Lessons From a Failed Startup #5 ❌ Beware of your GTM: 5 Q's you need to ask before diving in Dan and I had the perfect idea to go through partners to get more customers. Here's what we did: ■ Created a strategy to meet with at least 5 partners a week ■ Created a podcast about the partners to build rapport ■ Created a partner program to pitch to them about our software ■ Signed multiple partners to start selling our software to their clients meet This was a GTM that took about 2 months before it started picking up steam. We did a longer approach because there was a finite amount of partners out there and we wanted to build trust. They LOVED our software and were super hyped on it. We got many partners on board and things were going great! So we thought... After a while we realized that none of the partners were selling our stuff. We didn't even get a single meeting from any of them. This is when we realized we done goofed. We started asking around and found out this was not the right move and we wouldn't get sales rolling in every day from them. We ran out of money and eventually shut down the business... Here's 5 questions we learned to ask about our GTM and partnerships that need to be considered before you dive in: 1. How will your approach be selling to their clients (ie. who's doing what)? 2. Do they care more about client experience more than the kickback? 3. Are they more burdened with work if they sold your software? 4. Do they have a great use case for any of their clients? 5. Are your partners paying for your product as well? Hopefully this helps shed some light on what you need to consider when working with partners! NOTE: These partners are great people and amazingly talented, they just didn't do what we thought they would do to no fault of their own! Good luck out there 🍀
Sinisa Grgic
4w
Thanks for sharing these valuable insights! It's crucial to thoroughly evaluate your GTM strategy to ensure it aligns with your partners' goals and capacities. This lesson is a great reminder for all of us. 🌟
Thanks Tanner! Excellent points.
Founder | Marketing Leader | Startup Cheerleader 📣 | Podcast Host
1moThis is a great post! Thank you for sharing the lessons from your experience. Any GTM has to consider incentives- especially in the partner reseller space. Without a clear reason to keep your product top of mind, it'll slip. Sales/ partner enablement (training, marketing materials, messaging) can make a world of impact when equipping others to sell for you. Thanks for being vulnerable on here. There are no failures, only (sometimes expensive) lessons. If you ever want to talk about your story on my podcast (The UNHIRED Podcast), I'd love to have you :).