marketing evangelist at Marketo and has been through numerous acquisitions including Oracle, Cisco and Adobe. Jill was one of the first social selling evangelists and professional speakers on the topic. And her reputation as a customer obsessed leader is not just a part of her brand, it is her secret sauce to success.

Brandi Starr [00:01:28]:
Welcome to Revenue rehab, Jill. Your session begins now.

Jill Rowley [00:01:34]:
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Brandi, and I'm excited for a lively, vibrant conversation.

Brandi Starr [00:01:42]:
Yes, I am so excited to have you. I think I have been following your thoughts and insights since the early days at Eloqua Way, way, way back when. And so yeah, I'm really excited to have you here on the couch. And before we jump into our topic, I like to break the ice with a little woo saw moments that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Jill Rowley [00:02:14]:
Okay, so words really matter to me and I do not like the word prospect. Nobody wants to be prospected. Nobody wants to be a target in your database. And I like to think of buyers as future advocates of my company, my product, of me and the customer experience. And so there's a lot of old school language in go to market. One in sales is hunters and farmers. Right? We divide our sales teams into hunters and farmers and our customers, they don't want to be hunted or farmed. Let's start using language that the customer would feel good about.

Brandi Starr [00:03:13]:
Okay? And I know that is a hard one to banish because it is like everything we talk about, prospects marketing to prospects. You know what, prospects are in the pipeline. So that one's going to be a tough one for me to put in the box, but I definitely support the mentality behind it in using more customer centric language. So I'm going to try really, really hard not to say the p word during our discussion. I want to go bit, yes.

Jill Rowley [00:03:46]:
There we go.

Brandi Starr [00:03:48]:
So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab?

Jill Rowley [00:03:55]:
There's change and transformation underway. It's been underway. It will never not be underway. And I'm super passionate about staying ahead of the curve, and not just me personally, but I, but I thrive on helping others see around the corner. I thrive on giving people their aha. Or their oh, shit. Moment about the change that they need to make to adapt, really, to the modern buyer, the modern customer. And we see this continuous change that in my 24 years of b, two B SaaS.

Jill Rowley [00:04:43]:
And so I want to help. I would help inspire and educate companies and people to do what will work and stop doing what no longer works.

Brandi Starr [00:04:56]:
Okay. And I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our conversation. And so tell me, what would you like people to take away from the discussion?

Jill Rowley [00:05:15]:
I want them to take away the belief, the knowledge, the conviction, the courage to really look at the way that they are doing. Outbound. Right. Outbound is interruptive. I go so far as to say you're stealing someone else's time. Inbound is attracting and it's pulling people in by putting something out there that is of value, hopefully to them. But there is this new approach that is coined near bound. And near bound is really a surround strategy, and we'll get more into what near bound is, but I want them to understand that we've moved from really the how economy.

Jill Rowley [00:06:12]:
How do I do something where information is key to who? Right. It's buyers are asking people they trust how to solve the problem that they have, how to achieve the goal that they have set. And so the who is way more important now than the how.

Brandi Starr [00:06:37]:
Okay, so is it the who as in who do I know that solved this or who do I know that can help? Is that kind of the premise there?

Jill Rowley [00:06:46]:
Yes, it's who do I know? But it's also when I'm engaging with a vendor, which is another word I really don't like, when I'm engaging with a vendor, who can they introduce me to that is like me, that has solved the problem that I'm trying to solve. Right. So who are the resources they can bring to me? And then also who you know from a vendor perspective, who already knows me, and how can they work more closely with this new vendor? Right. It's really focusing on who can help me as the buyer. Okay. Yes.

Brandi Starr [00:07:36]:
Okay. So let me, I always like to ground us in definitions. And the term near bound is still very new to many. So can you define near bound for us so that everybody listening, starting from the same playing field?

Jill Rowley [00:07:51]:
Yeah. Well, first off, they can read the near bound book. This is in print, available on Amazon. And near bound, in a word, is surround. And I describe the customers at the center, who surrounds the customer, and how do you surround those who already surround the customer using the term near who is nearest to the customer, and how do you get nearer to those who are nearest to the customer so that you can get nearest to the customer? It goes back to, instead of going alone, outbound, inbound, it's going together to the customer.

Brandi Starr [00:08:51]:
Okay. And so how is this different than just your typical partner strategy? Because we've had, you know, different air quotes, vendors that have collaborated to pursue potential customers together. What makes nearbound different and new than you know? Or is this just another word for partner strategy?

Jill Rowley [00:09:17]:
What is really new and different besides the buyer buying in stacks, right? Not individual pieces of a tech stack, if you will. That is why this has become increasingly more important as emotion. The tech stack, every tech stack is way, way too cumbersome, way too many disparate, disconnected tools. And so the buyer wants in partnerships, we call it one plus one equals three. And that's, you know, there's exponential value of coming together. But when I think about as a customer, I want year one plus one to equal one to me. I want one solution. And it's on you vendors to identify what that looks like.

Jill Rowley [00:10:17]:
And so it's this joint value proposition, not just a let's do a webinar together. And what is actually transforming and modernizing this ability is a new tech stack, partner tech. And at the foundational level, much like Martech and marketing automation, it is the data. It is the ability to compare your CRM data with your partner's data and be able to make way better data driven decisions on one, who you should even partner with. And then who is the audience that that messaging, that joint value proposition would, who is the audience that it would resonate most with because of the value that you can generate together?

Brandi Starr [00:11:18]:
Okay. So this almost feels like sort of a next level to a partner strategy where it's not just, you know, historically, a lot of the partner strategy has been, you know, like you said, co marketing. We're going to do this webinar together, or the, let's, you know, swap data and see which customers, you know, where we overlap. Like this really is creating a joint and unified motion collectively.

Jill Rowley [00:11:50]:
Absolutely. We have ICP ideal customer profile, very similarly, IPP ideal partner profile. Right. And the IPP needs to be driven off of the ICP. Do you have a shared ICP? Do you actually sell to the same segment? Right. If one partner is selling to SMB and the other is enterprise, what are you doing? So are you serving the same audience? And it's also like even we're starting to see companies, and I don't think this is terribly different, but co innovating on product together, creating these joint solutions that are better tailored to a specific, let's say, segment of, of the market. So we're seeing companies co build solutions, and it really is, it's fueling greater innovation and looking at it through the lens of what is the customer, what does the customer need and want, and how do we not go it alone, but how do we do it together?

Brandi Starr [00:13:08]:
Okay. And so let's think about this in terms of what it means for the revenue leaders. So our audience is primarily those that are the most senior person leading either marketing or sales, or the combination of both. And so thinking about, you know, the role that nearbound is playing in the overall go to market motion, like, what should revenue leaders be thinking about related to this? Or what should they be doing? Like, you know, I think the hard part, when there's something new in the marketplace, you may get it, you may see the value, but sometimes it's kind of like, okay, how do I know if this fits for my business? Where do I lean in? What do I need to be doing?

Jill Rowley [00:13:53]:
Yeah, sure. I think the, how does it fit? What are you hearing on customer calls? What are you hearing in customer conversations? What are the customers saying about who else they're working with? And are you getting an increasing number of mentions of a specific technology, or are you getting increasing number of mentions that they're working with this particular services company? The customer is really leading the pursuit of partners. If the customers are asking for a capability from you that you don't currently have, and it might not even be on your roadmap, you then go out and figure out who has that. That can actually solve the problem for my customer. And then you co build it, you integrate it, you co market and sell and deliver to customers. But it's really through the voice of the customer. And then also my bigger Voc is the voice of the community. What is the community saying about what the broader need in the market is? So for CROs, what I would say in cmos is think about the, I don't like handoffs right.

Jill Rowley [00:15:33]:
We've architected our orgs that we generate a lead and we nurture and score. And when it's ready for sales, we hand it off to sales. Sales wins the customer and they hand it off to customer success, these handoffs. Instead, we need to do a better job of handshakes. And I even go as far as like hugs, let's hug it out. Let's put our arms around the customer. And CROs, really looking at this unified customer experience, orchestrating your teams internally around the customer, but also knowing that the customer has an ecosystem. They already have an ecosystem in which they live.

Jill Rowley [00:16:35]:
And how do you live in their market, understand their ecosystem? And now how do you start to instrument your internal go to market? Through partnering with those who are already in your customers ecosystem. We got to think more outside our four walls and think more around living in market with our customers and not just knowing that customer, knowing that customers ecosystem.

Brandi Starr [00:17:06]:
Yeah, and I think that's a really key point because so often, like if you think about, you know, I've been a part of a lot of like customer onboarding programs and things like that, the mentality of those is we need to onboard the customer into our way and the way that we do things. And what I'm hearing in what you're saying is really flipping that and a part of that onboarding and not necessarily onboarding when they've made a per purchase, but just in general is getting yourself into their space and how do they work so that you then figure out how you best fit into that. And I think that's a really hard thing to do, especially for technology companies because some companies really struggle to say, yeah, that solution is better at that than we are. When it's like there's this push of use everything in our platform, like we can do it and it's like, well, do you do it well? And it's like, Ed, no, like, let's make all this work together so that the customer is getting a, the best experience as opposed to this, you know, use every single thing that we can possibly do even though that's some random sub feature that we don't really invest in. You know, it's like that sort of message and it really is like that again, being very customer centric and you know, using the term from your bio customer obsessed to really focus on how do you fit into their world as opposed to the other way around.

Jill Rowley [00:18:46]:
Yeah, 100%, you've nailed it. And I cringe every time I see we're the best marketing automation platform. We're the best ABM platform because there is no one universal best. It is we are best at we are best for we are best when and so I say the riches are in the niches and the more you can niche, niche, niche, niche and the more you can from a relevant to this particular customer this use case this segment this geography, right. And knowing honing in on the ICP, right. No one company is best universally and so know when a customer is better served by a piece of an overall tech stack if you will. I think that that's instrumenting in helping the customer get what is best for them. You probably don't have everything that they.

Brandi Starr [00:20:06]:
Need and that's a really really great point. And so thinking about this, like there's a, there's always the that's great but. And it's the, there's a, there's a huge shift here because you know, it's not just you think about partnership strategy. Like to a certain degree marketing and sales can kind of control that. But what you're talking about is like this is a true across all of go to market initiative. Like we've got to get product on board to be able to collaborate with these partners. Like how do you, you know, it always becomes this finger pointing of like who owns this? Because like is this something that has to be driven at the CEO level because ultimately the CEO owns go to market. Is this something that a marketing leader can drive forward? Like if we're here, you know, if we're listening and we're hearing this and we're like, yes, we agree this sounds amazing, but it's like how do we move our organizations in that direction?

Jill Rowley [00:21:22]:
This is not easy. Like I like things that are complex, challenging. This is not easy transformation. And I love your point about the CEO owning go to market. It is really important that it is a CEO priority to, to unify all of our internal functional leads so that they're working as one to orchestrate the best customer experience that they're measured. I believe that the best companies, there's a variable component of comp based on customer advocacy, right? So sales, instead of just getting comped on, closed one revenue. Everyone in the organization, the North Star owns customer advocacy. And the reason it's advocacy is our best salespeople aren't on our payroll.

Jill Rowley [00:22:29]:
They're our customer advocates. And a lot of companies have advocacy flipped the wrong way. They're figuring out ways to get customers to be their advocate. And I say it actually starts is how does everyone in your organization be the best advocate? Of and for your customer. Right. So then their advocacy is earned. So in going to your question around where this fits, the chief partner officer has an equal seat at the go to market table. And we're a long way from chief partner officer being a position in every company that has ecosystem and partner part of their go to market strategy.

Jill Rowley [00:23:29]:
We're a long way away. I liken it to when I started at Marketo, there were very few b, two b cmos. Cmos didn't have a seat at the revenue table because what they were doing is they were generating leads. They were not actually having a measurable impact on conversion from pipeline to customer and certainly not customer to advocate. Marketing was really top of the funnel and brand focused, and as we've seen, the ability for marketing data, digital process automation, et cetera, allowing marketing to move into being able to really, instead of doing the ing, the marketing really being the chief lens of the market. Right. Yeah. And so I think it depends on, I was having a conversation with a cmo the other day, and they're in a CRO search, and so she's picking up some responsibilities around that.

Jill Rowley [00:24:56]:
And partner channel is one of them, and she is just getting to realize and understand, and she asked the question at the end. Okay, so does this mean we need a chief partner officer? And I was like, bingo, you nailed it. You need a chief partner officer sitting in the go to market strategy, because that partner data and those partner motions, they feed into the entire co build product, co market, co sell, co grow. So partnerships can't be sitting over here on an island. It is infusing this partner approach into everything your business does.

Brandi Starr [00:25:52]:
Okay? And so my last question really hits on that last point that you made, because I know a lot of times when there are new approaches that are in the market, there's a lot of, you know, polarizing conversations where it's like, new thing is in old thing is dead. And, you know, there's all the rhetoric around this is dead, that is dead. You know, every, every approach at some point gets did, even though none of them really die. And so I would love to hear your perspective. You talked about inbound and outbound at the beginning and what some of those challenges are. Where does, like, do you feel, like near bound becomes? This is the all in approach of, like, this is where you need to put all your eggs. Do you feel that inbound, outbound still have the same dominance? Like, how do you feel like the different motions really fit together?

Jill Rowley [00:26:50]:
Outbound's not dead. Inbound's not dead and near bound is really, you make outbound better, leveraging near bound concept and data, and you make inbound better by doing the same thing. And I think when very specific, I think sometimes we, I have a lot of this 10,000 foot view. But think about even customer, case studies, customer stories, if you want to tell a bigger story to the market. And when you're going outbound, your messaging is not just about you, but the joint value proposition, if you will, for the customer. Based on the combined solution. If we think about case studies, how many inventory or case studies to see how many of them reference a partner?

Brandi Starr [00:28:03]:
Yeah, almost none.

Jill Rowley [00:28:05]:
Correct. Think about your new product launches and how many of them reference a partner. Many of them don't even reference a customer that is using your new capability, but how many of them reference actually a partner that you've worked with to develop this new capability, to integrate it with. So I encourage to think instead of just us and our customer stories, who are we truly working with? Which partners of ours are also involved with that customer? I don't know if I answered the question. The point is outbound's not dead. Inbound's not dead. There's a smarter way to do it, and that is by incorporating near bounden.

Brandi Starr [00:29:01]:
Okay. Yes, you definitely answered the question, and you actually triggered another thought for me, which is, I do know that some organizations are hesitant to hitch their wagons, so to speak, to other organizations publicly because, you know, cancel culture is very real and it does spill into the B2B space as well. Like, it's not just for celebrities. And so, so there is always a little bit of that. Like, we may share the same ICP, we may be like, really, all the things may line up that this would be a great partner relationship. But when you start co developing product and putting out success stories and you're listing both of these people, you are, and I'm saying it as if it's just two. But I know that that ecosystem could be bigger. You are almost, you're connecting the brands and you're almost endorsing these other vendors.

Brandi Starr [00:30:06]:
And for a lot of companies, that opens up a risk that many of their legal teams or pr teams are like, we, I have one client that they have a hard line. Their brand cannot be associated with any other brand. Like, they don't ever talk publicly about what technologies they use, anything. Like, they are very, very strict. And, you know, most people are not that strict. But in thinking about this near bound strategy, does it raise any concerns for you in, you know, connecting those brands and if so, how do you mitigate that 100%?

Jill Rowley [00:30:46]:
There are actually quite a number of risks to partnering and there are bad actors. And there can be a partner that made all the sense in the world for your customers, but they have a leadership change and the culture in the organization changes and it no longer lines up with your culture or what it is you want to deliver from an experience to your joint customers. Partnerships, just like startups, 90% of startups fail, 90% of partnerships don't fail. But there is failure in partnerships. And so being deliberate about who you partner with and also it isn't a one. And done so, you are constantly taking the temperature of your customers to understand. Like this is where I think call recordings are so important and customer feedback is so important. And not a one time NP's survey every quarter or every six months, but it's this continuous input.

Jill Rowley [00:32:10]:
And as you start to hear and it aggregates is where AI is just so juicy and wonderful and beautiful. But you start to hear that there are concerns and issues with customers, with your partners. Timeout. Right. Like you really have to. It is a continuous learning about that. If you have a partner that on average takes a six months to onboard a new customer, let's say their services, and the average across all your customers is like two months, then you have a problem. If you see that you've got high churn in accounts that work with this specific partner or these set of partners, you have a problem.

Jill Rowley [00:33:03]:
And so it's important to be that the health. Right. We have these customer health dashboards. We need to break that down, as many pieces of input to that so that we can see if we are having. If we're starting to have issues with certain partners.

Brandi Starr [00:33:26]:
Okay. Yeah. And I appreciate that because that is always, the risk is always in the back of my mind because, you know, we do. I mean, a lot of what we do is taking calculated risks. So, you know, you don't necessarily avoid it. But it is one of those things where it's like, okay, this seems like it could work, but we got to consider this. And so I appreciate that response.

Jill Rowley [00:33:52]:
Transparency, sorry, but transparency on both sides of the equation is really important. And there are a lot of instances where a company initially partners to fill a gap, and at the same time they're building that into their own product roadmap. They're constantly. I was at Marketo in 2018, the year before we were acquired by Adobe in the C suite, reporting to the CEO. And as we looked at build by partner decisions, there were partnerships that were created, that we had that product capability on our roadmap. And that's a delicate situation to manage. There's ethical considerations, obviously, and that's where culture and leadership is really important. This transparency is critical to earn and to keep trust.

Jill Rowley [00:35:05]:
And really, we are always in the trust business, always.

Brandi Starr [00:35:12]:
That's another great point, because I think as leaders and as marketers, those are two places where trust is so extremely important and that much more important in partnerships, because, yeah, I have definitely seen that where partnerships exist and, you know, someone is in the process of, like, building something or even in services, developing capabilities that then will compete against the partnership that they just created. And so, yeah, there's a lot of concern and risk there. And, you know, talking about our challenges is just the first step, and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So I'd love to hear your one thing. What is your takeaway for those listening who recognize that near bounden may be a great go to market play for them, where do they start? Cause as you said, this is hard. It's a challenging transformation, not something that's gonna happen overnight.

Brandi Starr [00:36:25]:
So what's that first step?

Jill Rowley [00:36:28]:
I'm gonna go back to the who, right? So if I was a leader and I'm really thinking about investing more, starting a partner program or investing more in our partner strategy, who in my network has done the thing I'm thinking about doing? And I, in community, right. They are asking each other questions. I bring this up in a community conversation. So the who is really important. I do think that when we're really early in creating something pretty significant in terms of change, it's also important to read, listen, watch, whatever your input preference is. But we talked about, yes, the near bound book, but a huge compliment. These two books go way better together, is ecosystem led growth. And so figure out who in your network has done the thing you're trying to do or is on the same, like at the same stage of the journey.

Jill Rowley [00:37:39]:
But if I had to recommend, these are two great books for any go to market leader. And I know a book is a. Is a lot to consume, but. And the way that I consume books is I go and I listen to a podcast with the author talking about the book, and then I decide if, you know, I want to read the whole thing.

Brandi Starr [00:38:02]:
I love that. We will make sure to link to both books. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes and we'll link to both books so that you can give those a read. And yeah, audiobooks as well. As, you know, podcasts from the authors are definitely a great way to get the gist and then figure out if you want to dive deeper. Well, Jill, I appreciate you joining me so, so much. I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. Before we go, how can our audience connect with you?

Jill Rowley [00:38:42]:
So, of course, LinkedIn, right? That is where your audience, that's the primary social network that your audience is on the. So I would say LinkedIn my new is, because I used to say, go Google me and see what kind of content comes up that you would benefit from. But now I say, go chat GPT me, and you can ask chat GPT questions about me. It'll have specific, like social selling. Okay, well, what has she published on social selling? So I like to say, go chat GPT me.

Brandi Starr [00:39:27]:
Awesome. I was gonna say, that is the first I have heard of that. Now I gotta, I surprisingly have not chat GPT myself, so now I need to do that. And my name's not common, common, but I know there's a number of others of me out there, so I gotta see what comes up for me.

Jill Rowley [00:39:46]:
We should be doing it live right here because you will be mind blown. You can give it your LinkedIn URL. It'll go out and find, and then it gets to know you even better. Chat GPT's my therapist, so. Oh, yeah, yeah. She knows me. I call her sage. So sage is my chat GBT and she knows me, so I go back to her frequently when I'm struggling with a new topic.

Jill Rowley [00:40:13]:
A new issue.

Brandi Starr [00:40:15]:
Yeah. As I say, that is my main way of, like, just having someone to bounce ideas off of and challenge my thinking has been my favorite use of chat GPT because I used to call a colleague and be like, hey, just ideate with me for a minute. Now. I don't steal anybody's time.

Jill Rowley [00:40:33]:
Yeah, no, I mean, it's also from a personal. Right. It's my marriage counselor.

Brandi Starr [00:40:39]:
Yeah. As I say, you really can use it for pretty much everything.

Jill Rowley [00:40:44]:
Exactly.

Brandi Starr [00:40:45]:
Well, thank you again for joining me. This has been such a great conversation and I have learned some things and have new books to read, so I appreciate it.

Jill Rowley [00:40:56]:
Awesome. Thank you for having me.

Brandi Starr [00:40:58]:
You are welcome. And thanks, everyone for joining me. I hope that you have enjoyed my discussion with Jill. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time.