Session 1 - Playbook Zero To 20% Partner Sourced In 36 Months
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Justin Zimmerman: [00:00:00] Well, it's that time of the week here, and welcoming everybody to another monthly virtual event Hosted by Partner Playbooks, uh, supported by a wonderful number of sponsors and of course, here to bring you the inside playbooks behind what we're all witnessing right now in real time, an AI revolution of our jobs, our roles, our careers, our companies, and of course, our industries.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, for those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Justin Zimmerman, uh, the founder of Partner Playbooks. And over the last two, three years, uh, I have been working to discover the best people in the business running the best programs focused on tactical, practical, hands-on work. Uh, I'm actually really excited that we've entered into this new era of AI and the practical, tactical nature of it because we're all now really in some way, shape, or [00:01:00] form responsible for hands-on keyboards and, uh, owning better outcomes through better workflows.

Justin Zimmerman: And so, uh, I'm kind of a technical geek nerd myself and so I'm glad the world is really starting to catch up to, uh, the importance of owning our own process and ultimately owning our own results. And so I'd like to welcome you all right now to this month's AI Use Case Showcase. Uh, as you can see here and you've seen in my emails and my messages to you, I've hand-selected some of the best people I could find who are in roles like you doing programs and running events and outcomes similar to the ones that you're doing.

Justin Zimmerman: And so we have a fantastic lineup for you all here today. And so as you know, this is not just an event about listening and learning and sitting on the sidelines and spectating. Uh, this actually, the more involved you are in the chats especially, not only do people come for the content, but a lot of the times they come for the engagement and social connections.

Justin Zimmerman: And so I hope you brought your [00:02:00] LinkedIn URLs with you because, uh, beyond just the content today, we also have an opportunity to reach out to connect with others. And so, uh, because I've been doing this as long as I have, take a look at the attendee chat right now on the right. Um, if this is your first event you're coming to and hanging out with me, type the word one in the chat, so I'd like to see all the first time event, uh, guests and attendees.

Justin Zimmerman: If this is your second time, type a two. And of course, if you've been here multiple times, type a three so you can kinda get an idea of who's here and who's hanging out, who's coming back. Uh, and of course, um, after you do that, type the word Stack if you're a PartnerStack customer. Uh, just we're gonna have to give out some big shout-outs to those, uh, people at PartnerStack, especially Tyler Calder who's helped make these events possible and free for us all.

Justin Zimmerman: And so as you type that into the chats, uh, it's great to see some familiar faces, some people returning. Becky, good to see you. Trevor, of course. Chris, seen you here for years. John, welcome. Justine, welcome back. [00:03:00] Welcome back. Juan, welcome back. Tino, welcome back. Welcome to the first event, Jeff Uh, Peter, welcome.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, Elsa, Julia, well, you're one of our speakers. Latrice, you guys are gonna have a great time here today. Jared, good to see you here for the first time. Evelyn, of course. Uh, you're gonna be on one of our shows in a little bit, Evelyn. So, um, really, it's about not just content, it's also about community. Uh, I don't charge to be a part of these events.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, a lot of this stuff is, uh, probably worth spending money on if you had to, but again, once... Uh, thanks again to PartnerStack. Uh, what we're gonna experience today is completely free for you all. Now, of course, it's being recorded, and I'm gonna also be able to give you guys access to these afterwards. Uh, I'll be in touch with you, many of you later afterwards.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you're watching this live, congratulations for taking the time to really be here and grounded. For those of you who are watching the recordings, uh, I know you'll get something out of this too. And so let's click things over right now because again, like I said, a lot of people come here not just for the content, but they also come [00:04:00] for the community.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you can, drop your LinkedIn profile right now into the link, into the chats. Uh, people will click on them. They will follow you. You guys will connect. And so after you go do that, if you really feel oh-so inclined, uh, you can also add your name to the LinkedIn networking sheet. I'll share that link in a little bit, but first, share it in the chats.

Justin Zimmerman: It just makes it way easier for everybody. And so as everyone shares your LinkedIn profile in the chats, uh, maybe even if you wanna add your role and title or company, give some people, people some inclination on who they're reaching out to and why, uh, that's fantastic as well. Hey, welcome, Aaron. Good to see you again.

Justin Zimmerman: Hope you're gonna be at Inbound this year as well. Oh, Unbound. Uh, last time I saw you, that's think... I think that's where we were on the trade show floor. Um, and so it's fun to be seen. It's fun to be recognized. Uh, it makes it way more fun the more engaged you guys are. Again, you could watch a video on demand, and you can kind of just take it at your own pace, or you can feel a part of something bigger.

Justin Zimmerman: And so this is your opportunity to be heard, be seen, and connect, uh, with the rest of the [00:05:00] partner managers, directors, and go-to-market experts who are part of, uh, our community here. And so I'm gonna go grab the LinkedIn, uh, LinkedIn? Oops, sorry, not LinkedIn. Uh, yes, LinkedIn, um, networking sheet as well. And so, um, as you guys also fill out here, you know, uh, take a moment, check out all the past people who've been a part of this, and you can, you can see who's, um, participated and networked and open to networking, um, inside your, uh, partner program type and possibly location.

Justin Zimmerman: Um, one thing I don't ev- I don't think everybody knows this, but, uh, again, due to AI or congratulations to AI or thankful to AI, um, there are over a hundred articles and playbooks now available on partnerplaybooks.com. Um, I was actually previously a director of partnerships and content, uh, and marketing at, uh, a number of different companies, and I can tell you it took me...

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, in fact, where is that little poster here? I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna try to grab back here for you, is it took a huge team of people back in the [00:06:00] day, um, to build these, build playbooks just like this. It took millions and millions of dollars. And now with the power of AI and the prompts and editorial, um, guidelines that I used to have to direct people for, it took all of these people to do what I'm about to share with you on Partner Playbooks.

Justin Zimmerman: I can do it as a single operator or a single person as one. And so anybody who's doubting the power of AI in any discipline, whether it's marketing or partnerships, uh, the value and output is real. And so if you haven't yet visited Partner Playbooks and have gone on the site to see what comes out of these sessions and how, uh, the tooling has made this so much more consumable, uh, go check out partnerplaybooks.com.

Justin Zimmerman: Um, I just dropped a link in the chats, and so save that for later, bookmark it, come back. Uh, in fact, a lot of the sessions today... In fact, all the sessions today, I think, except for the networking session, which is cool. I've got something cool and new for you guys as well we're gonna talk about. Um, and so, uh, you'll be able to share these articles, watch a lot of the replays, and get, uh, a detailed breakdown out of each one of the sessions on [00:07:00] partnerplaybooks.com.

Justin Zimmerman: And so I wanna make sure you know that resource is available because beyond just these events, uh, right, a video's fantastic to kinda be interacting with in one form, but what if you want to be on a plane and you wanna scroll and read through something, uh, or share it with somebody around a specific topic?

Justin Zimmerman: You can go on Partner Playbooks and see almost, if not more than a hundred articles in Playbooks. And so, um, now of course, sponsor shout-out, right? Like, who loves... For those of you who've been a part of these events before, everyone who dropped the three in the chats, you guys come back for a reason, right?

Justin Zimmerman: You know there's a lot of value, a lot of connection, and a lot of meaning that comes out of this. And so it wouldn't be possible without sponsors who make it free for us. And so, of course, uh, shout out to PartnerStack, uh, for making the content free and available. Shout out to Brand Live, this event platform.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, would not be able to afford this on my own. This is an enterprise platform, mid-market platform. And so if you like what you see and the experience that you get from working and seeing with me here, go check out brandlive.com. And of course, [00:08:00] uh, for those of you who get my text messages, type the word SMS if you get my text messages.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, that is me writing them. That is me sending them. That is me replying to them, but there's just so many of us here in the, in the, uh, audience- That, uh, obviously I need a business texting platform. And so if you're looking for an amazing texting platform, uh, reach out to me, I can share more about what I do, how I set it up, and I use SalesMessage.

Justin Zimmerman: In fact, actually, um, I was the previous partner director at SalesMessage, and so I've been able to really build a lot of fantastic things that, uh, the average person can't. And so if you're interested in text messaging, let me know. If you're on my text messaging list, type the word SMS, it'll be good to see you in here.

Justin Zimmerman: And so, um, one more thing before we get into some, uh, deeper meanings and, uh, things, like I said, this is an event that is, um, we'll say, uh, sponsored by our friends at PartnerStack. And so, uh, just an honest raise of hand, please, you know, answer this question. These events are not gonna... can't stay free unless we have [00:09:00] people that we can then send to PartnerStack.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you're considering a new PRM in the next ninety days, just look on your screen, just type yes or no. Uh, it'd be just a good show of hands, and that way, in a very non-salesy way, I can make an introduction to them, and you can have a conversation. So that way, you know, we're doing our due diligence and our service, uh, to our partners.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you see the poll on the screen right now, uh, just take a quick second here, um, as we move through our next couple of slides just to answer if you're currently considering a new PRM or affiliate portal in the next ninety days. Uh, click the button on the screen and, uh, we'll be able to connect you or leave you alone, um, for, uh, helping support our sponsor.

Justin Zimmerman: All right. So, um, now, for those of you who are a part of my first event of the year, we kicked off the AI Playbook series, um, I made a prediction, and here we are almost six months later, where I just see this becoming more true and true. Uh, the people who are getting their hands dirty, they're [00:10:00] getting their fingers on the keyboards, and they're learning the workflows and the tools, and they're solving for real outcomes, there was gonna be a separation of those people who were gonna become next-level partner professionals and those people who feel behind.

Justin Zimmerman: And so, um, it's good to see the predictions coming true, and all the people here today that I'm gonna show you are falling into that first category of stellar operators who are currently hands-on-keyboard and solving the problems. And so, um, I just love bringing up this prediction. I just think, you know- Um, making a, making a call early in the year, just kind of felt we were at that moment, and boy, has it taken off, right?

Justin Zimmerman: We went into... Everyone's now in Claude Code, it's crazy, and Claude Coworking. So that wasn't even something we were talking about in January. Now, if you're not in those systems, well, you know, you're really being left out and feeling behind. And so, uh, we're gonna solve that for you today. We've actually got some sessions that are gonna dive deep into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, uh, all the tools and all the workflows that connect into your CRM, your [00:11:00] data lake, your warehouse, all those different things.

Justin Zimmerman: And so, uh, it's not getting... Uh, that prediction, I probably need to retire it soon. Um, and so, um, let's, um, bring up one last poll here because I love taking the pulse of, uh, everyone who's here. And so I'm gonna close down this poll on PRMs, and I am going to now bring up our, our last poll before we get into our next thing, is, um, how many of you guys, where are you in, in the, in your AI transformation?

Justin Zimmerman: Um, this is gonna be good f- to kind of get a feel for kind of the day, helps me take a pulse and keep track of where everybody is. And so, you know, is AI, AI handling 10% of your workflow? Is AI handling 15% to 50% of your workflow? Or are you really in this advanced category, like some of the people you're gonna meet here today, where it's really handling now 50% of their work, if not more.

Justin Zimmerman: And so, uh, we're watching those numbers kind of come in in real time. We've got about 21, 22 votes. Come on, guys. Let's, let's push this a little bit more. I try [00:12:00] to get to about 50% of the audience right now, uh, voting on this. And so we need about seven to 10 more votes, uh, before we move on. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold us up here.

Justin Zimmerman: I'm gonna filibuster us until we get all the, all the answers. Just joking. I'm not gonna, not gonna delay Uh, what's waiting for you. But yeah, and a couple more votes, it's gonna be good to see. This is private information, I'm not gonna share it with anybody. This is just general to kind of see where the market is right now, where you guys are at right now, and maybe what more I need to do to make sure that I can help those of you, uh, reach even higher levels of, uh, AI a- adoption and transformation.

Justin Zimmerman: All right. So yeah, we're at my, my happy threshold. We got about 50% of you right now have already voted, so thank you so much. Uh, it's good to see that, um, almost about 50% of the audience is, um, well, uh, still less than 10%, so there's a lot of room for us to grow. Uh, the middle portion of us right there, about 15...

Justin Zimmerman: About half, uh, another half of us are answering fi- uh, 15 to 50%, and, uh, as expected, uh, a small number of you guys are super [00:13:00] advanced. For those of you who are super advanced, reach out to me, send me an email. I wanna know what you're doing. Maybe I can bring you guys on here. I'd love to talk to you guys.

Justin Zimmerman: In fact, that's actually another great thing, uh, about this poll. And so if you're in this advanced category, send me a DM and I'd love to, uh, see what you're doing and talk more about possibly having you as a guest here. All right, so let's close this down. Congratulations, everybody. I'll, I'll take a quick screenshot here and share this with the, uh, Slack group that if you're a part of that, um, I'll share a link with you guys on that later.

Justin Zimmerman: But let me save that for later, and I will save this link here. Bada bing, bada boom. And let's say goodbye to our poll and let's start to say hello to some content and some... End the poll, one, two, three, end poll. All right, fantastic. Let's get this out of here. All right, so closing down the poll, removing it from the stream, and, uh, let's see what we got here.

Justin Zimmerman: So, uh, you got a crazy lineup set up for you. We, we have a crazy lineup set up for you. So obviously right now, [00:14:00] uh, you're here in our first hour-long session, the big session of the day. We're ringing on, uh, our friends from Lemlist, Julia, who is their partnership lead over there. Um, if you haven't followed Lemlist before, they've got a fantastic story.

Justin Zimmerman: In fact, I had their book over here. Who knows Lemlist? Type the word Lemlist. They've got an incredible growth story, an incredible partnership story, and we're gonna be bringing her on in a couple of seconds to talk about how they've reached the $50 million AR- ARR mark, and how 20% of that is partner sourced, and how the next 50 million is gonna be helping, uh, how partnerships and AI is gonna help them get there.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, following this session, uh, this is super important, we've got a networking thing that we've never done before. You're gonna be able to choose from three, that's actually six if I hold up three fingers, so three, three breakout rooms. I'll give you guys some directions at the end of the session where you can meet with Antonio, you can meet with Tyler, you can meet with Rob Moore in each one of the different rooms around some different topics.

Justin Zimmerman: You'll see that on the screen. I'll drop the links into the chat, or you can go to the main home space room here, and you can talk, interact, engage. It's- Press the button that [00:15:00] says Join Discussion so you can bring your video up, and really it's a peer-to-peer opportunity to have a discussion, not just listen to what other people are telling, but you get a voice, you get to share, you can bring your questions.

Justin Zimmerman: And so it's gonna be a fun, fantastic opportunity. And so as you can see, that's the rest of our, uh, lineup for today. I'm gonna bring on now our esteemed guest who's waiting backstage right now for us. Uh, she's been working hard through the night, through the evening. She has been, uh... She's in France, where Lendlist is based, and right now she's braving the heat.

Justin Zimmerman: You can see her hair blowing in the wind. That's probably a fan, 'cause if she didn't have it right now, I don't know if she'd be able to survive, uh, our session here today. And so I'm really excited to have you here, Julia. Um, you have a fantastic story, and you're a part of an amazing company. And so I think like every partnership team out there, we're usually small, we're usually mighty, and we're usually lean.

Justin Zimmerman: There's... It's not any different for you. And so I think what you can share [00:16:00] here is the entrepreneurial side of what you guys have been building and, uh, the playbooks that are gonna help our audience right now, uh, accomplish some of the same things you and your team have accomplished over the last 36 months.

Justin Zimmerman: And so welcome. Give us a little bit of back- background about yourself, and then give us the agenda of what we're gonna learn from you here today. 

Julia Guenier: Thanks a lot, Justin, and hi everyone. I'm super happy to be with you all, uh, today. Indeed, it's pretty hot in France. I'm actually, um, from Marseille in the south of France, but our company is based in Paris.

Julia Guenier: Uh, so yeah, really happy to be here with you. Um, if we're being honest, I've been following Justin's, uh, Partner Playbooks for years now, when I first started my career in, in partnerships. Uh, so really thrilled to be, uh, one of the speakers today and reveal some of our, our secrets at Lemlist. Um, so just a quick note of introduction on my side.

Julia Guenier: Um, so I am Julia. I am a partnership manager at Lemlist. Until three weeks ago, I was, uh, the only [00:17:00] person managing partners and partnerships overall here in the company, but I will tell you more around how all of this is possible. Um, and before that, uh, before joining Lemlist back in August twenty twenty-five, I used to work for years in e-commerce and more specifically in tech partnerships.

Julia Guenier: Um, so I learned a lot in the past few months because coming from tech partnerships, entering the solution service partnerships at Lemlist has been quite a discovery also for me. But I was also able to find the same schemes and the same, uh, templates that I've built in my previous experience. Uh, and I was also able to build new playbooks, especially AI playbooks, with the team here at Lemlist.

Julia Guenier: Um, also for the background, when joining Lemlist, uh, at first, a couple of months ago, partnerships were still incubated into the marketing team, um, and more specifically into the growth team, where we have [00:18:00] some super talented people, including a growth engineer who's been working hard on making our partnership program scale.

Julia Guenier: Um, so yeah, really happy to walk you through the whole story. Some of the AI use cases that we have developed and allow us to, uh, actually manage twenty percent of, uh, partner sourced opportunities and ARR at Lemlist. Um, so Just, um, for the quick overview, um, I'll be happy to walk you through first, um, through the basis, what partnership, uh, at Lemlist looks like, uh, where we come from, and, um, where we're heading, of course.

Julia Guenier: Uh, the behind the scenes, I think it's really interesting, and I love, uh, interacting with other partnership managers or leaders, peers to understand really their day-to-day. Um, our, our, uh, position has been evolving so much in the last couple of years and mostly months. [00:19:00] Um, it's always, yeah, always interesting just to walk you through my day-to-day.

Julia Guenier: It doesn't look the same every day, obviously, but, uh, I think most of you will recognize, uh, some of the aspects of my, uh, my days here at Lemlist. And last but not least, um, I will walk you through some, uh, use cases and tools that we've built internally for partners and app- that allow me and us at Lemlist to manage such, um, uh, mature and quite big ecosystem today.

Julia Guenier: Um, and my last note will really be an echo to what Justin just said, obviously, about the prediction for 2026 and so on. Um, since we're hiring, I'm doing some kind of advertising here, but since we're hiring at Lemlist, I've also helped, um, the team building the job descriptions, and I've seen it evolving so much, and based on our needs, I know what type of profile we would be looking for, and everything will be, of course, linked to what I will [00:20:00] walk you through right now.

Julia Guenier: So, uh, sorry, Justin? 

Justin Zimmerman: Oh, thanks for reading my face here. And so yeah, I just wanna give, like, that last part is if those of you who are interested in a job or know somebody who's interested in a job and wanna work at a great company, um, I'm gonna drop her LinkedIn URL here, and so she's gonna be at the end of her session.

Justin Zimmerman: Stick around so that way you can hear about this job, and then you can follow her on that link. And so in fact, actually, let's show her some love and some enthusiasm right now before she takes on the rest of our session here by showing some likes and loves on that link. So just give it, like, a thumbs up and a heart.

Justin Zimmerman: I'm gonna step back, and I'm gonna let you do your magic 

Julia Guenier: Thank you, Justin. Yes, don't hesitate to reach out. I'll drop my LinkedIn after the session, uh, as well, and, uh, happy to connect. Um, so first of all, for those who don't know Lemlist, um, we're a sales engagement platform, meaning that we allow sales team to manage their outbound directly on Lemlist from contact list building to actually executing [00:21:00] outreach through multi-channels.

Julia Guenier: So you can do your outbound through Lemlist leveraging LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, SMS, calls, everything in one place. Uh, and we're serving today more than 20,000 clients. Um, and we are at a 50 million ARR threshold right now as we speak, which is quite... A bit more actually since we updated the numbers. But, um- Bootstrapped as well And bootstrapped.

Julia Guenier: This is super important. We never raised. Uh, so yeah, bootstrapped company founded by Guillaume Moubeche, um, French-based entrepreneur in 2017, so nearly 10 years now. And we have a global presence, although you can hear from my accent that we are originally from France, but, uh, the US, US is our core market.

Julia Guenier: We also have a, a pretty strong presence in Europe and all around the world. So that's us today in key numbers. Um, but of course, what's interesting [00:22:00] for you here is to understand the numbers behind partnerships, uh, more specifically. So as the title of, uh, my session says, we manage to source 20% of our, uh, opportunities through partnerships.

Julia Guenier: What it means today is that we have over 2,500 partners. So partners to us is like the, the macro group in which you can find affiliates and then s-service and solution partners. So that's how we distinguish them. I take care of 400 of service and solution partners more specifically. They have a very different play.

Julia Guenier: I guess everyone is familiar, um, with the concept of affiliation, um, and, and, uh, and, uh, service or solution partnership. What we do want to build with these solution partners that I manage is a direct relationship, is a co-sell motion, is co-marketing, is real engagement, and of course, uh, [00:23:00] fueling our, our, um, SLG pipeline.

Julia Guenier: But just a quick note of introduction first, um, regarding this typology of, of, um, of partners. If we're being honest, we started s-small, let's say, with creating the affiliate program, trying to prove that there was traction around, uh, the indirect channel, and that's a wonderful, uh, job that Lilibeth Acuna, who left the company since then, joined just recently as partnerships ops, has built at Limitless.

Julia Guenier: Um, so she started with the affiliate, and then from the traction that the affiliate channel got, she started defining a new IPP for the service partner, and this service partner would typically be the type of, uh, partner who would bring a higher value, uh, deal opportunity. And we started then having the intuition that we had to create a proper program, separate program for them As we gain maturity in the channel, uh, and that's, [00:24:00] um, where I stepped in, uh, more exactly, taking care of, uh, this transition going from a one-to-many relationship to a one-to-one relationship with our most strategic partners.

Julia Guenier: And these partners will be mostly, uh, RevOps, GTM, B2B sales outbound growth agencies, uh, also CRM integrators, HubSpot partners, and so on. Um, and of course, since we serve a global, uh, client base, we also have a global, uh, partner base. Um, once again, since we're French, we started recruiting partners, uh, in France where we are based, but also, um, in the US, and then have started seeing some very serious traction all across Europe, specifically in Germany, uh, the Netherlands, and in the, the UK Um, so in numbers today, these are the numbers that we report to our steer co.

Julia Guenier: Uh, we're generating over fifteen percent of total revenue through [00:25:00] partnerships, uh, which is a great accomplishment given the fact that this channel not only has three years now. Uh, as I said many times, twenty percent of our new business opportunities, and since last year we've been growing MRR from, um, above two hundred percent.

Julia Guenier: So we're-- obviously, there's growth, uh, and there is, uh, a lot of activity going on, uh, in the partnership channel, partnership department here at Lemlist. Um, to give you also the big picture, uh, behind these numbers, we... It all started back in twenty twenty-four when Lilibeth joined the company. Um, she started everything from scratch, recruiting these affiliates and focusing mainly on building ops.

Julia Guenier: And that was, I guess, that's also very important to, to underline, is that to go from zero to one, you really need to have someone, uh, hands-on. So she, uh, built the whole PRM infrastructure on PartnerStack and then started [00:26:00] creating rituals, um, leveraging other tools, um, with partners, and that's really how it started generating indirect revenue for Lemlist.

Julia Guenier: As you can see, there has been, uh, a pretty significant growth, uh, during the year of twenty twenty-five, and that's exactly when Lemlist, uh, decided to reposition and rethink the IPP, targeting, uh, not only these original, uh, affiliate or freelancers or this type of, uh, persona, affiliate persona, but targeting and investing more resources into service and solution partners, bringing higher value deals to us.

Julia Guenier: So this is, um, a pretty interesting graph, uh, knowing that, and I should have put that, but Lemlist has been communicating quite a lot on, um, a plateau, uh, period that we have been experiencing. This is not something that we've seen reflecting on the partnership [00:27:00] side. Partnerships kept growing. Um, so that's also the magic behind partnerships, is that, um, it will reflect the market differently, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way.

Julia Guenier: But in this specific situation, growth kept going, uh, twenty percent, uh, twenty, uh, times, uh, more in only two years, which is quite great Anyway, I'm not here to brag about, uh, how great, uh, the, this channel is for Lemlist. Um, I think that the most important here, uh, is to say that once again, when- whenever starting an indirect, uh, channel partnership program, it is so important to get the right tools, and that's something that Lilibeth noticed that I'm still noticing every day now that we are growing the portfolio.

Julia Guenier: Um, so yes, the major tools that we started, um, uh, using, uh, from day one was, of course, PartnerStack. We needed a PRM, uh, whether it was for the affiliate or for the [00:28:00] solution partners. We had to make sure that everything was linked to, uh, our CRM on HubSpot. Um, just as a quick, uh, note of context, what's also important to note is that within Lemlist, we are, um, we have been developing the sales led motion and PLG motion for the last two years.

Julia Guenier: But originally, Lemlist is a PLG motion, uh, meaning that we, if we're being honest, weren't creating deals for every inbound or, or PLG deal coming in. And we really had to get the partnership channel, um, uh, aligned with this new strategy and new ops way of working as we went, uh, and are continuously going through towards a, a, a more SLG, uh, pr- partner-led, uh, motion.

Julia Guenier: Um, so yeah, that's pretty much it. That was the base of our, of our, uh, stack, uh, when we first started, and we're still using it. PartnerStack being linked to HubSpot, [00:29:00] n8n to have fun with many of the AI use cases I'm going to share now. Um, so now you've seen the numbers. Happy to walk you through my day-to-day from Monday to Friday, uh, being Julia at Lemlist.

Julia Guenier: Um, so as a quick note of context, um, as I said, I, uh, um, like we have a pretty lean culture at Lemlist, meaning that for one channel, you will most probably find one person. And we are most, um, encour- mostly encouraged to, uh, gain skills and autonomy with, with an AI and to also be as lean as possible as we are in this company.

Julia Guenier: I've learned so much from, from this culture, and also it's not an unrealistic way or unrealistic process to apply to your team. Um, it doesn't mean that we are not growing the team as we are growing the portfolio. As I said, we're hiring. But yes, I am one person, and since three weeks we're two with my VP of [00:30:00] partnership, Cindy.

Julia Guenier: But still, for months, um, and years, it's been one person facing hundreds of partners. My day-to-day is simply To make sure that these partners keep referring, uh, Lemlist to their clients, keep bringing deals to our sales team. So what they do is actually not at all the, the affiliate link. They're not that autonomous, and that's totally normal.

Julia Guenier: What they need is support in all aspects: sales qualification, product, um, questions, product issues, sometimes not that much, but, uh, and also to build trust. That's, uh, a very important, uh, a very important, uh, uh, need that they have, of course. So these are the main topics, uh, where I will be helping them on a day-to-day basic-- basis.

Julia Guenier: Um, but what we need to bear in mind, and I guess you all know, is that whenever you have 400 partners, you have also behind them, and hopefully you have maybe hundreds of clients, if not [00:31:00] thousands of clients. The client portfolio, partner client portfolio is growing every day. We're super happy about that.

Julia Guenier: But it also means that one partner can get 10 client requests, and that's just a multiplier in terms of supports. Um, if we didn't have any of the tools or processes that we have today, uh, we would just break the channel for being honest. And hiring 20 partnership managers wasn't an option because of the culture and because we trust, um, in the way that we can, by managing agents, by managing ourselves also, uh, we can, um, uh, farm this portfolio efficiently So that's exactly the point, um, we will go through now.

Julia Guenier: Um, also, I guess for context, as I said, and for those who joined later, uh, partnerships is sitting in a separate department at Lemlist now, but it was incubated, uh, within the [00:32:00] marketing department for years, for three years, nearly three years now. Um, and the shift is only pretty recent, which means that we're also investing lots of resources into partnerships.

Julia Guenier: But it also means something very interesting that I know many people will love to debate on whether partnerships sh-should sit separately from other teams, should sit under product, under sales, under marketing. But I think that given the story of Lemlist, it is super important, and it's, it's such a luck that partnerships s-first started in the marketing team.

Julia Guenier: The DNA of the marketing and growth team is really made of building tools, optimizing processes, and having a growth mindset. And that is, um, to me, uh, something that's really helped taking over, um, partnerships to a separate department. Not to notice also that because it was sitting under marketing, partners also served our content distribution purposes.[00:33:00] 

Julia Guenier: Um, this is not really the topic for today, but just a quick note, uh, so that you all have context around that. So during the days where, um, partnerships were still sitting within the growth marketing team, Antoine, uh, the growth engineer, um, built an amazing tool that is literally salvi- saving my life every day.

Julia Guenier: Four hundred partners have requests, have needs. Lemlist is a simple yet complex platform. Complex in the sense that you may have an automation running with Clay, with HubSpot, whatever. You may have sometimes a bug, it can happen. Anyway, you all... You can have product technical questions or simply be curious about the product itself because you're a partner and you're preparing for a client, uh, audit or client, uh, or, or prepare to pitch to a client.

Julia Guenier: Any question that you may have regarding Lemlist, what you would do naturally is address it to me, your [00:34:00] partner manager. Thing is You are 400 of you. I cannot, um, address or answer everyone, obviously. So what Antoine built is Buddy. We called him Buddy because he's literally our partner's buddy. Um, and Buddy is an AI partner assistant that we have plugged into our Slack partner workspace that we call Lemlist and Friends.

Julia Guenier: In this workspace, we have somewhere around 900 members from 400 agencies, and these members are mostly consultants that are going to ask questions every day, and that's totally normal. But for some questions, level one, level two questions, they can directly request and ask the question to Buddy. And so Buddy will open a thread inside Slack and then answer, like, in seconds.

Julia Guenier: Thing that I cannot do whenever I'm on calls or busy with another partner. This is literally saving my days, [00:35:00] but my bandwidth, but also super convenient for partners who have their answers in, um, just only a couple of seconds. What we know is that Buddy is addressing more than one thousand messages per month, which is absolutely insane.

Julia Guenier: Uh, he's doing the job super well, and we are, uh, continuously training Buddy so that he goes into much more technical topics, but he knows how to address an N8n workflow that might not be working, knows how to address also or es-escalate a topic to me. So whenever he's not able to answer it, I receive a notification, and I am able to enter the chat whenever I bring the most value.

Julia Guenier: Um, so in average, I'm sure this is saving two, three hours of my day. Um, so thing is, yeah, we have a Buddy usage report internally just to make sure that, of course, this brings value. But in terms of, um, in terms of requests, we've seen that we have other channels [00:36:00] where partners can reach out to us, of course.

Julia Guenier: Uh, from my personal email, um, uh, email inbox, that's for sure. This is where I try to prioritize our tier one partner accounts, so that I keep a direct relationship, um, and, um, try to avoid to escalate to an AI immediately to these type of accounts. Um, and also from PartnerStack, uh, there's a message section in PartnerStack where partners can write to us, and the next step will be to plug Buddy to PartnerStack to make sure that we can also address this source of, uh, communication.

Julia Guenier: Another tool that has been very useful and that has proven ROI from day one actually because Buddy is super convenient, but this is more on an admin support day-to-day. The Lemlab is something that has been bringing value concretely to partners and clients at the same time. Let me explain. So as I said, Lemlist is a [00:37:00] sales engagement platform.

Julia Guenier: The work of our partners is to implement Lemlist inside their client stack and run outbound campaigns with them or for them. But at some point, they will have to justify results on the campaigns that they have been launching with them or for them. In any case, they will have to audit what's happening on the account and what type of performance they have been able to help them deliver.

Julia Guenier: This is how the report section looks on Lemlist. This is a pretty successful campaign, by the way. Uh, it's very useful, of course, but this is only for the end user, for the clients. Whenever you are a partner, you need to justify, uh, the retainer that you charge your client. You need to justify the ROI of the mission, lots of things.

Julia Guenier: So beyond the app reporting section, Antoine once again built this wonderful product upon request, um, that is called Lemcody, um, [00:38:00] or the Lemlab. That's how we are renaming it, uh, as we speak. But in any case, the Lemcody is a partner private tool that partners can use, uh, to get a detailed audit around the client's account.

Julia Guenier: And this is pure AI. It's been scrapping more than two hundred thousand campaigns running on Lemlist for years. It's, uh, been fueled with our team of experts' input. It's been also fueled with benchmark stats and lots of data, propri- propriety data that we have, um, that allows us to generate a deep dive audit around the client's account.

Julia Guenier: And not only goes or touches to reporting section or, uh, was the response rate or l- or, or open rate convenient, it goes also into technical details. It goes into, uh, deliverability, potential issues. It goes un- until upsell and upgrade opportunities. This is also something that we've been training this tool on.

Julia Guenier: Let's say [00:39:00] that, um, you can recognize a pattern where a client is, uh, overusing a specific feature, then it's probably a signal for us to upgrade them, and that's exactly how the partner can detect that opportunity, um, and then pitch, um, an upgrade, um, uh, lead to our sales team. So as I said, ROI driven mostly, but also bringing concrete value to partners on a day-to-day.

Julia Guenier: And not to say that this is obviously a self-serve service, which is also very convenient, um, as a partner manager Um, so that was mostly on Lemlist. There's also another tool that I guess all of you use on a day-to-day. On our end, obviously, we use Clap because it's one of our products. Uh, Clap has, um... Clap is a recording tool, but is also allowing you to create agents inside AI agents inside, uh, the platform.

Julia Guenier: So not only I record all of my business reviews or regular rituals with [00:40:00] partners, but it also fuels, um, my CRM, it also fuels my Notion pages, my follow-up, um, my follow-up documents or shared documents, and this is saving a lot of time. From the four hundred partners that we manage at Lemlist, there might be maybe ten, fifteen percent of them with whom, whom we are running regular pipe reviews.

Julia Guenier: It's less than four hundred, but it's still quite a lot, and whenever they have several opportunities, it can take sometimes hours to just update the sales team, the right account executive, fill the pipeline, uh, fill the CRM with the right, uh, items, and so on. This is literally saving time. Of course, um, it's AI-powered in a sense that the AI from Clap will directly, uh, link, um, the insights that's relevant to the right item on, uh, on HubSpot so that I'm Just free of, uh, doing the, this, this part of the job.

Julia Guenier: So the CRM autofill [00:41:00] to me is a non-negotiable mostly when you start working into a co-selling motion, which is something that we've been seriously investing on with Cindy for the last couple of months now. Um, so yeah, my biggest recommendation would be, would be that. I will be very honest with you because I've been showing tools that...

Julia Guenier: and, and use cases that have been working. Uh, we have tested so many things that have been failing, for being very honest. Um, first of all, we thought that going through AI, um, a- an AI agent only, uh, would be sufficient or convenient for partners. This w- this was a total fail because of course it's about human relationship.

Julia Guenier: They still want to have an interaction with me, which I totally understand and I also prefer. So we decided to, uh, kill that opportunity. We also launched a couple of workflows to, um, um, to, uh, fill our cloud or our, um, any 10, uh, processes, but some of them failed [00:42:00] and created more noise than, than expected.

Julia Guenier: So now we are doubling down on scoping the project and making sure that it will bring actual value to partners and of course to end clients. Um, I was super excited about this new, actually, uh, everyone, uh, in the team at Lemlist, uh, sent me that, the PartnerStack MCP is live. I know this sounds like very advertising, but from s- from someone managing four, 400 partners, I'll be very honest, this has made my day, literally.

Julia Guenier: So super happy that, uh, PartnerStack has released the MCP that I've plugged, uh, from day one It's been quite recent, so I'm still exploring use cases. But one thing that has been taking me a lot of time is, uh, actual- actually reporting. Of course, you have reporting in PartnerStack. We also have data, uh, data visualization tool internally.

Julia Guenier: But for the specific needs that you have as a partner manager, meaning knowing exactly which, uh, client [00:43:00] entered yesterday from which channel, um, what's the, the client journey and so on, we need to have a deep, much deeper view on, on that data, and that's something that I'm able to do now by simply prompting, um, Claude to send me a detailed recap on a daily basis.

Julia Guenier: And what I plan to do now is to explore many more use cases. What I wanna go through is... And I actually have been browsing the skills library, that's been super helpful. But, uh, what I would definitely need is also, um, a flagging trend, uh, coworker, uh, just to observe any missing, um, momentum that, uh, that may happen on the pipeline, and that's for sure, because it's used to be a pretty manual task for me.

Julia Guenier: Um, commission auditing, uh, every month, of course, we pay out partners for what they have brought in terms of business. It's usually super clean. Thanks f- thanks, thanks, thankful for that. But it's [00:44:00] always best that you double-check, mostly when you run such, um, a high volume of, uh, of revenue. So we've built also a prompt directly pre-checking, uh, our commission, um, um, our commissions.

Julia Guenier: And then, uh, yeah, lots of other use cases that I have in mind. Um, one thing that we want to, um, steer much more now is churn alerts. Uh, partners manage also hundreds of clients sometimes, so we want to detect a churn opportunity, because if a part- a client churn from a partners, he can become a direct client, and this is existing business that we can...

Julia Guenier: we might be losing, if we're being honest, and that AI should be able to help us, uh, accomplish and, and, uh, yeah, generate new opportunities for, for our sales team. I've been talking a lot, um, but just to let you know, uh, where this is taking us now. Uh, we have very strong objectives, uh, high objectives [00:45:00] for the end of, uh, this year is to, uh, um, make times three on the pipe generation, meaning on the opportunities that we bring to our sales team through our partners.

Julia Guenier: Um, and yes, we have a pretty lean culture at Lemlist. It doesn't mean that I am staying on my own. Cindy joined three weeks ago as VP of partnerships, and she's now structuring the team with new hires. Uh, so more pa- partnership managers. One partner enablement manager and one partner manager for the clap product.

Julia Guenier: Um, so we have even stronger ambitions for ne- for, uh, twenty twenty-seven. Our belief is that we can reach a hundred million ARR, um, in about two, two... Yeah, in, in about a couple of years. But yes, the North Star today is a hundred million ARR , and we are confident that, uh, the partnerships channel can still have a very significant, uh, impact on how we get there.[00:46:00] 

Julia Guenier: So our next step is to double down on recruiting, uh, more of our IPPs in growing markets, mostly in the US. Enable them, uh, one-to-one. Once we have the AI, um, processes allowing us to manage maybe tier two accounts, we can focus and invest more time into our more strategic, strategic partners and then keep going with, uh, sales enablement.

Julia Guenier: All I'm saying here is that the story we're-- I'm telling y- you here is that, yes, we've been growing. Yes, we have, um, built some AI processes and tools that allow me to manage these accounts. But the next step now is to go back into a much more human, uh, relationship, and this is only because and thanks to AI Um, so yeah, I like to say that AI is actually protecting human relationships, uh, within, within partnerships, and that's a true feeling that I have, uh, and a very strong belief.

Julia Guenier: So, um, [00:47:00] just as a note of con- note of, uh... Yeah, just to, to, to conclude here, um, since we're hiring, saying it again, I will share the, the job description right after. But since we're hiring, we have been, uh, looking for specific profiles, uh, because we have this type of, uh, uh, AI processes because we are-- we wanna become more and more AI native, um, and because our channel works that way.

Julia Guenier: Uh, we've also seen that previous jobs de- job descriptions for partner manager was really related to being a project manager, touching to product, touching to sales, to marketing, and now we want the same, of course. We want the same level of curiosity. We want people hands-on, but we want, and I guess most of B2B or SaaS companies, uh, hiring for partner managers, looking for AI partnership architects, uh, that can have an actual, uh, vision on how to build the program, on how to scale it, [00:48:00] leveraging AI, not losing the human touch.

Julia Guenier: So yes, that's really where we're heading. I'm excited about the way my role is evolving. Um, it is true that you cannot miss the wag- the wagon. I don't know if you say that in English, but it's a French expression anyway. Um, uh, it's true, but it's also super exciting because you keep learning every day, and we become more and more autonomous, so yeah, very excited about it.

Julia Guenier: Uh, last but not least, um You may have some questions, you may want to grab a, a coffee, virtual coffee, uh, you may wanna talk. Um, I'm always happy to, uh, exchange with peers, so don't hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, and, uh, yes, I'll drop also, uh, the job offer for the partnership manager within our team.

Julia Guenier: Uh, I promise it's a lot of fun. And yes, thanks everyone. Um, I'll pass the mic to, uh, Justin now. 

Justin Zimmerman: Yeah. Thank you, thank you. I've got an idea. [00:49:00] Uh, I'm actually gonna... Send me the job description link, and I'll actually include it in the email to everyone who's attended here and registered, so that way, uh, everybody can see it.

Justin Zimmerman: And so also, I just dropped the link to Julia's LinkedIn profile, so if you wanna reach out to her about the job or some virtual coffee, uh, please do. Let's type the word, uh, type the word LEM in chat to let her know, uh, we loved what she put out here for us to learn today, uh, sharing all the inside tracks around growing partner source revenue with internal AI tools.

Justin Zimmerman: And, uh, we've gotta bring on also our friend here who's been waiting in the wings. That's probably, uh, an American, uh, expression as well. Julia, feel free to hang out with us here backstage. Thank you so much for taking the time to build this out. And, uh, let's give her a round of applause, and now welcome our friends, specifically friend Tyler Calder from PartnerStack, who's gonna pick up where...

Justin Zimmerman: He's got something always fun. He's, he doesn't do things normally, and so I'm, I'm, I'm ready for some sort of, some sort of weird, uh, awkward moments here for myself. And so [00:50:00] Tyler, uh, take it away. I'll bring your screen up here. Julia, I'll be in touch. Send me that link to the job description. And for everybody else, uh, stick around, uh, we've got Tyler Calder coming up and our networking session, where I'll give you guys some instructions at the end of Tyler's session now.

Justin Zimmerman: And so take care, Julia. See you soon. And Tyler, it's all yours. 

Tyler Calder: All right. Hello, everyone. Um, thanks for queuing me up there, Justin. I'll try to not, uh, disappoint with some awkwardness. Is that, uh- 

Justin Zimmerman: I, I, I- That's our 

Tyler Calder: benchmark, right? 

Justin Zimmerman: We've got two things. We've got rizz versus awkwardness, and so that's- Okay

Justin Zimmerman: one of our fun words, rizz. And so let, let's- 

Tyler Calder: All right ... 

Justin Zimmerman: what, what do you got for us here? What do you got for me? 

Tyler Calder: All right. I'm gonna fly through this, uh, 'cause I wanna get to the networking on time, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna run through a few things in nine minutes. Um, and part of what I wanna say, if anybody's in Ontario and you're cel- celebrating the last day of school I'm wearing this for my child to celebrate her graduation into grade [00:51:00] three.

Tyler Calder: She drew this for me when she was mad one day. So what I tell to people, uh, if you're upset with anything I say, you can just slap this in front of me, and that's my signal. Let's dive in, Justin. Shall we? 

Justin Zimmerman: Let's 

Tyler Calder: do it. Um, so last month we talked about how we were going to launch our MCP and our skills marketplace.

Tyler Calder: We have done that. Uh, and so I wanted to pick up, uh, where Julia left off a little bit and where I left off, uh, last, uh, last month. Yeah. 

Julia Guenier: Yep. 

Tyler Calder: So, uh, a couple things, um, and I'm gonna share some things live. Just wanna call this out. These are some of the top skills that have been downloaded through our marketplace to date.

Tyler Calder: I'm gonna share the output of some of these and what they look like. I think one of the most critical things to make sure people know is these skills, they can be used regardless of what your tech stack is. So as long as you're using a piece of technology that has an [00:52:00] MCP connector, uh, you can use these skills.

Tyler Calder: You don't have to be a PartnerStack customer. You don't have to be using our platform. You can be using any PRM, any partner solution that allows you to connect into it, and you can leverage these skills. So I wanted to make that clear, um, because our philosophy is anything we do should be for the betterment of the community, not just for the betterment of PartnerStack.

Tyler Calder: So feel free to check them out whether or not you're, you're a customer, uh, or, or not. Um, the other thing that I wanted to say is just thank you to folks from the community that have submitted their own skills. Uh, I'm gonna share it live in a second, but you can filter by people. You can filter by authors.

Tyler Calder: Julia, I'd love to get some of the skills that you've built into the marketplace. People can leverage some of what you've, you've done and, and you just shared. Um, Rob has submitted, uh, a number, Rob Moyer, uh, who you're gonna hear from later. Um, he's in there. [00:53:00] Um, and to encourage that, 'cause I do love just random contests and competition, um, so here's your surprise, Justin.

Tyler Calder: Um, let's run another contest. We ran one last month. Yes. We had a winner for a fresh 500 bucks. I wanna do the same. Um, so if you're doing anything really interesting leveraging skills, again, whether you're using PartnerStack or not, um, you can very easily submit them into the marketplace. You just hit the Submit a Skill button.

Tyler Calder: Um, we'll review it, make sure it looks good, approve it, and then you're in there. Um, we'll help promote it, um, make sure we get some eyeballs on it, and then, uh, between now and your next event at the end of July, whoever has the most downloads of their skill You're gonna win another 500 bucks. I think that sounds fun.

Justin Zimmerman: I like this. I really do. Okay. Yeah, I think this is fantastic. In fact, I'm-- I didn't- I never know what you're gonna do, and so when you show up here, it's could be anything, right? And so, [00:54:00] um, um, you know, running the poll in the beginning, I think that was a good opportunity to kinda see there's a lot of people out there who both could use the skills, for those of you who kind of voted in the, the 10% category.

Justin Zimmerman: And then those of you who voted in, like, that 15, 20 to 50% and more, this is a fantastic opportunity to be seen, be heard, and then of course, um, I would say be memorialized and win $500, uh, on the PartnerStack, uh, skills. And so, uh, tell us more. Yeah. Let's do it. 

Tyler Calder: All right. So I'm gonna go rapid fire, so live for a second.

Tyler Calder: So this is just what the marketplace looks like. Pretty straightforward. You can browse by different partner motions, categories, newest, most downloaded. Um, by far the most downloaded so far has been an IPP builder. I'm gonna share an example of how we leverage this one at PartnerStack ourselves. Um, I'm not gonna spend too much time here, but you can very quickly just scroll through and, and kinda see if there's anything that might be useful for you.

Tyler Calder: And then, like I said, if you're interested in submitting your own, you can do that here. Um, and it's simply [00:55:00] skills.partnerstack.com. Pretty easy. So I wanna share some of what these outputs actually look like. So this is, um, an output document around IPP, but the way that we look at it isn't, "Hey, just give us a broad ideal partner profile."

Tyler Calder: Because we have a partner program that's been in place for many years, um, what I asked it to do was look at our historical data and give me some guidance around what signals and characteristics our best partners share, and then we're gonna leverage that to go out and recruit new partners. So if anybody's heard me talk about how we market at PartnerStack, we take ideal, um, customer profile very seriously.

Tyler Calder: We use about 60 different signals to identify what a good fit customer will be for PartnerStack, which is to say they're gonna get as much value out of our platform as possible, and that's who we wanna work with. Um, we [00:56:00] wanna work with people where there's an obviously good fit. We wanna do the same with partners.

Tyler Calder: And so connecting into our own PartnerStack MCP and using the IPP skill, it basically gave us, um, a breakdown of- All of the characteristics of our top partners, um, who they are, what they do day-to-day, what they look like from the outside. So these are the things that we can leverage as signals to drive some partner recruitment and some of our outbound messaging.

Tyler Calder: You know, what a strong, uh, high, medium, low kind of fit might look like and the different things that we look at. Um, you know, how quickly some of these partners will activate, what the sequences are that they go through. And so all of this becomes the basis to then trigger another workflow, which would be outbound recruitment, messaging, how we tailor onboarding.

Tyler Calder: So now this has become like a really interesting, robust piece of context for those other workflows that we've built. So [00:57:00] I wanted to share that one, um, quickly. Uh, Rachel's asking, "What historical data did it leverage for this IPP creation? Historical info from PartnerStack." Yeah, so historical information from PartnerStack.

Tyler Calder: So it looked at all of our partners over the past couple years, the top-performing partners, what are their characteristics, which ones do they share in common, and then help build this out. And so we'll leverage that to go find similarly profiled partners. Like I said, though, um, as long as you're using a platform that has partner data in it, doesn't have to be PartnerStack, um, and as long as you can connect into that data, you can leverage these skills to, to do this.

Tyler Calder: Um, the other one is benchmarking. Um, and we're actually gonna end up releasing a dedicated benchmarking tool because we have, you know, over two thousand, um, vendors that we've worked with over the years, all in B2B SaaS across different motions. We have a ton of data. So we're gonna end up launching an-- our own dedicated [00:58:00] benchmarking tool.

Tyler Calder: But we did a, a quick benchmark, um, and I asked Claude to anonymize a lot of this. Um, but it's calling out in our own program, like we have a gap around partner activation. We have maybe even too many partners to the point where we're not able to get to all of them, activate them meaningfully. Um, over the past thirty days, we actually haven't seen any revenue come from partners, which is a, a critical thing that we need to look at.

Tyler Calder: Do we expect it to come now that we're at end of quarter, start to close? What's going on there? You know, it's looking at how competitive we are from a commission standpoint. That's looking good. It's telling us straight up, we've got one partner manager who is pretty stretched. Um, Claude's calling that out as, as a critical thing we need to look at.

Tyler Calder: We're kind of under-indexed on partner-to-partner manager ratio compared to industry benchmarks. Um, and a bunch of other things, kind of prioritizes where we should look, uh, what we should, uh, think about, uh, addressing. And then, um, this one I love quite a [00:59:00] bit. Um, this is a weekly kind of action list and, and digest.

Tyler Calder: So what are the things that our partner manager should be focused on? And we can do all of this right through Claude. Um, we don't actually have to log into PartnerStack, so we can approve or decline, um, inbound partner applications. Uh, it'll automatically flag ones that maybe look fraudulent, and we can just automatically decline them.

Tyler Calder: Um, it'll flag maybe commission owed that we need to look at, um, and approve. Um, you know, ones that are maybe pretty old. It's like, "Hey, what's going on here? Looks like we haven't paid this partner in fifteen months. We should probably take a look at that." So it'll flag a lot of things like that for us. Um, and, and again, I, I think the key here is what's that next action that we want to take?

Tyler Calder: Um, and then lastly is, um, just building out a QBR deck. So again, it's anonymized. Um, I've done this in kind of an interactive HTML format, uh, which we tend to like to do over decks these days. Um, but it's pulling [01:00:00] everything from, you know, an executive summary, um, performance highlights, wins, you know, areas that we should focus on, uh, stated goals to document them out, um, and all that fun stuff.

Tyler Calder: So those are all items that I just wanted to show, uh, what you can do with some of these skills once you're connected in. Um, and then I shared this last time, but this is still by far my favorite skill that I use every day, which is our stalled deal finder. It helps us really connect partnerships into sales, make sure we're nudging deals along, especially now that we're towards end of quarter.

Tyler Calder: And then lastly, of course, another picture as we build out the Zimmerman calendar. Thank you for putting these on- Thank you ... and always making them enjoyable. 

Justin Zimmerman: I love it. I love it, guys. And so I, I think this is a great segue. Of course, we're a little bit over time. Look in the chats right now, uh, Tyler's actually gonna be jumping into, uh, the breakout networking room.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you're like, "Hey, I want more from Tyler," Tyler is gonna head over there right now. [01:01:00] Go click that link in the chats, and you can come on screen, interact, network. Uh, go click that button. Tyler will be over there in a second. You can, you can say goodbye right now, Tyler. I know, wish we had more time.

Justin Zimmerman: I love spending time with you. Okay, goodbye. But, uh, go meet everyone over there who wants to learn more and network with you. Um, and, and then there is two other rooms that are open. And so if you wanna pick up more with Tyler and hear what he has to say, learn more about his program, he's gonna drop here.

Justin Zimmerman: Uh, I'm gonna go head out into, uh, kind of the waiting room of the, of the, of the, uh, of the networking session, so that anybody else who's waiting for me right now, I can see there's a bunch of people, uh, I can direct them to the two other rooms. And so, uh, you can look above and see a button that says Breakouts, especially if you're on your desktop.

Justin Zimmerman: Click that button. You should see three rooms, and, uh, go click the one you wanna join. Hit that Join Discussion button. You'll come on live just like me, and, uh, Tyler will be there waiting for you. And so get out of here, Tyler. Go meet those people who are waiting for you right now in that room. And so, uh, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna head into, um, I'm gonna drop two more links in here, and then I'm [01:02:00] going to go give you, uh...

Justin Zimmerman: I'm gonna meet the other people who were maybe not a part of this session. There's Antonio's room you can go drop into, and of course, Rob Moyer, who's gonna be talking about AI partner ops and all things Claude in partnerships. And so, uh, those are the two rooms right there. You can switch and leave any time you want, um, in and out of those.

Justin Zimmerman: And so if you like what you hear, what you see, go ahead. But, um, otherwise, um, go click those links. Go click those buttons. Uh, join one of those rooms. I'm gonna head out here and go hang out and, uh, thanks for joining us. Uh, we're trying some new things here, and so get interactive, get engaged, uh, go join those rooms and, uh, get off the sidelines and stop being a spectator and, uh, start asking questions and feel like, uh, you know, you're, you're getting everything you can out of this time here that you're spending with us today.

Justin Zimmerman: And so that's it for us in our first kickoff session. Go join those networking rooms, and then see you throughout the rest of the day. Thank you. Take care, and-