305: Mastering Partnerships: Creating Lasting Partnerships Through Engagement and Strategy with Jason Yarborough (Co-Founder, Arcadia)

Host: Hey everyone. Welcome back or welcome to an all new episode of the 20% podcast. This is the show that brings you tips and tricks from industry professionals across all industries that you could implement in your current job today. Now, when I was going through this week's guest background, I got so excited because over the course of his career he's held different roles including director of Operations, assistant store manager at Starbucks, sales rep, ae social and digital strategy, Director of marketing and strategy, strategic alliances and VP of uh, partnerships, as well as T ball coach. Now he's taking all of his previous experience, uh, where he is guiding partnerships programs to scalability through GTM training, program development and coaching. He is also the co host of the Friends with benefits podcast where he co hosts with his wife Sam. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming this week's guest, Mr. Jason Yarborough. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Yarborough: What's up? Um, Tyler, how we doing man? Thanks for having me and thanks for that incredible intro. I have to get that recording so I can make it m my official bio. It was pretty dang good.

Host: Yeah, there you go. You know what, I'll uh, I've, I've written some uh, some copy and stuff like that for, for other people and it's like that could be your walk up song or something like that. Yeah, love to edit some like background

Jason Yarborough: music, but we'll appreciate the, the wrap up with T ball coach. Probably the most important and uh, role.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think it's really interesting, like the first look, you know, we've obviously had some. I think we may have been connected by Will Taylor. So big shout out to Will. I know in the, the partnership space he's, he helps a lot so far with the work that we're doing at uh, pipe dream as I'm building out the partnerships program. But um, I know he just seems like there's always one or two degrees of connection away from Will in the whole partnership world. So if you're checking this out, buddy, thank you so much. But you know, when, when we're, when I was looking at your background, like it's obviously very clear that family is important. Number one with the T ball coach because you know, I had some, some T ball coaching experience and some soccer coaching experience for, for my kids. Um, but you also are hosting um, the, the show with your wife, which I know season two is going to be coming out here soon. So first and foremost, like, I'm really curious, why start a podcast with your wife? And I think there's my Opinion. There's no more important partnership than the one with your spouse. So tell me a little bit about that experience. And, and really some of the, maybe even some of the biggest lessons from, from, uh, working with your wife on that too.

Jason Yarborough: Yeah, no, it's um, it's awesome. We, we love it. That's partially why we started. We just, we love, you know, working together, uh, which you kind of blows a lot of people's minds that, uh, you know, typically, like in this office, she's normally sitting right behind me. Here, she's also in partnerships. So we do the exact same work. Oftentimes we have the exact same conversations. There's been times where she'll have one meeting and then the very next meeting for that person is with me. So like, they're just get different angles of the room. And so we, we were joking that like, you know, we're having all these conversations or dinner time con revolves around partnerships and we're super nerd out on that stuff. So we're like, we might as well just like start a podcast. And so we were joking one day. That wouldn't be funny if the show was called Friends with Benefits because, you know, we're married and you know, we're the ultimate partners. We do both in partnerships. We want to talk to partner leaders about the work it takes to really build these, you know, what we call purpose built relationships. Uh, so we kind of ran with it, stuck with it, and you know, named the show Friends with Benefits and kind of went as, you know, cheeky with it as we possibly could without, you know, crossing too many lines. And you know, we're having a good time, had a really great first season, some really incredible guests and you know, we, we love the, the, uh, the conversations we've been having. A lot of it is just around like, relationships. We try to bring as much of the, the person that's building these programs or teams into the conversation as possible. So it's not just all about, you know, how do you build your JVP or how do you go to market, but it's some of that, but also like, how do you bring your full self in these relationships and that important to she and I and our own life. So we wanted to bring that into the conversations.

Host: That's really, it's really interesting and I think that it's really great that you're taking a personalized approach to it. I know later on in the show we'll talk more about, you know, partner experience and really the importance there, which I'm sure That goes into it is, you know, you want to have a good experience with your wife, uh, with all of the partnerships that you have. And um, I think it needs to be a bigger focus, um, in general. But uh, before we, before we jump in into that, I always love, um, to start these shows talking about your background. Even before, um, you know, even in the, the earlier years, teenage years, I'm always interested to hear like, what were some of those first jobs that you had? Was there any big like, takeaways. Aha. Ah, moments that really you're, you're even carrying into, um, into some of the experiences that you have now.

Jason Yarborough: That's a great question. Um, so often joke. I. I've had at least four careers, um, and I've had probably more jobs than, you know, 98 of people out there. Um, but early on, like from an early age, like one thing that sticks with me from my dad always, somebody said you can do anything to put your mind to. Right? Meaning you can, there's. There's no end to what we can do and we can really choose our own path of what we want to do and, and become and create. So really took that to heart by, you know, chasing that down different careers. So my initial entry into, you know, adulthood jobs in life was a motivational speaker to high schools and middle schools, um, and all sorts of youth camps and stuff like that. And so like worked in the nonprofit sector, selling events, speaking at events, you know, working in like publishing books and selling goods and stuff like that. So I learned a ton there and you know, started to get a bug for like sales. So I moved from like public speaker to an ops and that side of the world to, to, to a sales career where I was a full time, you know, traveling, 100% quota car sales rep, learned how to manage a territory, a book of business and everything else that goes into sales. I learned a ton about sales and I was like, you know what, marketing sounds fun now? And this was the rise of social media and no one was really doing social media for like nonprofits. And it's kind of, you know, important to me. So I was one of like three people in like 2008, 2009 that was providing social media consulting for nonprofits. So that was fun. And then I just, you know, ended up making a change into uh, like the tech world. There's a whole story within that as well. But ended up in the tech space and got into partnerships therein. So I got, uh, Long story short is like, I learned that if, you know, I wanted to do anything different, then just go for it, like, try it out. And lo and behold, like, all those experiences have been like the ultimate, you know, buildup and experience to becoming a partner leader. Because I understand sales, I understand marketing, I understand how to, you know, publicly speak and you know, speak to, to leaders. Anyone in a room, right? If you can speak. I always joke that if you can speak to a group of sixth graders, which was the hardest group of people I've ever talked to, you can talk to just about anybody.

Host: That's so interesting and I'd love. And thank you so much. I got the chills from, from just that, that part of the conversation too. I think that like, in general, um, you know, you mentioned it before as we were warming up. It's like many, like in partnerships, you need to be. It almost need. You almost need to be a generalist so that you, to your point, could see all of these different areas of the business and really solve these problems from a holistic perspective. You know, I, I've held a couple different roles across the. Go to market space too. And you know, sometimes people, you know, will look and say, well, like, where's the throughput? Where's the line? And I think that like the big one, even from my experience and I'd love to hear from yours, is like, you've had all of these different experiences. So I think that's almost the ultimate culmination of business acumen. I think that that's a huge skill that people, uh, across the board, I think we're losing and we could dive deeper into that. But even from that perspective, like, how are all those experience in those various, um, roles in different industries and such really helped you to help your partners because like, you need to be able to understand their business. And when you understand their business and what they go through you, you could be an even more effective leader, partnerships leader, um, or more importantly, helping to coach people to where to go next. So, so tell me more from that perspective.

Jason Yarborough: That's a, it's a, it's a good, timely question. Uh, I just put up a post on LinkedIn the other day and then it came. You know, the post was inspired by a topic from our event, Arcadia Leadership Experience, where singer Vajri was talking about translating the, the problem right into the kind of like in my, my interpretation was like, how do you translate a problem into the language of a leader? Right? Meaning like, uh, as the partner person, we kind of sit in the middle of sales products, cs, other partners and their business. And like, we have to be able to quickly bridge a gap between, like, what we bring to the table and what sales is trying to solve for, what marketing is trying to solve for product and CS is trying to solve for. And if you can't truly listen to them and understand the problem they're facing, you can't bring, uh, an effective, like, answer or translate the problem in their language. Meaning that, like, hey, I've. You've got this problem. I hear you. I've see, I see it and I understand it. I've got this partner who does ABC that can help us solve for X, Y and Z. Right. Once you begin to, you know, to your point, you're that generalist and you have that experience in sales and marketing and product and cs, you kind of have an understanding of, like, all right, this is the problem that they're facing. I have experience with it. I know firsthand what it's like. You begin to be able to, to translate those problems in, in more of a, an effective manner, become more impactful to those departments and teams and even into the partners. Like, I've worked with. I've. I've worked at three or four different agencies, so I understand, like, when I'm talking to an agency partner, like, what they're up against, what they're facing, what they're m. Perhaps you know, to some extent what their business model is, like, how they're generating and driving revenue and how they're looking for partners. You know, I've been in the seat of, uh, an ISV or tech partner. Right. I understand that motion. And, you know, you begin to fill in the gaps that you don't have here and there. But the experience that, that I brought in with me, my very first partner role, like, once they sat me down the seat, they're like, oh, here's what your job is. I'm like, oh, well, this is easy. Like, I've been, I've been doing this work already. I've. I've been, you know, a quota carry and sales rep. I've been in the seat at an agency. I've been here. It's like, I understand their problems and I can be more of an empathetic partner leader to what they're trying to drive and generate. So when I get on these calls and I start building new programs, I can start having these conversations like, hey, you know, what are you trying to solve for here? What are you trying to solve for there? And they're like, oh, no one's really asked these questions about our business before. And so, because I Have an understanding, like I can actually ask questions that uh, get to the heart of the matter for them and I can, you know, in my, my goal with any partner I'm working with is like how do I become the most valuable partner that you've got in your, in your orbit, in your ecosystem? Because I'm going to work towards that and I understand how to, how to become that.

Host: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. I mean I think that there's, there's so many, so much gold that you mentioned there. I think, um, well, first and foremost, little sidebar. I think the, the work, the experience that you got at an agency. I worked at a marketing agency for a year and like just the amount of different companies from a business acumen perspective is ridiculous. Oh yeah, Like I, I think that everybody, uh, maybe this, somebody probably questioned me on this, but I think everybody should have some type of experience working in an agency, doing some type of that client work. Because you really need to understand like, you know, one day we're talking to an adoption agency, the next day we're talking to a religious organization, the next day we're talking to a woodworking company. Like those are like what is the throughput there? Everybody is trying to provide some type of experience for their partners and they're trying to, to are their customers rather and trying to, they have some type of goals, whether it's more brand awareness, driving more revenue making, uh, efficient process with different technology that they have. But, but that whole point is that there's so much different things and in having that experience allows you to really understand where their goals are and talk deeper to them as well.

Jason Yarborough: Absolutely. You understand how they're, they're generating revenue, what their expectations are. Right. Even under, down, down to like what does it mean for an agency to have billable hours? A lot of, a lot of, you know, party leaders don't understand that concept because hey, they've maybe never built a channel program agency program, but they never worked with an agency. So when I talk to these, I'm like most agencies don't really care about your Rev Share program. Right. They're trying to get these billable hours. They're providing services. That's where they make their money and that's how they retain and that's what they want to do. So you understand like the, the breadth of knowledge they bring to the table around technology, around that customer and what they're trying to generate from their, their own bottom line.

Host: A thousand percent. Before we talk more on, on some of your background, I think it's important to talk about, you know, because we're all talking about what kind of experience that you're trying to provide for your partners. And I know that that's a big, um, a big, uh, experience or a big focus for you right now because what you were trying to do is we're really trying to create those moments, um, where we're going to get more engagement. We want to develop these long term relationships. Why do you think, where do you think most teams are not focusing, uh, on that partner experience or where are they falling short from that perspective?

Jason Yarborough: You know, Mo, I would say the majority of partner programs, like, at least the ones that I talk to, they're just kind of focused on like how we're, we've got a number, how are we going to hit that number and how are we going to generate that revenue. Right. And I always joke that most partner programs just kind of, you know, position themselves as a glorified bdr, which is not the position that we want to be in, that we should be in. I think we're more of a GTM function, a go to market function, uh, for the support of the greater organization. We bring so much more to the table than just, you know, sourcing leads and awareness and all the other things that are out there. So, so what I'm getting at here is I think most programs kind of miss out on the opportunity to create a true partner experience, to almost like create a, uh, moment or even like, um, if anybody's read Unreasonable hospitality, like how do you go above and beyond to create this experience for your partner coming into your ecosystem to feel like they're seen, heard and known and they're getting value out of it and not just showing up with your handout like, hey partner, welcome to our ecosystem. You got any leads for me? You might get a couple here, a couple there, but you're gonna, you're gonna A, dry that well up real fast and B, you're gonna run them off real quick because like, that's, there's no relationship there. It's just, you know, holding your hand out. So for me it's always like, how do, how do I bring my partners in to like, the work that we're doing, give them value they can take out into, into the market and help them become the best business possible. So like when, uh, Caitlin Matchett I were running Terminus, we, we built the channel program there. It's began to ask like, how do we become the most valuable partner? What do you need? What are your expectations? And most oftentimes it was like, you know, we need training on, you know, more how to, how to more effectively do abm. How do we go to market on this stuff? It wasn't so much about the product. I was like, oh, okay. So like, we're the expert here. We can provide training to you and your team around how to effectively, you know, build ABM campaigns, what it means to actually go to market and run this stuff and like, get, pick up more clients. And our team understands that. So I began to like start hosting these, you know, training hours, partner hours or whatever where I would bring product in, I'd bring marketing in. And we were providing training out to those teams. And it got to the point where I, uh, asked my partner like, okay, well we're starting to do this. How can I more effectively help? And it's like, well, a lot of the training you have is really good for like our product team, but our sales team or our marketing team doesn't have any support. So we started to build out training specifically for those teams. It's a lot of extra work, but we, we scaled that program 300 in the first year because we listened to the partner and we brought them into an experience that was valuable for them. And what happened was like, we gained, we gained massive amounts of trust early on that generated long term relationship and revenue, which is kind of the goal here is like, I keep this note on my desk and like I showed on every podcast that value breach trust, trust creates relationships and relationships create roi. You know, in the context of what we do with partnerships, right? So like, how, how do you think about the experience that you're providing within your ecosystem as being extraordinarily valuable to that partner? And we kind of did the same thing at Drift. And I remember telling Nick, our partner marketer is like, you know, we need to, we've got these partner hours we're doing. It's like, how do we continue to, to nurture the whole ecosystem? Almost like it's a community, right? Let's not think about it as, you know, tech partners, channel partners and alliances partners. I think about as like one community. How do we bring them all together and, and kind of lift each other up? So it's like, okay, let's, you know, let's begin to share a tech partner to all of our agency partners. Let's begin to do this and that. Let's bring them all together for a big training and you know, if any product goes, is, is getting, there's new product going out, new product being released or new Update or whatever. Let's give it to the partners before you even give it to anybody. They love that. That's an easy thing to turn on. It's like before any new product went ga turn general, general accessibility, general availability. The partners were trained on it before anything went live. So they, they took it to the their, to the customers. Easy move. They freaking loved it. That meant the world to them. I would bring product marketing to calls, I would bring sales leadership into calls, I would bring CS leadership into calls just for the sake of like, how can they begin to meet and know more of the team obviously. So if I'm not never there again. They have relationships that last within these companies and you know, those are the little things that you can do to create this experience and then think about if you've got a great brand. You know, Drift was a, was a really solid brand. Terminus had a good brand back in the day. Like how do you, how do you bring them into the, the experience of going to market? How do you help lift them up and with the business they're doing? Because like you obviously as a, as an ICV of that nature, you've got a lot more opportunity in the market to help them generate awareness than what they can do for you. So why not be a valuable player to them and taking them to market with you?

Host: A million percent and big shout out. I'm a huge fan of, of Dave Gerhard and the work that him and David Cancel did and the whole founder brand and you know, I've run some of their playbooks too. So I think that, that, that's um, that was love to mention that you're, what you're doing is you're, you're creating not only stickiness, but you're really putting the customer, the partner front and foremost, right? And really doing those little things that is that extra level to show them that you care about them. People are think about you more. They, they, they, they understand. I know even um, even Will Taylor with his psychology background is like, you need to make people feel a certain way and by doing those things in really showing that you care, it makes them feel that need. It's really not a big deal to be able to take this like this, this early. You know, even shipping the product out as that example, right. You're able to not only gain feedback from people that you trust, but you're ultimately get some testing as well. But it's huge because then they get to go to their customers early and that could be a big competitive differentiator to them. So if it's their goals to expand their markets or new feature, new whatever, that's such one little step that you could do that has big expounding effect. Right.

Jason Yarborough: That's it. So kind of the 1% principle. How can you make your program 1% better every day? Right. Every week. And without trying to think about how do we get 1% more revenue in the door? Because if I think if you make the experience of being a partner 1% better, like the, the revenue is going to blow that 1% out of the water.

Host: And revenue is.

Jason Yarborough: And we experienced.

Host: Right, go ahead.

Jason Yarborough: Exactly. And yeah, it's a. I think the. Yeah, to you. I think we were going as like, revenue is almost a byproduct of the experience you create and the value you provide. And we. I've seen that firsthand. So like we. I've averaged probably 400 growth each of the programs I've managed. Because like, yes, while I'm thinking about revenue and have to hit my number, like most, the majority of my focus is like, how do I make this better for the partner, how do I make this better for the team that I'm working with internally? How do I build process to support it and how do I begin to build emotion that somebody wants to be a part of within our ecosystem? Right. If you think about that, revenue becomes a byproduct and we've hit our numbers pretty consistently throughout my tenure. Right. And. But it's because we create this program that partners find extraordinarily valuable.

Host: A hundred percent. And as a partner you want to be, you know, because I'm sure you've had some other competitors in those different spaces. I know Drift had a lot of competitors in that intelligence space. And you know, obviously there's some other ABM platforms out there. So you've had some of those competitive type situations. Sometimes it's just about uh, uh, if they're going to recommend it, if the solutions are similar, what's the big difference? And it could be the difference of Jason going in there and giving them that experience and them having more knowledge of your product. And when they're doing that, they're going to feel more confident. And then again, we could follow the path all the way down to more revenue. But you're starting and focusing on just that main topic of that experience and the training, which I want to dive into here as well.

Jason Yarborough: But when you're, you're spot on. You're absolutely correct. It's like when you, when you do that most oftentimes, like you, you or Your program can become the differentiator. Right. And to your point, like I've never focused on like the competition, if only focus on how we can make our program better. Like I'll watch and I'll see what's doing out there. Maybe still like an artist as uh, Austin, uh, Cowan says. But you know, I'm not really focused on like what they're doing and trying to compete too much against a qualified when I was adrift or 6 inch or demand based when I was a tournament. It's like how can we continue to make our program better and the best so that they feel like a welcome part of it?

Host: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if I, I read somewhere, I don't know if it was like a Bezos line or something of like, you know, I don't, I don't really focus on my competition. I just focusing on better myself Again, I don't know, I read that somewhere LinkedIn. So if that's completely wrong, I blame LinkedIn for that. However I did. Regardless of who said it, I think it's really important that uh, that you are focusing on yourself and um, you know, you can't control other people. You could control yourself. Um, but when you were talking more about the experience earlier, like we went to Disney a couple months ago and like they're the perfect example of like doing those extra things and it's greeting you out a door or like there, I mean like there's a million different examples or you're talking about that experience right? When you go on a ride, you, from the minute you're getting onto that ride to the minute you get off, there's a journey and there's an experience and by the time there's obviously some kind of goal that you, that they want you to feel as a result of that and the storytelling and the experience that they have through that is just an unbelievable. I had so many of those. Like maybe it's cheesy but uh, but at the same token, I mean it's like it's a masterclass in doing that extra thing and trying to always do that little 1%. Um, now I want to shift over to the um, the training because I think it's, it's pertinent to some of the work that we're doing, uh, at Pipe Dream as well as we're building out our program. You know, talking to a lot of custom, a lot of partners getting feedback, understanding what's going to be most helpful to helpful to them and some of the big feedback that We've been getting to that point is, hey, we want to get some more tailored training to that. Now we're a smaller team. So it's, you know, we've obviously built out, you know, training programs for other companies and it could be a big lift at times. Right. So tell me a little bit more. I know you used an example of like the partner hours where you're, you're bringing in like for Q and A, or, you know, we even had some ideas of like, how could we do some, like some asynchronous, like here's some videos or here's like the baseline training for the team to check out and then as a result of that, we'll get on. So we could ask those, those 200 and 300 level questions to the engineers when we're bringing them in. Am I on base with that or what kind of other advice or experience would you have or maybe pitfalls to avoid in building something out like this?

Jason Yarborough: Um, well, I would say pitfalls to avoid or just kind of providing one big blanket training and certification, expecting it to be a, uh, one size fits. All. Right. And um, I'm a big fan of, you know, kind of a choose your own adventure style training. Right. Because one size doesn't fit all. And when I started building it, when I built the whole training program at Terminus with Caitlin and we started to revamp it at Drift, it was like, okay, so they're all partners aren't all the same. All service partners aren't all the same. Right. Tech partners, they're probably not going to go through training. So focus on like, who you, who you can, um, train, who you can enable and the teams they're in, what's going to drive, you know, the most, you know, bang for the buck. Right. And so began to look at it from like level one, two and three type of training. You know, how do we begin to provide just a basic level of training? Right. And then for those partners that want to go further, like, how do you provide an advanced level of training and then within that advance, like, is it for marketing, is it for sales, is it for a product team? Right. And, and then you move on to like a different level of training and like it's more in depth product training, like really thinking about how to train them the way that you would train your team. And those are the partners that are, that you're starting to see the most momentum out of those that want to go the distance with you. And then more of like a level three training and like, how do we you know, train you to be a, an excellent go to market, top tier, you know, uh, silver spoon hospitality, whatever you want to call that partner at all costs. And you know, you begin to think about it that way. Like you got your basic. For those that are kind of on a self serve model, maybe there's not a ton of huge opportunity there, but they can just kind of get to that point where they have enough understanding to position it. But then you kind of go further in the weeds and you're kind of following almost a path to value of uh, the type of partner that you're bringing in. Meaning like the, the opportunity that you have within those partnerships and those that want to go the distance and then you begin to, you know, following the training. I'm a big fan of implementing like mutual action plans to really truly understand like what the opportunity at hand looks like and actually making a plan to achieve that, uh, on down to like, all right, this is the revenue numbers we want to hit. These are the marketing plans we're going to put in place, help support that and along those lines, in order for that to happen, like here's the training plan that we need to have in place for your team to be able to hit that and here's how we can help and support that. Um, but like you make everything plain, simple. Uh, it's, it's translated to, to their language into the problem they're trying to solve for and it comes with um, clear value propositions. Like when you, when you get that thoughtful and thorough in a program, like there's not a whole lot of questions left to be unanswered. Everyone knows the, the direction we're marching in. Everyone understands the what's to be accomplished. You know, the first know, quarter, two quarters, three quarters, however far out your plan and then you begin to, to get, you know, to knock those out that 1% again, like how to begin to solely progress 1% each week. And therefore if you've got a mutual action plan you're working off of, you guys are working off that every time you meet checking boxes. All right, we're getting here, we're getting there, we're doing this Great. Now what else do we need to talk about?

Host: Right? And especially when you're building a program is first because we have a couple different partner types. We have like our, our system integrators who are like the agency. We don't have any like services, uh, that teams that are building anything out internally, right where, that's where we're relying on our partners. To do like the system integrator work where they're working with the different agencies to help. We're an API connection tool. So we're like a, like a more developer, uh, friendly, like Zapier make.com, like really trying to connect these different data sources all together to streamline those and things. So a lot of customers are trying to connect like, you know, these big agencies, like HubSpot's a big focus for us where, you know, people want to focus on doing QuickBooks and their ERP and putting this into their billing software and back into the, you know, back in the HubSpot and all these different things. So we got system integrators and like the delivery partners who would be doing those kinds of things. Um, that's the big focus for us now. But when you're, when you're going in and you're like, you know, I would say like revenue is kind of. We're not, I'm, uh, not necessarily sure how you could quantify the revenue side yet. But when you're thinking about like building out, like we're starting to pull some of these partners who are already using the product and really formalizing this relationship. What are some of those. Like, if it's, if revenue isn't a focus, what other goals could you go after? Is it just having like the. When we think about mutual action plans, is it meeting regularly, hitting their train, getting them training and developing that? Like, where, where would you say from. From somebody who's in our situation where you kind of start building out that, like, hey, we have a couple of these key partners that we think are going to be really good ones. How do we nurture those, enable them? Wow. We're still going to try to do the, the other efforts of, uh, partner recruitment for those similar Personas.

Jason Yarborough: Yeah, I'm, I'm a fan of like taking a very narrow strategic approach and not trying to onboard a hundred partners at one time. Uh, like get it right with a couple that are really engaged that have a massive amount of opportunity and really beginning to figure out like, all right, what can and should our partner motion look like? So one of the companies I'm working with, like, they've got really good opportunity with about three solid companies in the market. They're engaged, already doing some stuff. And you know, from there, like with a tech partner, I can think about it from. If you think about it from the funnel perspective. Right. You build that awareness, build up into the opportunity, into the close one, blah, blah, blah. All the, all the things that go into a funnel, right? We know that motion saying think about how do you, we're going to market with this partner, right? How do we begin to like tell the story, how to begin to build awareness, how to begin to get a few leads in the door, get a few, get a little bit of traffic and momentum building through our marketing and efforts and initiatives like invest the time, spend one whole quarter like just nailing the go to market effort with that partner. Whether it's a webinar, whether it's you know, personalized landing pages or chat playbooks in your site or whatever, telling the story of your partner, pushing that traffic to these opportunities to, to, to consume that story. Then think about like how are you, you know, in that same tech partner working with your sales team to understand like we're running these motions with marketing. We're going to have these leads coming in. We've got these, you know, mutual account plans, we got these mutual um, value props, etc. Here's what we're dealing with partner A. We're bringing some opportunities, some accounts in the door for you. Here's how you begin to work with that partner. Think about how you're training your sales team to, to field those leads, to fill those accounts and opportunities and then you know, move on down to cs, right? So that's with your tech partner of how you're beginning to kind of go to market with that tech partner and begin to win together and generate revenue from there. But it's got to start with like building that awareness phase because even when I was like a drift in six sense like we still had a ton of work to do to tell that story and to build that market presence up of like the work we were doing together, the integration. So we started with marketing, ran this whole go to market campaign. Then we began to train the sales team able to sales team build up this whole process to support the work the sales team was doing with partners. And that revenue began to slowly grow over time. Then you flip over to like your agency partners, you're talking about your systems integrators, solutions partners, whatever you're calling it. And like those are the ones you really want to like make sure you're training because as they're kind of implementing the technology, they need to understand how the product functions. They need to be, you know, act as obviously an arm to you, you know. But uh, that's, that's the easy part is like train them on the product. One thing that we were very strategic about with our strategic partners was like are they working within the same tech ecosystem as we are. Right. So is. So I learned this early on at Terminus is like is, is this agency. So if we're talking about like Drift again, Drift six and Sales Loft, are they working with those same technologies uh, that we focus on from a tech standpoint? Those are our top tier tech partners. If an agency I think is working with those same tier tech partners, they're going to implement all those technologies for those mutual customers and get those customers to success much faster. Because while your company thinks very singularly about your product, maybe they're good there. An agency is going to be great at your product but also the entire customer journey or tech stack for that account. So their, their whole sole motivation is to get them to success as fast as possible, build these new technologies in and you know, continue to help you expand and retain. So as you think about how you onboard an agency, how are you onboarding them to understand your product but also to onboard like how you work within a uh, very similar tech ecosystem together?

Host: Yeah, a thousand percent. And that's, that's great feedback too. Um, uh, I know we have a lot of um, you know one of the ways that we're continuing to partner with these or to kind of get more of those partner engagements is we have templates with our tools. As I was mentioning, we have you know like 2200 apps that we're connected with already. So we have, we have the ability, if we don't have uh, an app that we're already utilizing, have some premium apps like the CRMs and like some of the main tech. Um, but the nice thing is that we could build some of that in. However, one of the big goals that we have from a recruitment perspective is hey, for these agencies that are already utilizing these, these solutions, start uploading your templates. So we could use that as a marketing area so people could go in and say hey, oh look at this is something that I'm trying to do. Let's go over and check this out. So there's already inevitable some type of marketing in place. But we also want to use that as a recruitment arm to say hey Mr. Agency, we're work with other agencies and this is the kind of work that they're doing. If this is something that you're doing too, let's talk about more specifically about building this function out so that we could work together and either put those out and use that as a marketing engine for you, um, or how we could get more one to one development and really trying to pull them into, into us and start giving them the, the value adds or like some of the engineering time or whatever our levers are too. My. Is that, is that kind of how you're thinking about building that like, mutual brand and like telling that like, better together story as well?

Jason Yarborough: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. So for me, it's like you're putting those templates out. You understand like what success looks like for your customer, so you're, you're building that material to support the partner to be that much more successful and that much faster of a time. Right. How do you, how do you accelerate the path to value for a partner? Right? You begin to provide those, those templates. You begin to provide the, the answers to the test for them. But also in, underneath that, you're looking at like what, what makes a customer very successful. Right? And when you're looking at it like this, it's, it's doing A, B and C within the technology, but it's also working with partner X, Y and Z. So as you're thinking about like the work that it takes to be successful, you're also thinking about the ecosystem that takes to be successful and you're connecting all those dots therein. And it goes back to like, how do you treat this whole thing as a community? How are you connecting your tech partners to your solutions partners who are all working and touching the same customers and making everything that much more successful? And that's like we always use the word flywheel within an ecosystem. Like, uh, to me that's the flywheel when the, when the tech partner, solutions partner are all working with the same customer and driving, you know, success that much faster for them, and you're providing the, the, the necessary tools, steps and templates to ensure that success for those partners. And like, your path to value is just getting, you know, cut down incrementally, you know, month over month.

Host: Right? Because at the end, at the end of the day, all those mutual. And it's all like the consent. I love the ecosystem example because it's almost like those concentric rings and the customer is at the middle of all of those. So not working together of that customer has these goals that they want to accomplish a lot of the time. Like, hey, they don't care if they're using this type of tool or that type of tool to connect it. At the end of the day, they want to be able to help, you know, from an agency perspective, they want to help their customers. They want to make it easy for their teams to achieve the goals and of what their customer is looking to Accomplish. So if you can do that, then that's the value, I think that, that you're trying to focus on. Now.

Jason Yarborough: I know if you build your program to be successful for your customer, you will inevitably build a program to be successful for your partner. Bottom, um, line, if you're, if you're generating, if you're building this thing for the customer to make them successful and to, you know, retain them as a customer and help expand them and build on top of what they're doing and help them get to success, then like it, it inevitably will become successful for your partner. Your agency partners will find a ton of value within the technology and how they're servicing customers, and they'll begin to be able to do more, faster. Your technology partners will want to connect to it because it's driving success for them. Maybe it's driving more usage or, you know, licenses or whatever. But you inevitably will make it, create, make it much, much greater for the partner if you build it for the customer 1000%.

Host: I think that that focus on what is that end customer experience and what are we trying to help them with will help solve all of those extra problems or the goals that we're looking to Achie. But we need to have a crystal clear focus on that. Now, uh, talking about, talking about focus, I mean, uh, as we already mentioned, there's a ton of different things that the partnership team has to do, right? We're doing some co selling initiatives, we're doing marketing, we're providing feedback to our product team, we're bringing product in to have these, some of these conversations. What's your best piece of advice for, um, time investing and where to really like, how to best focus your time, especially when there's all of these shiny little buttons that you could focus on. But really time is the only, like, investment, uh, of time is one of the biggest areas we need to focus on. What kind of advice do you have there?

Jason Yarborough: Yeah, again, it goes back to like having a very narrow strategic focus. And you know, I had a boss once upon a time that was like, you know, you need to narrow the, narrow the focus down. And like, I think there's a ton of value in kicking off your year with a, whether it's a V2 mom or core objectives or KP, whatever you, whatever you're kind of building out to, to map out the year, make it very clear, very plain and like, what the major focuses are for that year. Right. You should have a clear understanding based off your, your, your objectives with the program, your numbers, your KPIs etc, take a narrow strategic focus on how you're going to hit that and if you begin to like look under those objectives and like don't, don't have a ton of objectives, right. Understand like how you're going to support each pillar of your program, what the work that needs to be done. So in order to hit your, your numbers and keep it, keep it, keep it, keep it narrow, keep it very focused, right? And understand like these are the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 things I need to hit. When you start looking at those things all uh, right. What is it that I, the leader have to do and what can I begin to delegate and begin to give out as an experience to people that work under me, my or my partner account manager. Because the more you can source out to them, the better opportunity they get within their careers. So for me it's always been like all uh, right. If I'm looking at my, you know, my top 10 list, we'll call it, where I based off what I'm trying to accomplish this year. And this has always been the case for me. It's like my time is best spent internally going after, like talking to, being a part of the, the leadership conversations, the trainings and getting the buy in, getting the resources, getting the support from the team. So inevitably end up spending 60 to 70 of my time internally working with the team, uh, making sure that my team is supported internally. We get the buy in, the resources we need to get and then from there I understand like, okay, my tech team needs to focus on these three things. My agency team needs to focus on these three things. We, we understand our marching orders and we stay super diligent to focus on that. If it doesn't line up to like those objectives you laid out the beginning of the year, either like push it off till later or begin to shift what's what you've prioritized as an objective. Like, you know, obviously things can move around and change, but at the end of the day you should have a clear plan of what you're working towards and what you want to accomplish by the end of the year and then make, make very clear, detailed plans around like how you're going to do this, what you're going to do, make quarterly goals, you know, and I would, I would assign different projects, or what I call it, experiments to my team throughout the year so that it could help build and expand the program based on those objectives.

Host: That's fantastic. It all starts with focusing on those key objectives, making sure you're not having too many of Them and then being able to work together and at least having those other teams understand what your goals are. You're almost being like that internal partner too, right? Where, understand what are your goals, what are my goals and where do our internal ecosystem of goals align? And hopefully the goals of all of those are all going to align to the same company goal. Yeah, I'm sure it probably doesn't happen that nicely all the time, but I think we're living it.

Jason Yarborough: Like if you ask most partner leaders, they ask the biggest, biggest objective right now is like getting the buy in uh, from you know, the leadership team or getting the necessary resources. And so like it's up to you, the leader to go out and kind of, you know, begin to, to lobby for that and figure out like where the gaps are, where the, where the hurdles are and how you begin to clear the path for your team. It's like that's the number one goal as a leader is to make that path as smooth and easy for your team to come up behind you. And you know, like I said, drift, terminus everywhere. It's like 70 of my time has been spent internally clearing that path and making sure that there's a clear road ahead.

Host: That's, that is fantastic. And I think uh, there's, I don't think there's a better spot to, to wrap up today's episode. Now there is one final question I want to ask though, as I ask every single guest on the show. If you were teaching a College 101 class, based upon all of your previous life and work experience, what would you teach and why?

Jason Yarborough: Hm, that's a great question. Um, it would, it would probably fall under kind of the, the marketing arm of like, you know, how to truly be an effective uh, go to market player. Right. How to, how to, how to be a support to your, to your marketing function and help, you know, generate and tell stories that matter on behalf of others. Like one of the things I love most is like storytelling and finding that red thread to pull on and work within, uh, you know, an initiative. And so like how do, how do you take the experiences you've got, the knowledge you have and begin to be a, uh, support to the greater story that's being told around you within your organization and all that falls up under marketing. So how do we help help, you know, utilize our experience industry presence to tell bigger, better stories?

Host: That's fantastic. Jason, thank you so much, man. Where could people learn more about you and everything you've going on?

Jason Yarborough: I stay pretty active on LinkedIn. Just LinkedIn in/RB. Uh, get there. The. The Friends with Benefits podcast. We pretty much share all there. So come find me. Come say hello.

Host: Very good. Tell them that you found Jason on, uh, the 20% podcast as well, if

Jason Yarborough: you enjoyed this episode. All right.

Host: Thank you so much, Jason.

Jason Yarborough: Amen.