The Partner Fleet team spent June 5th through June 8th in San Diego, attending Crossbeam’s Supernode conference.
There were over 450 attendees representing 250 companies from Amazon to 5-person agencies. Over 30 sessions and workshops worked to drive value to partnerships professionals.
We spent three days surrounded by people not only working in partnerships, but passionate about improving their programs and partnerships as a whole. Everyone was there to learn, chat, and build relationships. And that is exactly what we did, too.
Here’s how it went.
The venue
Supernode took place at the Town & Country Resort in San Diego. It was a retro California resort with pools, lawns, and outside seating that made it easy to run into other event attendees naturally.
The dining room was decked out with umbrellas and corn hole, the presentation rooms were 70s themed, and we were constantly presented with a new, delicious meal or snack.
It was casual and fun – a comfort level that helped everyone make connections easily.
The sessions and workshops
We made it to many of the sessions and workshops. If you missed the event or a specific session, here were our takeaways.
Opening Keynote – Bob Moore, Crossbeam – Ecosystem-Led Growth
Only 27% of GTM teams are beating revenue targets. 73% of SDR teams are under quota because outbound is becoming a saturated market.
Ecosystem-led growth is the answer. It’s cost efficient, proprietary, and scalable. But we can’t just talk about it at this event and with partnerships teams. Now is the time to convince your CEOs, CROs, and CFOs that an ecosystem-led business model is the way forward.
Sam Jacobs, Pavilion – Insights from the C-Suite Perspective
Note: Pavilion is a GTM and career enablement community for CEOs and CROs.
What is the C-suite scared of right now? Their company going out of business. They’re talking about gross margins and how to grow effectively as well as resetting board expectations for growth.
“Let’s build companies that last for longer than 10 years.”
How does Sam think we can do that? By having CROs be aware and versatile around their entire GTM. And by figuring out our specific use case and building relationships to fill the gaps for our customers.
He sees a path to a world where everyone is engaging in partner activities, not just the partnership team.
Maureen Little, Okta – Building Influence to Drive Impact
How can you influence executives? Maureen answers that question in her session.
First, believe that your time is as valuable as your executives’ time. And understand that influencing is a completely different skill than managing.
Then make a plan using Maureen’s 5 steps:
- Identify and understand your audience. What are their priorities, struggles, and risks? Who is the final decision maker? Who’s your champion? Who’s batting against you?
- Trust and build trust. Invite people in early and be open to their ideas. Be vigilant about transparency and documentation.
- Gather data. Market trends, win/loss data, competitive intel, est. investments, timeframes, and revenue opportunities. Don’t underestimate or overestimate the value of your offering.
- Identify the win-win and create a proposal. Present your data and a high-level plan. And outline exactly what you’re asking your executives for.
- Get commitment and outline next steps. Don’t walk away from the meeting with a “good feeling.” Make your executives commit.
If you’re denied, control your own reaction. Ask for details on why you got a no, and collect the data to come back for a yes next time.
Andrew Lindsay, Microsoft – How AI Has Changed Microsoft
In the AI world, it’s going to be important to have data sets your customers can access. There will be a lot of value added to hyper scalers and incumbents.
Andrew recommends thinking about how to use AI in a way that solves problems for your customers, not necessarily just how it helps your internal team.
Mike Stocker, CallRail – 10 Partner Metrics Every Executive Ought to Know
- Partner sourced revenue. Coming from agency partnerships, resellers, OEM, embedded tech, and complimentary tech partnerships.
- Partner influenced revenue. Was the partner an important factor in the deal closing?
- Integration adoption. Integration installs and use.
- Retention tied to integrations. Baseline churn versus churn for customers with integrations.
- Penetration to customer base.
- Sales win rate. % deals closed with partner involvement.
- Average deal size. ARPU of partner deal versus baseline.
- LTV. Partner deal LTV versus baseline.
- Partner marketing activities. What % of marketing campaigns have partners in them? How effective are they relative to other campaigns?
- Partner reciprocation. # of leads passed to partners.
Blake Williams, Ampfactor — How to Start Co-Selling Faster
Create “better together” stories with your partners and take them to market.
If you exchange data using Crossbeam or another tool, ask what the next step is. How can you leverage that data together?
To catch the attention of your executives and investors, don’t just talk about the relationships you build in partnerships. Make it interesting with numbers.
Sarah Du, Alloy — Build Integrations 2x Faster
The #1 challenge to getting integrations built is buy-in. Here’s what other teams care about:
- Product managers care about expanding business value, customer use cases, and whether there’s revenue being lost due to lack of the integration.
- Engineers care about the most important and interesting features, timeline and scope, data being sent, who’s creating the integration, whether an API needs to be expanded, and sandbox environments.
- CTOs care about the big picture. Is this distracting from your core product? Also, rate limits, tech considerations, use cases, required APIs and docs, and how long it’ll take.
Build your integration pitch around their considerations.
Justin Zimmerman, Partner Playbooks – How To Launch Multi-Partner Webinars That Drive 1000+ Registrants
Justin walked us through the process of creating partner and integration webinars that are a compelling and useful co-marketing asset.
He encourages you to promote webinars at every opportunity and leverage your biggest fans, paid influencers, and close connections to drive that registration number to at least 1,000.
Although we didn’t make it to every presentation, we absolutely got value out of the ones we attended.
The parties
The opening night party was on the lawn at the Town and Country resort. Everyone connected, had drinks, ate barbecue, and watched roller skaters dance in retro 70s outfits.
Partner Fleet had the privilege of sponsoring the second night’s party. And it was a blast, if we do say so ourselves. It was hosted at Punch Bowl Social, an adult amusement complex and bar with custom drink specials, skee ball, bowling, ping pong, shuffleboard, and dozens of other fun things to do. The winner of our digital trivia game got to bring home an Apple Watch. Everyone else brought home smiles.
The last night had the best spread by far. We sat out on the lawn. Tables with seafood, appetizers, fried fish, and desserts had everyone salivating – then overeating. Hula dancers kept us entertained.
The freebies
Impartner gave away water bottles and had a water booth that kept everyone hydrated all week.
We also walked away with two books.
The first draft of Bob Moore’s book Ecosystem-Led Growth. The Partner Fleet team plans to start a book club to read and discuss it, plus offer our feedback to the Crossbeam team.
Polina Marinova Pompliano’s book Hidden Genius. Polina’s keynote discussed how inspiring people like Francis Ngannou and Diana Nyad took risks in times of uncertainty, which we are certainly in. I plan on reading Hidden Genius to help me think like the world’s most successful people.
Partner Fleet at Supernode
We tried something new at this conference. Shirts. Wild shirts. Very visible shirts.
Our custom-made Partner Fleet shirts didn’t just have our logo on them. They included a series of QR codes that brought scanners prizes, useful information, and more.
You’ll probably catch us wearing one of these shirts at a Partnership event sometime soon.
Didn’t catch us at Supernode? We want to connect anyway!
Whether you were at Supernode and didn’t meet any of our team, or you didn’t make it to the event this year, we still want to meet you!
Interested in a marketplace? Want to connect about a partnership? Do you have something to add to your experience at Supernode? Reach out to us at marketing@partnerfleet.io.
