Bryan Williams - Building partnership ecosystems and communities that drive growth - S4 Ep2

Champagne Strategy

Brain-hurt Scale = 5/10. Some marketers believe Apple’s success stems from a series of emotional brand ads. Yet they ignore product strategy, distribution and ecosystems - which I would argue, is the true source of their market power.

Some marketers might know what distribution and the power of physical availability is. They may drop the term in conversations, but rarely are they exposed to it or know how to go about affecting it. Most of us in business will be aware of distribution networks in the physical goods world. Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. But in the service industry, it's often far more complex and subtle. And almost no one talks about it because it's hidden from sight. It's a growth-driver that firms are cagey about disclosing in public. But, probably the most powerful lever a business can pull, and very defensible once established.

This episode is the last in what is now a three-part mini-series on building distribution networks via partnerships. And there are many forms of partnerships. This is one of the first things we discuss.

But, if you're just getting into the partnership side of things, I'd suggest listening to the first in this series, season 2, episode 3 with Ayaan and Peter from Impact on the topic of affiliates, digital partnerships and content. We go through lots of examples including large tech companies like Canva and smaller retailers. We start drawing lines to the natural connection partnerships have with communities, superfans, and advocates.

Then listen to season 3, episode 26 where we speak with Brent Annells mostly about strategic partnerships. This is all the big deals you'll make which have the potential to create step-change growth.

In this one, we’re going to cover some of the same territory from both former episodes, but take it a step further to the upper rung of the partnership world. Where we look at scaling partnerships into systems. Specifically partnership ecosystems and communities. With examples that are most relevant to larger enterprise and SaaS tech. But even if your company is small, there's an important genesis story and lots of takeaways if you're have a less mature partnership function. This is because Bryan has created these programs from scratch. So important learnings apply to people working in a less mature partnerships function.

There’s a running joke about content marketing which says content marketing works best when marketing isn’t involved. And the core lesson here for anyone that cares, is source message credibility. I.e. a source is more trusted when the brand itself isn’t the direct source of the message.

And on that vein, partnerships, communities and ecosystems tend to work best when we create networks where other people becomes advocates and sell our product instead.

But setting up these systems requires a lot more skill and strategic thought than simply booking a few meetings and trying to sell them a deal.

Which brings us to Bryan and Xero.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should have heard about Intuit QuickBooks and Xero.

Today’s guest, Bryan was one of the original employees who kickstarted the creation of Xero’s partnership ecosystem and community. Which he started pretty much from scratch. Xero is a large multi-billion dollar public company which dominants the category of accounting software in APAC. He has since left but now advises other firms on all the dos and don’ts so they can create their own distributed partner networks.

So we go through his process in a reasonable amount of detail. By the end of the episode, you should be easily able to prevent yourself from making rookie mistakes if you’re going to pursue these growth levers yourself.

And you'll learn what a Champagne beer is

Sound good?

Click play to partner