In this Revenue Today podcast episode, host Jared Robin interviews revenue leader Mary Vue about B2B product‑market‑fit (PMF) partnering. Mary explains how to identify and execute high‑impact partnerships by first mapping a product’s fit within a customer’s tech stack, then targeting partners that fill gaps or amplify value. She illustrates the concept with real‑world cases such as Fivetran’s partnership with Snowflake and Syncery’s rapid growth after partnering with HubSpot, describing how a niche or ancillary fit can drive fast customer acquisition. Mary outlines a systematic approach: extract technology data from existing customers, prioritize partners that align with the ideal customer profile, and start with marketplace listings and certifications to gain momentum. She categorises partnership models—OEM, marketplace, consulting, system integrators, affiliate/referral—and discusses when each is appropriate based on product complexity. The conversation then shifts to metrics: early‑stage KPIs focus on partner recruitment, activation, first deals, marketplace entries, and certifications; mature ecosystems track revenue influence, pipeline contribution, and overall revenue mix percentages. Mary also shares a practical tier‑and‑review framework, recommending semi‑annual (or annual for enterprise) performance reviews based on deal volume, event activity, and license influence to differentiate A, B, and C players. Finally, she notes the recent shift in SAP’s ecosystem to a free Open Ecosystem, highlighting it as a new partnership avenue. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to develop their own partner strategies.
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Okay. So from Eleanor, can you give an example of a good case of B2B PMF partnering, please? I would say examples of good B2B partner PMF partnering is essentially think about like your product, right? And I said, hey, you know, where does your product help you fit? I mean, and what role does a partner play, right? So that's kind of where you start and you say, hey, your product is, you know, it could be, if we think about like what happened with Fivetran and Snowflake, right? I mean, those are examples of PMF partnering where you've got a bigger ISV and you perhaps are the function of a smaller new SaaS on the market. You partner with an ISV that has a niche fit with you, right? A lot of times people say, hey, it's an ancillary fit, right? But in that ancillary fit is where you kind of get to ride the wave. Even in the example of Syncery, right? When I think about Syncery, in the time that I've spent at Syncery, right, we partnered with HubSpot. And in that HubSpot partnering, right, it enabled us to certainly grow in less than 6 months, you know, from 3 mutual HubSpot customers to over 50+ mutual HubSpot customers, right? And, and that's a PMF fit where we say, hey, where there's a gap, right? And it might be between 2 partners or it might be between 3 partners. And in the 2 partners, there's Syncry and HubSpot, right? There's a niche fit. we add a third layer partner to it where that partner becomes a vehicle, right? That partner might be an OEM, that partner might be a consultant, that partner might be somebody who's on the ground who's working with HubSpot customers or Syncry customers who say, hey, if we brought these 2 technologies to that together, we help the customer achieve so much more. In which case, that was exactly what happened, right? So in that use case, I mean, in 6 months, You know, just in being a Series A company, we were able to grow our adoption from 5— from 3 customers to 50 customers, just by partnering with a technology partner who had a subset of customers that certainly found value in our joint value proposition, right? Those scenarios typically, you know, certainly you'll see it in the sales team when you're talking to customers, you'll see it in the field with marketing when people give you fake feedback about like, hey, you know what you do, my product and the things I'm using, it's missing these things, but I think you could help me here. And that's where you take that piece and you extrapolate it across a partnership, right? And when you add a partner leader to that, then that partner leader helps grease the wheels, help you set up the right marketplaces, the right relationships to how do we amplify this, right? So that would be just kind of an example. I mean, I kind of went from Fivetran Snowflake to, to like a dialed-down Sage Creek. But, um, you know, I hope that hopefully answers your question, and you're welcome to hit me up, Eleanor. So I do want to say, um, I just went through the cycle of SAP like literally 3 weeks ago, and SAP has completely changed their model. So you should check that out. Um, SAP have since rolled out this SAP Open Ecosystem that is actually free, right? You don't have to do rev share, it's free. You can participate in it, you can pay a nominal fee if you need a sandbox to be able to enable your customers. So I would say SAP has come a long way. But if you're thinking that, hey, SAP is still an ecosystem that's important to you, you should recheck that out, right? It's called Open Ecosystem, SAP Open Ecosystem. Some good partnership types for B2B startups. It really depends on your product, right? Where does your product play, right? If your product is playing with SaaS martech, you might want to take a look at some of the stack that your customers typically work with. So a good way to come about this list is essentially the first thing I did when I joined Syncery was I went through our entire customer list. I downloaded a customer list of all the active customers, every single deal that ever closed at Syncry. And then I looked at all the different technology that basically, um, our customers are working with in conjunction with our product, right? And that informs you where to start, because even when you start to say, hey, I'm gonna go and establish some partnerships, You want to be able to establish partnerships that are going to be meaningful to your ICP, to your ideal customer profile, right? You don't want to just be shooting a bunch of blanks in the dark. You want to be able to establish partnerships that are going to have meaning to your sales team, to your marketing team, to your product team. And so the best way to start is take your list of customer wins, look at what they're using your product in conjunction with. And start with those partnerships, right? Um, and lowest hanging fruit is always, hey, get in their marketplace, get certified, right? Uh, from there, build enough momentum, get noticed. Uh, and then once you can certainly get there, when you're noticed, you know, these partners, regardless of, of you chasing them down, they're going to say, hey, I want to work with you because 50 of my customers are talking about you. Right. That's from an alliance perspective. From a consulting perspective, you want to think about whether or not there's a need, right? Do you need implementation? Do you need services? Do you need referrals? Right. I mean, for example, Unbounce, no services, completely self-service. So they have a complete like affiliate referral model, right? Where a bunch of marketing agencies refer customers to Unbounce. That's a very kind of simple model, right? The more complicated your product is, you know, then you might want to start to think about, do I need system integrators? Do I need people to learn my product and build my product and implement my product? And so there's certainly value in that. It just depends on your product. So proven good KPI for partnerships? When you're starting out from scratch, it's typically How many, how many folks did I sign? Yeah. How many of them did their first deal? Right. If you're starting from scratch, it's always, once I sign them, can I get them to do a first deal with me? This is the consulting side. On the channel side, right. Um, how many marketplaces did I get into? How many certifications did I get? How many referrals did I get from those marketplaces? Right. Um, how many mutual customers did I get to? As you start to evolve that, right, and your partner leader will typically, you know, have these KPIs as well. Then, you know, you start to grow revenue and then revenue becomes a key indicator of your KPI. Did you know, if you saw my stats, my fast stats earlier, where I talked about 40, you know, growing a revenue mix 40 to 70%. What that meant is essentially the entire company revenue mix, Right? If it's $10 million, $4 million came from partners, $7, you know, $6 million came from direct sales and marketing, et cetera. Growing it to $70 million, growing to 70%, $7 million is now being influenced by partners, $3 million is direct, right? So, so a mature partner ecosystem eventually gets to a point where you can certainly measure purely on revenue or purely on pipeline build. an early partner ecosystem is typically on how many partners did I recruit? How many did I activate? How many events did I do? Because all of those things lead to pipeline, right? What is a good framework to use for partnership review quarterly to validate partnerships? Yeah, so this is a great question, Nick. I mean, I know we're up on time, so this will be my last question. Otherwise you guys can hit me up. This is a great question. You typically, what you, you know, when you start off, you might not even need tiers. You know, everybody's kind of on a clean slate, but a flat footing. But what you want to do is you want to set up tiers to be able to incentivize your partners to do more with you, right? And so when you do that, you might set them based on quantity of deals, quantity of events, quantity of activities. Um, quantity of licenses sold, quantity of license influence, right? Those are all kind of good indicators to help validate that the partnership is actually doing something to meet, um, the discounts and the bonuses that you're giving them, right? The margins that you're giving them. I wouldn't say quarterly. I mean, I'd say, you know, half in a year is typically where you're validating the partnerships. You know, more enterprisey tends to be a year. Earlier startups tends to be half, as long as you put the framework in place. But it's a little bit of the wild, wild, wild, wild west when you start really early. And it's more of identifying which ones will go the long haul with you. Usually after your first year, you will then kind of sift out, filter out the ones that are kind of your A players versus your B players and your C players, right? You need all of them. It's okay. Keep all of them. But your A players are the ones that are going to certainly meet and exceed your expectations, right? So I hope this session was helpful. And if you haven't started thinking about partner strategy, I hope, you know, the little bit of knowledge I shared today got you thinking, and I welcome all of you to connect with me.
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