Nearbound survey playbook: generate partner-sourced leads quarterly

Published on October 29, 2023
Expert advice from Justin Zimmerman.

Snapshot

The big picture is simple: Nearbound Marketing amplifies trust signals from partners and couples them with crisp first-party data so you can find who is actually in market—right now. The issues is without a focused co-marketed survey, partner promotions often produce vanity registrations and weak leads. However with the right fields, segmentation, and routing, you collect technographic, persona, and intent signals that let you qualify faster, route instantly, and convert more deals.

Keep reading to learn how Justin Zimmerman can help you achieve consistent partner-sourced leads, richer first-party data, and faster lead qualification.

If you are a great partner, you can attract great partners. – Justin Zimmerman

Table of Contents

Why Nearbound surveys work

Nearbound marketing is about leveraging trust. When a partner recommends something to their audience, that recommendation carries far more weight than an ad or a cold outreach. But trust alone isn’t enough. You must capture actionable signals from those trusted touches—who is in market, what they use today, their role, and whether they have budget or authority.

A co-marketed survey solves this gap by combining second-party trust (the partner endorsement) with the first-party data you collect directly. That combination gives you:

  • Demand capture: Identify who is actively evaluating solutions.
  • Qualification at scale: Surface the right titles, budgets, and technographic fit in real time.
  • Partner alignment: Give partners qualified leads they value while you expand pipeline.

The whole point of all of this activity is to identify and find leads and contacts who are in market that match your ICP. – Justin Zimmerman

Core outcomes you should measure

When you launch a Nearbound survey, design it around the outcomes you actually care about. Trackable outcomes make it easy to decide whether to keep the play, tweak it, or scale it.

  1. Partner-sourced qualified leads: The number of leads that meet ICP and intent criteria.
  2. Conversion to SQL: Percentage of those leads that become sales-qualified over a defined window.
  3. Time to contact: How quickly SDRs or partner reps can follow up on hot hand-raises.
  4. Partner engagement: Which partners drive the highest quality traffic and why.
  5. First-party data enrichment: Percent of records with technographic and persona signals captured.

Who to invite: picking your top partners

You don’t need dozens of partners. You need the right three to five. Pick partners who:

  • Share an aligned ICP with you
  • Have a trusted audience and consistent engagement
  • Offer complementary tools or services that fit into your buyer’s stack
  • Are willing to co-market during a defined promotion window

Start small and prove performance. When Justin ran this play for Nearbound sponsors, they asked sponsors to think about who their ideal mutual customers were and who could promote to them with credibility.

Build your survey: essential fields and why each matters

The survey is the product here. It can’t be long, but it must capture the signals you need to route and prioritize. You can build it in HubSpot, Typeform, SurveyMonkey, or any form tool. Choose one tool and keep the UX consistent.

Minimum structure (1–2 minutes)

  1. Contact information (name, email, company)
  2. Title/role (seniority)
  3. Department/function
  4. Industry
  5. Technographic indicator (e.g., which CRM, platforms)
  6. In-market hand-raise (checkbox of specific needs)
  7. Optional: team size, budget range, timing

You just need to pick one form tool, and a couple of key questions that helps your and your partners find and identify those key people. – Justin Zimmerman

Why each field matters

  • Title/seniority: Distinguish between users and decision-makers. A manager or director is more likely to influence purchasing than an individual contributor.
  • Department: Some partners care about operations personas, others about marketing or success. This allows precise segmentation.
  • Industry: If partners serve different verticals, filter to the industries that matter for each sponsor.
  • Technographic indicator: Knowing whether they use Salesforce, HubSpot, or another platform tells you whether you fit into their stack and helps prioritize outreach.
  • In-market hand-raise: The most important single element. A checked box for “account mapping” or “PRM” is a hot lead signal and should trigger immediate follow-up.

These fields are really helpful in deciding the level of budget and authority. – Justin Zimmerman

Question design tips

  • Use single-select where you need a clear routing decision (e.g., department, CRM).
  • Use checkboxes for intent or needs so respondents can hand-raise for multiple items.
  • Keep optional open-text fields minimal—use them for notes only.
  • Make the form mobile-friendly and limit required questions to the minimum.

How to co-market the survey with partners

The hardest part is aligning partners on timing and messaging. You want several partners to promote the same survey within a coordinated window so you collect a focused, comparable dataset.

  1. Set a promotion window: Pick a 2–4 week window and ask partners to promote during that time.
  2. Share messaging templates: Provide email copy, social posts, and a landing page to remove friction.
  3. Offer partner benefit: Tell partners what they will get—qualified leads segmented by their interest, and a share of joint performance metrics.
  4. Agree on routing: Decide who gets which leads and how quickly follow-up must occur.
  5. Use tracking links: Tag partner traffic so you can attribute which partner drove each completed survey.

When they go to send traffic, you’re going to get that persona level information, technographic information, and the economic indicator. – Justin Zimmerman

Routing, segmentation, and follow-up playbook

Collecting data is only half the battle. The value comes from routing hot hand-raises and segmenting leads for follow-up.

Immediate routing

  • Trigger alerts for hot hand-raises (e.g., intent fields checked like account mapping or PRM).
  • Send these records to an SDR queue and the partner’s sales rep simultaneously so both teams can act.
  • Set an SLA: contact hot leads within 24 hours.

Segmented nurture

  • Group by department and technographic fit to send targeted content and product messaging.
  • Use drip sequences for warm leads that did not check an intent box but match your ICP.
  • Feed qualified leads into account mapping tools to cross-check fit and open opportunities for joint outreach.

A partner drove a contact to this survey and they checked account mapping. The reveal sales team would love to jump on 20 of these leads immediately. – Justin Zimmerman

Cadence: how often to run the play

Run this co-marketed survey on a regular cadence. Quarterly is a practical starting point because it balances freshness with partner bandwidth. Quarterly runs let you:

  • Compare partner performance across regular windows
  • Keep messaging timely and relevant
  • Refresh creative and test new intent questions

Measurement: what success looks like

Measure both quantity and quality. A high volume of low-value leads is a false positive. Your core KPIs should include:

  • Qualified lead count (matches ICP and answered intent questions)
  • SQL conversion rate from survey leads
  • Time-to-contact for hot leads
  • Partner ROI: revenue influenced or partner-influenced opportunities
  • Data enrichment rate: percent of survey responses that add new first-party signals to CRM

Out of five to ten thousand people that registered for the event, which of the 500 are currently looking for this tool and do they have the right title, authority, industry, and technographic information? – Justin Zimmerman

A simple tech stack is often better than an over-engineered one. Here are tools to cover the essential pieces.

  • Form / survey: HubSpot forms, Typeform, or SurveyMonkey for easy building and embedding.
  • Attribution / tracking: UTM links and partner-specific landing pages for attribution.
  • Account mapping / intent: Reveal or similar to enrich and cross-reference survey responses.
  • PRM: PartnerStack, Allbound, or similar to coordinate partner promotions and rewards.
  • CRM / routing: HubSpot, Salesforce, or your CRM to receive form submissions and trigger routing workflows.

FAQs

How long should the survey be?

Keep it short. Aim for 1–2 minutes of completion time. Use required questions only for core routing signals and keep optional fields for enrichment.

How many partners should participate?

Start with three to five strategic partners who share an aligned ICP. Too many partners dilutes coordination and makes attribution harder.

What constitutes a hot lead?

A hot lead is someone who matches ICP criteria and checks an in-market intent box for a specific solution (for example, account mapping or PRM). Those responses should trigger immediate routing.

How do we share lead credit with partners?

Agree up front on lead ownership rules. Use attribution parameters and a shared reporting dashboard. Consider splitting leads by intent or territory and ensure joint follow-up expectations are clear.

Can we run this without a PRM?

Yes. A PRM simplifies partner coordination, but you can run the play using email templates, shared calendars, and tracking links. A PRM is recommended for scale.

Conclusion

A co-marketed Nearbound survey is a low-friction, high-impact way to turn partner trust into measurable pipeline. You collect first-party signals, rely on second-party trust, and create a repeatable cadence that produces qualified, in-market leads for your sales teams and your partners.

Start by picking three to five aligned partners, define the essential fields that signal intent and fit, coordinate a promotion window, and set up immediate routing for hot hand-raises. Measure qualified lead count, SQL conversion, time-to-contact, and partner ROI. Run the play quarterly, refine questions, and scale the partners who consistently deliver high-quality leads.

Social Post

Announcing a new playbook for Partner Managers, Demand Gen Leads, and Growth Marketers…

Introducing Nearbound survey playbook: generate partner-sourced leads quarterly!

Inside it you will find a practical, repeatable play to convert partner trust into qualified pipeline. You will learn how to capture demand, route hot hand-raises, and enrich your CRM with technographic and persona signals so you can prioritize high-value conversations.

  • Identifying which partners to invite and why they matter
  • Designing the survey fields that actually drive qualification
  • Coordinating partner promotions so you collect comparable data
  • Routing hot intent leads for immediate follow-up
  • Measuring partner ROI and SQL conversion from survey leads
  • Running the play on a quarterly cadence to keep momentum
  • Choosing the right tools without over-engineering

Get this playbooks if you are Partner Manager, Demand Gen Lead, or Growth Marketer and want to learn what Justin Zimmerman does, so you can achieve consistent partner-sourced leads, richer first-party data, and faster lead qualification. The playbook is free, no form-fill required, no optin required.

A co-marketed survey is a fantastic way to go to market with your top three to five partners and generate qualified leads. – Justin Zimmerman

Partner Playbooks

Your trusted source for B2B SaaS playbooks

© 2026 Partner Playbooks. All rights reserved.