January 16, 2025 • 27 mins
'Duh' was a common phase when I was an adolescent. Kids used it in a not-so-nice way to let the other person know that what they were stating was obvious.
In all of my years in customer experience management, it never occurred to me to consider the impact of partnerships on CX.
If you think about it, it's a 'duh.'
On today's show, I'm excited to introduce Theresa Caragol, who has authored
Theresa shares powerful insights on how to move beyond “random acts of partnering” and build intentional strategies that drive meaningful business outcomes.
We explore Achieve Unite’s three-part framework—talent development, ecosystem strategy, and profitable growth programs—and its role in fostering successful partnerships.
Other key topics include:
- Why strategic partnerships are essential to delivering exceptional customer experiences.
- Common misconceptions leaders have about partnerships and how to uncover gaps in their strategies.
- The concept of “partner lifetime value” versus “customer lifetime value” and the unique benefits of prioritizing it.
Tune in to learn how to create partnerships that not only fuel growth but also elevate your customer experience to the next level!
Show Notes:
- 2025 Partnering Trends: https://www.linkedin.com/
pulse/2025-partnering-success- trends-theresa-caragol-bc7mf/? trackingId=O%2F4Y2pViSJa% 2BFsYtopOTpw%3D%3D - Link to what we would tell our younger selves: https://www.linkedin.com/
pulse/letter-our-younger- selves-theresa-caragol-czzoe/? trackingId= 01m35CVRRhuwhlMSwAbtyQ%3D%3D - All the partnering success monthly editions https://www.linkedin.com/
newsletters/ 6932307608557010944/ - Partnering Success book for order: .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}Mark as PlayedTranscript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today's episode is brought to you by Achieve Unite, a global
leader in leadership development, business acceleration and trusted
partnerships. Achieve Unite combines deep expertise, data
analytics and AI to help companies accelerate revenue control
costs, elevate talent and build trust. They're more
than advisors. They deliver results with their proven three part approach,
(00:23):
talent development, ecosystem strategy and profitable growth
programs. Whether you're strengthening alliances, enhancing
internal systems, or optimizing your partner ecosystem,
Achieve Unite is the partner you need for success.
Hey there and welcome back to the Delighted Customers
(00:46):
Podcast. As we step into this new year, I've got some exciting
updates to share with you. First, you might have noticed something
different. The podcast has a new look. We've got an awesome
blue theme and a redesigned cover, all to reflect the energy
and passion we pour into each episode. But
that's not all. I am thrilled to announce that the Delighted
(01:08):
Customers Podcast now has a title sponsor. We
partnered with Achieve Unite, a company that's all about building trusted
partnerships, both within and between
organizations. Why? Because partnerships aren't just
business buzzwords. They're game changers for creating
outstanding customer experiences. I want to take a quick moment
(01:29):
to say a thank you to you. Yes, you. For tuning in,
sharing the show and helping us grow. This community means
the world to me and your support has opened up opportunities
like this amazing sponsorship. Now back to Achieve
Unite. Today's episode is extra special because their. CEO,
Teresa Carrigoal joins me to dive into something
(01:52):
that doesn't get talked about enough. And that is the connection
between strategic partnerships and customer experience. In a
world that's getting smaller, yet more complex, the
number of partnerships is growing fast. But here's the
thing. The quality of how those partnerships work.
Together is what makes or breaks success. Teresa
(02:14):
and I unpack the context of partnership, some common
roadblocks, and practical tips for organizations and their
teams to collaborate effectively and deliver for their customers. So grab your
coffee or your tea. Settle in and let's jump right in.
Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so
glad you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about
(02:37):
customer experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't
just good for business. It's a powerful way to make a meaningful
difference in people's lives. Each week we feature thought
provoking conversations with industry thought leaders from
a variety of backgrounds, offering unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
(02:59):
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Well, I am so excited to introduce my
guest on the show, Teresa Carrigol. Teresa and
I have formed a partnership because we have so
(03:20):
much in common. And I want to tell
you how excited I am to share her story
with you because I think it will shed some light and hopefully, as we
always try to do some learnings for the audience as well. I
know I learned a lot. So, Teresa, welcome to the show. Thank you
for having me. I'm delighted to be here today. Yay. And
(03:42):
Teresa is a title sponsor now of and her company
of the Delighted Customers podcast. So we're
going to talk a little bit about the intersection of trust,
AI partnership, and business outcomes. And what
fascinated me so much about your company and
your story is you have tapped into something that I have not heard
(04:04):
anyone exactly put their thumb on. And that is we
think about. You know, we often talk about matrix organizations and the
complexity and the evolving layers of
organizations. But there's another thing that has to do with partnerships.
In a world that we live in today, you can't really
exist without some intricacies, some
(04:28):
integrations that exist. Whether you really think about it that way or
not. I mean, I'm not just talking about middleware. I'm talking about the partnerships
you have with everyone in the supply chain between you
and and the end customer. And so if you would
just shed some light on the white space that you saw as an
opportunity and what gets you so pumped
(04:50):
up about it. You know, what excites me
so much is that I grew up in this
partnering alliance, go to market channel
space, and spent my entire career in the tech industry as an
executive running these partnering divisions. And
I can remember 15 years ago saying, Partnering
(05:12):
needs to be at the CEO level. Partnering needs
to be across every part of the organization. It needs
to become a way of life. Well, fast forward 15
years, well, probably more like 25 years later.
Published a book and has become a bestseller
in 25 categories about how to do
(05:35):
partnering right and how to make it successful
right first time. Whether that's partnering with your customers, whether
that's partnering cross functionally inside of your organization, whether that's
partnering with your distribution channels, with your
suppliers, with your strategic
dealers or alliances, you know, that's what we're
(05:56):
talking about here. Excellent. So before we get into
the magic behind the curtain and what you've
created as a approach to helping
companies, and you had mentioned to me in
our earlier conversation that you like to focus on pretty large companies,
large enterprise organizations, but you will work with other
(06:18):
organizations as well. What is the big deal?
Why should the C suite really care so much about
partnerships? Partnering in the
B2B space, bar none thousand
percent. It's the way of the future. And any
CEO that is not thinking about it this
(06:40):
way is missing a big trick for success.
Yeah, yeah. And can you, like
they're always talking about, well, I've got to make, you know, an investment
in my time, my people and my. Why is investing and
the concept of partnership so important? Well, if you
think about, think about customer lifetime value, right?
(07:02):
You, Mark, do all of these podcasts you've talked about part customer
lifetime value all day long? We do. Everybody understands customer lifetime value,
right? The lifetime value of a customer, if we have them for 10 years.
Think about partner lifetime value. By the way, we own the trademark on partner
lifetime value and the concept of what
if we treat our partners? I have a
(07:25):
solution provider. I have a dealer. I have a, you know, a network
of partners. It's customer lifetime value on steroids. Right.
And we make that experience with the partner a force
multiplier for them and we propel their businesses
forward. It's a way of life. It's a very different way of
thinking. It takes a longer time sometimes to be successful. But
(07:48):
in the long run, the force multiplier effect is
magnificent. And it's exponential
as you're talking. In a lot of ways, it kind of bucks the status quo
thinking or conventional thinking in that we're taught to compete,
compete, compete and outperform and outperform. What you're talking about is
really the tent is getting larger
(08:11):
and you're having people that are connected to your
organization that you want to lift up as
well, right? Yes, it's this, you know, I really believe in the
flywheel effect. And we talk about that in the book that
as you create, every organization needs to have their partner
strategy. They need to have their community strategy. And we talk about the community. And
(08:33):
you have to be very deliberate about what your ecosystem
is, because your eco, your own ecosystem is made up of a
set of communities. Whether that's, you know,
associations that you participate in, whether it's events that
you attend on an annual basis, whether it's memberships that you belong to.
Right. And by the way, personally and professionally, we all, we need to
(08:55):
make sure that our organizations have this set of communities
that were participating. Maybe we're owning a community.
Right? Think about Salesforce, think about aws, re invent.
I mean, some of the biggest communities in the world now are owned by some
of these big tech companies. So,
Teresa, I want to talk about some of the misconceptions
(09:18):
that companies have around this topic. And one of
the things that I Want to ask you about is, do leaders
take it for granted that these partnerships are just happening
and optimized? Yes, 100%.
And do you have a way of helping them
understand how there might be a gap? Yeah. Yeah.
(09:40):
I mean, 75% of partnerships never reach their
potential. And partnerships are
hard. Right. It's not. It is a muscle that has
to get built in people's DNA. You know, we
call individual trust and organization trust. Right. So in people's
DNA and an organization's DNA, partnering has to
(10:02):
become a way of life. It has to become a muscle that gets built
so that you get really good at developing these. I no longer
believe partnering can be done, you know, a sales leader or
a, you know, a supply leader. It really has to permeate through
the organization. And you've developed
a diagnostic tool that companies can use, right, to assess. Tell me
(10:25):
more about that. Yeah, we actually have two diagnostic tools, and
we talk about both of them in the book. You know, as you know, there's
three components. Three. Three elements to the system of partnering success.
So the trusted business relationships piece is
part one of the book. And there is a diagnostic
tool, the only one in the world today that
(10:46):
is scientifically based that measures business
trust and that codifies profiles of people
and how they build trust and then helps them develop their
muscles in the ways that they maybe are not always strong.
And up until now, trust was sort of in this esoteric
thing. Well, we now have a way to say, hey, Mark might build
(11:08):
trust differently than Teresa builds trust. So how do
I bridge. It's like a language. It's like body language, right? It's another
language that you get in your repertoire. Because if
individuals can accelerate trust, what happens?
Productivity goes up, innovation goes up. You know,
cross functional collaboration goes up, revenue goes up.
(11:30):
So this notion of accelerating business
relationships and kind of eliminating that competitive
thing that has been inside of organizations and
across organizations is really important. So business relationships and
pqi, Partnering Quotient Index is the name of
that assessment. Think eq, Think iq. This is your
(11:52):
pq and it's your ability to build trust. So that's the
assessment for the individuals. We also have a business
acceleration set of assessments we
have in the book Uniters and deflators. You know, what are partnership
uniters? What are partnering deflators? So you can really get a sense
in your organization. Are you doing partnering? Well?
(12:14):
Do you have the muscles built in your company to do it? Well,
then do you create an experience
for your partners? And we have a value measurement index that
actually assesses the science of whether you're
creating much like Net promoter score for customers,
Net promoter score for the partners. Are you creating
(12:36):
a scientific phenomenal experience for the partners? And we
have that diagnostic tool as well on the business acceleration
side. Got it. So there are two diagnostic
tools. So one of the things we talked about, and I just like to pull
out gems here, is that companies leaders can
often overlook or take for granted the fact that the
(12:57):
importance of partnerships to the whole ecosystem of what
they end up delivering to their end user customer.
And you have written a book and by the way, the name of the book
is. The name of the book is Partnering Success the Force
Multiplier to achieve exponential growth.
And so in the book you reference these two diagnostics, the
(13:18):
PQI and the other business accelerators, which
then gives what seems like a soft, touchy
feely topic, a lot of objectivity. Because now
you've got results report out from the assessment.
Correct? Absolutely correct. And it will, I assume, identify
gaps for the company to say, hey, we should. Now
(13:41):
does your company provide guidance on helping them prioritize what they should
work. On 1st,000% in both the
individual. We help individuals prioritize where their skill
sets are to increase partnering muscles and we help
organizations prioritize what they need to invest in
that's going to give them the biggest return. Because we all know you can't do
(14:02):
everything at the same time. I just think it's
fascinating, you know, I've been in the CX world for, I don't
know, a couple of decades and it never really occurred to
me to think about the impact of partnerships, especially outside,
inside the organization. Yes. But oh my gosh, it's becoming
a more and more complex world where we need to rely on
(14:24):
and you know, we only need to look back a few years in the heart
of COVID when there was supply chain issues to really.
And that's just nuts and bolts kind of stuff where it was
dramatically affecting people's business. Yeah, it's
so true. And I think this partnering
thing, strategic alliances are making a
(14:46):
resurgence. We're going to see these deep strategic alliances
become much more important over the course of the next decade
with this advent of AI. Every company has to be a tech
company. You can't go it alone.
And we have the global phenomenon. So this
partnering thing has to. CEOs have to get good at it.
(15:10):
Yarrows have to get good at it. Can
you share sort of a story of a
customer that had a problem that
you helped them with, whether they found it or you
Found it. And then you use the tool and. Yeah, tell us about
that. There's a few examples, there's many examples of that. Throughout the entire
(15:32):
book are examples of customers who had problems or
opportunities where we've really made impact. But let's do a couple.
One is two companies came together and were experiencing
a lot of conflict in the integration. Teams were
fighting, they were not synergizing
together. And we came in, they did the
(15:54):
entire PQI trust building, team building experience
for their teams and they
said that their teams were, were six months ahead
of everybody else in the organization because they went through
these kinds of experiences together early and
were able to innovate faster and integrate themselves faster. So
(16:16):
that's one. At the organization level we
have helped a number of companies. I'm very proud of the
story of Atlassian and the story of a couple of
other companies who have built unbelievable
partner networks and have incredible partner
experiences because of some of the diagnostic tools we've helped them
(16:38):
with because of some of the things that we've done to build these partner
programs that are world class and easy to do business
with and make this seamless experience for the
customer fantastic. But if that company
had gone it alone, that customer wouldn't have had
these amazing experiences. And so those are
(16:59):
just some things I'm really proud of. Yeah, could you
give us some, would you mind me giving us some context on that? So I'm
just trying to wrap my head around the mechanisms that you put the solutions that
you might put in place and how there's some quality controls built
into how the organizations partner together.
Well, if you think about part of the magic
(17:21):
of what Achieve Unite does is is
developing organizations partner programs,
their partner strategy, their partner program. Because the only way
to get partnerships to work is to create. Why do you
have a partner program in the first place? It creates trust at
scale. And if you're going to create trust at scale, get
(17:43):
people to work with you, you have to have these seamless partner programs.
And that's one of our superpowers is understanding an
organization. What do they need to
do to create their own superpower
partner? Think about it on steroids, right? How do I have this partnership
initiative that's super successful the first time?
(18:06):
Got it, Got it. And
part of that solution could be anything from the
people aspect of it, the technology aspect
aspect of it. Am I right on that? It could be the company
strategy and the program aspect of it. It could be the data analytics
and where the company should be focusing in order to get the biggest
(18:29):
return for Me, which I very value
very deeply, is the people side. Because if you're going to get
partnering successful, the people have to work together well. And so one of our
superpowers is helping people become
really good at partnering. And how do you put joint North
Stars together, and how do you do joint business planning, and how
(18:51):
do you make that work really well and teaching the muscles
to the people to do that? Teresa, what would
be a symptom that I may
be a little bit under the weather as a
company? That may be a signal for me to
say, hmm, I may have a partnering issue.
(19:13):
Yeah, well, in the book, there's a whole thing of
partnering deflators. And so it's all of these symptoms that
you are not maximizing your opportunity to partner. But
let's talk about a few of them. You know, one might be,
oh, yeah, we've got some partnerships. They're very transactional.
Whenever you hear, oh, their partnerships are very transactional, it probably
(19:34):
means you've got a big opportunity there and you're not leveraging it
strategically. I also, I also often hear, you
know, our sellers are competing with our partners, and
our partners don't bring any value. They just do fulfillment. If you
hear those kinds of things going, you probably have a big opportunity to
accelerate, to turn the accelerator on, because all you're doing in
(19:57):
that phenomenon is creating internal conflict, which
is preventing you from even maximizing what you could be doing
externally. Another one I hear
is we think we have an
opportunity to work with partners to bring us into opera,
to bring us into deals.
(20:17):
Okay, now what are you going to do for them? How does that
work? So there's. You probably do have an opportunity, but it goes
much broader than that. Because if all it is is referrals, by the way, that's
a good partnership motion, referrals, influencing.
But where you see that, you more than likely have much more
opportunity for integrated services, white
(20:39):
labeling, you know, much deeper levels of
alliances. Why don't
companies do this on their own? I mean, I
think they do. I think we're seeing. We're getting more
calls outside of the tech industry and other industries because
people are starting to realize how important this is. But
(21:01):
it's hard. Partnering is not easy. It goes back to how
you started the conversation about competition.
And, you know, we've all been bred in this competitive
world, and you have to shift your. We call it the partnering growth
mindset. Right. You've got to believe if you partner
together, you make the pie bigger, you make your
(21:22):
opportunities more, as opposed to, we're competing with one
another. And that's a mindset shift. There's a lot of sellers that don't have
that mindset. Right. There's a lot of individuals in the organization that sometimes don't
have that mindset. And so we have to shift the mindsets too.
Yeah. So there's
some great tips there. I heard some
(21:45):
of the things that you want to be aware of
in terms of, hey, maybe I could use some help
in this area is if I'm hearing that our
partnerships are more transactional than relationship based.
If we have what I used to call channel conflict. Right.
Where we've got sellers competing against each other in the
(22:07):
organization. And
I guess also if you've got departments within the
organization that are highly frictioned.
Very good example. Yeah.
In terms of strategy recommendations for how companies,
obviously they're going to want to read your book. They're going to want to take
(22:30):
the assessment, one of the assessment or the other and call you.
But what other practical steps can companies take to do a better
job of partnering? Well, we have an AI
partnering success hub which
will be even deeper with we are completing an acquisition
right now that will have an unbelievable
(22:52):
capacity of knowledge in partnering.
I would tell you the most in the entire world.
And they can purchase that for their
teams, integrate it into their own systems and have
a tool for the people to understand how they build
trust, and a tool for the organization to maximize
(23:15):
its partner building muscles. Excellent,
Excellent. Is there anything else that
I'm thinking about that you want to share
with the audience relative to partnering that I
missed? I would just say
that I would like people to think about
(23:36):
it in a methodology and a structure and a
system. The ad hoc, we call it random
acts of partnering. You know, the random acts of partnering
won't get you the results you want. And so it needs to be
really done. The degree to which organizations and people
get the strategy right is the degree to which they're successful two years
(23:58):
later. Excellent, excellent.
And I want to ask, because we in the CX space get pounded
about this ROI of CX all the time.
What is the ROI of partnering? And are there any concrete ways that
companies can go either to this, to the C
Suite or the C C Suite, asking themselves, you
(24:22):
know, tell me how, what's the ROI of this? Yeah, there is,
there are a number of different metrics. I mean, revenue, of course,
right? Revenue, customer loyalty. One of the things we've seen in the SaaS
world is, you know, land, adopt, expand, renew. You
know, we were, we were very focused on Land and renew. But when you
partner, well, the adopt and the expansion
(24:45):
that happens inside of customers because these partners are
out on your behalf with their own services, their
own ecosystems, their own. Think about Zoom, right? Think
about what Zoom has done and the ecosystem they've created around
their application. Microsoft, these partners have built huge
businesses on this technology with services, with
(25:08):
intellectual property, with all of these capabilities
that make the customer experience so much better and the
customer. And they stay in that customer for a very long
time. Right. And so that's the partner lifetime value
ripple effect that you get when you build these ecosystems
correctly. Excellent. Great tips, great
(25:30):
advice. If I were someone listening today and I
was interested, how might I
connect or get started? Yeah. Well, visit
AchieveUnite.com follow us on LinkedIn.
Follow me, follow, Achieve, Unite on LinkedIn. Subscribe to our
newsletters. We do not spam. We do not. We just
(25:53):
educate. You know, that's really, really important to me is to be an educator and
a thought leader. We published the 2025 Partnering
Trends in the world. So please check those out
and. Yeah, and, or you can call me or text me
or email me. Anyway, yeah, so would you like
offer a free consult? We do. I will offer free
(26:15):
consults, 100%. I'm happy to do that.
Excellent, excellent. Okay, so last question I'm
going to ask that I ask all my guests is what advice would you give
to your 20 year old self? Oh my goodness. Well,
one, we just, I just did a LinkedIn post
on the advice we would give to our 20 year old selves, four of
(26:37):
us. And so let's put that into the, we'll put
that link in there and it's all about the things we would do differently and
we would tell ourselves. But my number one thing would be
invest in relationships for the long run. You
know, invest in the business relationships for the long term.
Somebody you know from high school becomes, you know, your business
(27:00):
partner 30 years later.
Great stuff, great advice. And it fits right into
your business operation as well.
Absolutely. Teresa, thank you so much for being
a guest on the show. Thanks for having me, Mark. I really enjoyed it
today. I hope you
(27:21):
enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast. It would
mean so much if you would take a moment to subscribe. You can go to
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(27:43):
review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday.
Today's episode is brought to you by Achieve Unite, a global
leader in leadership development, business acceleration and trusted
partnerships. Achieve Unite combines deep expertise, data
analytics and AI to help companies accelerate revenue control
costs, elevate talent and build trust. They're more
than advisors. They deliver results with their proven three part approach,
(00:23):
talent development, ecosystem strategy and profitable growth
programs. Whether you're strengthening alliances, enhancing
internal systems, or optimizing your partner ecosystem,
Achieve Unite is the partner you need for success.
Hey there and welcome back to the Delighted Customers
(00:46):
Podcast. As we step into this new year, I've got some exciting
updates to share with you. First, you might have noticed something
different. The podcast has a new look. We've got an awesome
blue theme and a redesigned cover, all to reflect the energy
and passion we pour into each episode. But
that's not all. I am thrilled to announce that the Delighted
(01:08):
Customers Podcast now has a title sponsor. We
partnered with Achieve Unite, a company that's all about building trusted
partnerships, both within and between
organizations. Why? Because partnerships aren't just
business buzzwords. They're game changers for creating
outstanding customer experiences. I want to take a quick moment
(01:29):
to say a thank you to you. Yes, you. For tuning in,
sharing the show and helping us grow. This community means
the world to me and your support has opened up opportunities
like this amazing sponsorship. Now back to Achieve
Unite. Today's episode is extra special because their. CEO,
Teresa Carrigoal joins me to dive into something
(01:52):
that doesn't get talked about enough. And that is the connection
between strategic partnerships and customer experience. In a
world that's getting smaller, yet more complex, the
number of partnerships is growing fast. But here's the
thing. The quality of how those partnerships work.
Together is what makes or breaks success. Teresa
(02:14):
and I unpack the context of partnership, some common
roadblocks, and practical tips for organizations and their
teams to collaborate effectively and deliver for their customers. So grab your
coffee or your tea. Settle in and let's jump right in.
Welcome to the Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so
glad you're here. We challenge conventional thinking about
(02:37):
customer experience because I believe that improving experiences isn't
just good for business. It's a powerful way to make a meaningful
difference in people's lives. Each week we feature thought
provoking conversations with industry thought leaders from
a variety of backgrounds, offering unique perspectives and
actionable insights. Get ready to sharpen your
(02:59):
leadership and transform your approach to customer experience.
Let's dive in.
Well, I am so excited to introduce my
guest on the show, Teresa Carrigol. Teresa and
I have formed a partnership because we have so
(03:20):
much in common. And I want to tell
you how excited I am to share her story
with you because I think it will shed some light and hopefully, as we
always try to do some learnings for the audience as well. I
know I learned a lot. So, Teresa, welcome to the show. Thank you
for having me. I'm delighted to be here today. Yay. And
(03:42):
Teresa is a title sponsor now of and her company
of the Delighted Customers podcast. So we're
going to talk a little bit about the intersection of trust,
AI partnership, and business outcomes. And what
fascinated me so much about your company and
your story is you have tapped into something that I have not heard
(04:04):
anyone exactly put their thumb on. And that is we
think about. You know, we often talk about matrix organizations and the
complexity and the evolving layers of
organizations. But there's another thing that has to do with partnerships.
In a world that we live in today, you can't really
exist without some intricacies, some
(04:28):
integrations that exist. Whether you really think about it that way or
not. I mean, I'm not just talking about middleware. I'm talking about the partnerships
you have with everyone in the supply chain between you
and and the end customer. And so if you would
just shed some light on the white space that you saw as an
opportunity and what gets you so pumped
(04:50):
up about it. You know, what excites me
so much is that I grew up in this
partnering alliance, go to market channel
space, and spent my entire career in the tech industry as an
executive running these partnering divisions. And
I can remember 15 years ago saying, Partnering
(05:12):
needs to be at the CEO level. Partnering needs
to be across every part of the organization. It needs
to become a way of life. Well, fast forward 15
years, well, probably more like 25 years later.
Published a book and has become a bestseller
in 25 categories about how to do
(05:35):
partnering right and how to make it successful
right first time. Whether that's partnering with your customers, whether
that's partnering cross functionally inside of your organization, whether that's
partnering with your distribution channels, with your
suppliers, with your strategic
dealers or alliances, you know, that's what we're
(05:56):
talking about here. Excellent. So before we get into
the magic behind the curtain and what you've
created as a approach to helping
companies, and you had mentioned to me in
our earlier conversation that you like to focus on pretty large companies,
large enterprise organizations, but you will work with other
(06:18):
organizations as well. What is the big deal?
Why should the C suite really care so much about
partnerships? Partnering in the
B2B space, bar none thousand
percent. It's the way of the future. And any
CEO that is not thinking about it this
(06:40):
way is missing a big trick for success.
Yeah, yeah. And can you, like
they're always talking about, well, I've got to make, you know, an investment
in my time, my people and my. Why is investing and
the concept of partnership so important? Well, if you
think about, think about customer lifetime value, right?
(07:02):
You, Mark, do all of these podcasts you've talked about part customer
lifetime value all day long? We do. Everybody understands customer lifetime value,
right? The lifetime value of a customer, if we have them for 10 years.
Think about partner lifetime value. By the way, we own the trademark on partner
lifetime value and the concept of what
if we treat our partners? I have a
(07:25):
solution provider. I have a dealer. I have a, you know, a network
of partners. It's customer lifetime value on steroids. Right.
And we make that experience with the partner a force
multiplier for them and we propel their businesses
forward. It's a way of life. It's a very different way of
thinking. It takes a longer time sometimes to be successful. But
(07:48):
in the long run, the force multiplier effect is
magnificent. And it's exponential
as you're talking. In a lot of ways, it kind of bucks the status quo
thinking or conventional thinking in that we're taught to compete,
compete, compete and outperform and outperform. What you're talking about is
really the tent is getting larger
(08:11):
and you're having people that are connected to your
organization that you want to lift up as
well, right? Yes, it's this, you know, I really believe in the
flywheel effect. And we talk about that in the book that
as you create, every organization needs to have their partner
strategy. They need to have their community strategy. And we talk about the community. And
(08:33):
you have to be very deliberate about what your ecosystem
is, because your eco, your own ecosystem is made up of a
set of communities. Whether that's, you know,
associations that you participate in, whether it's events that
you attend on an annual basis, whether it's memberships that you belong to.
Right. And by the way, personally and professionally, we all, we need to
(08:55):
make sure that our organizations have this set of communities
that were participating. Maybe we're owning a community.
Right? Think about Salesforce, think about aws, re invent.
I mean, some of the biggest communities in the world now are owned by some
of these big tech companies. So,
Teresa, I want to talk about some of the misconceptions
(09:18):
that companies have around this topic. And one of
the things that I Want to ask you about is, do leaders
take it for granted that these partnerships are just happening
and optimized? Yes, 100%.
And do you have a way of helping them
understand how there might be a gap? Yeah. Yeah.
(09:40):
I mean, 75% of partnerships never reach their
potential. And partnerships are
hard. Right. It's not. It is a muscle that has
to get built in people's DNA. You know, we
call individual trust and organization trust. Right. So in people's
DNA and an organization's DNA, partnering has to
(10:02):
become a way of life. It has to become a muscle that gets built
so that you get really good at developing these. I no longer
believe partnering can be done, you know, a sales leader or
a, you know, a supply leader. It really has to permeate through
the organization. And you've developed
a diagnostic tool that companies can use, right, to assess. Tell me
(10:25):
more about that. Yeah, we actually have two diagnostic tools, and
we talk about both of them in the book. You know, as you know, there's
three components. Three. Three elements to the system of partnering success.
So the trusted business relationships piece is
part one of the book. And there is a diagnostic
tool, the only one in the world today that
(10:46):
is scientifically based that measures business
trust and that codifies profiles of people
and how they build trust and then helps them develop their
muscles in the ways that they maybe are not always strong.
And up until now, trust was sort of in this esoteric
thing. Well, we now have a way to say, hey, Mark might build
(11:08):
trust differently than Teresa builds trust. So how do
I bridge. It's like a language. It's like body language, right? It's another
language that you get in your repertoire. Because if
individuals can accelerate trust, what happens?
Productivity goes up, innovation goes up. You know,
cross functional collaboration goes up, revenue goes up.
(11:30):
So this notion of accelerating business
relationships and kind of eliminating that competitive
thing that has been inside of organizations and
across organizations is really important. So business relationships and
pqi, Partnering Quotient Index is the name of
that assessment. Think eq, Think iq. This is your
(11:52):
pq and it's your ability to build trust. So that's the
assessment for the individuals. We also have a business
acceleration set of assessments we
have in the book Uniters and deflators. You know, what are partnership
uniters? What are partnering deflators? So you can really get a sense
in your organization. Are you doing partnering? Well?
(12:14):
Do you have the muscles built in your company to do it? Well,
then do you create an experience
for your partners? And we have a value measurement index that
actually assesses the science of whether you're
creating much like Net promoter score for customers,
Net promoter score for the partners. Are you creating
(12:36):
a scientific phenomenal experience for the partners? And we
have that diagnostic tool as well on the business acceleration
side. Got it. So there are two diagnostic
tools. So one of the things we talked about, and I just like to pull
out gems here, is that companies leaders can
often overlook or take for granted the fact that the
(12:57):
importance of partnerships to the whole ecosystem of what
they end up delivering to their end user customer.
And you have written a book and by the way, the name of the book
is. The name of the book is Partnering Success the Force
Multiplier to achieve exponential growth.
And so in the book you reference these two diagnostics, the
(13:18):
PQI and the other business accelerators, which
then gives what seems like a soft, touchy
feely topic, a lot of objectivity. Because now
you've got results report out from the assessment.
Correct? Absolutely correct. And it will, I assume, identify
gaps for the company to say, hey, we should. Now
(13:41):
does your company provide guidance on helping them prioritize what they should
work. On 1st,000% in both the
individual. We help individuals prioritize where their skill
sets are to increase partnering muscles and we help
organizations prioritize what they need to invest in
that's going to give them the biggest return. Because we all know you can't do
(14:02):
everything at the same time. I just think it's
fascinating, you know, I've been in the CX world for, I don't
know, a couple of decades and it never really occurred to
me to think about the impact of partnerships, especially outside,
inside the organization. Yes. But oh my gosh, it's becoming
a more and more complex world where we need to rely on
(14:24):
and you know, we only need to look back a few years in the heart
of COVID when there was supply chain issues to really.
And that's just nuts and bolts kind of stuff where it was
dramatically affecting people's business. Yeah, it's
so true. And I think this partnering
thing, strategic alliances are making a
(14:46):
resurgence. We're going to see these deep strategic alliances
become much more important over the course of the next decade
with this advent of AI. Every company has to be a tech
company. You can't go it alone.
And we have the global phenomenon. So this
partnering thing has to. CEOs have to get good at it.
(15:10):
Yarrows have to get good at it. Can
you share sort of a story of a
customer that had a problem that
you helped them with, whether they found it or you
Found it. And then you use the tool and. Yeah, tell us about
that. There's a few examples, there's many examples of that. Throughout the entire
(15:32):
book are examples of customers who had problems or
opportunities where we've really made impact. But let's do a couple.
One is two companies came together and were experiencing
a lot of conflict in the integration. Teams were
fighting, they were not synergizing
together. And we came in, they did the
(15:54):
entire PQI trust building, team building experience
for their teams and they
said that their teams were, were six months ahead
of everybody else in the organization because they went through
these kinds of experiences together early and
were able to innovate faster and integrate themselves faster. So
(16:16):
that's one. At the organization level we
have helped a number of companies. I'm very proud of the
story of Atlassian and the story of a couple of
other companies who have built unbelievable
partner networks and have incredible partner
experiences because of some of the diagnostic tools we've helped them
(16:38):
with because of some of the things that we've done to build these partner
programs that are world class and easy to do business
with and make this seamless experience for the
customer fantastic. But if that company
had gone it alone, that customer wouldn't have had
these amazing experiences. And so those are
(16:59):
just some things I'm really proud of. Yeah, could you
give us some, would you mind me giving us some context on that? So I'm
just trying to wrap my head around the mechanisms that you put the solutions that
you might put in place and how there's some quality controls built
into how the organizations partner together.
Well, if you think about part of the magic
(17:21):
of what Achieve Unite does is is
developing organizations partner programs,
their partner strategy, their partner program. Because the only way
to get partnerships to work is to create. Why do you
have a partner program in the first place? It creates trust at
scale. And if you're going to create trust at scale, get
(17:43):
people to work with you, you have to have these seamless partner programs.
And that's one of our superpowers is understanding an
organization. What do they need to
do to create their own superpower
partner? Think about it on steroids, right? How do I have this partnership
initiative that's super successful the first time?
(18:06):
Got it, Got it. And
part of that solution could be anything from the
people aspect of it, the technology aspect
aspect of it. Am I right on that? It could be the company
strategy and the program aspect of it. It could be the data analytics
and where the company should be focusing in order to get the biggest
(18:29):
return for Me, which I very value
very deeply, is the people side. Because if you're going to get
partnering successful, the people have to work together well. And so one of our
superpowers is helping people become
really good at partnering. And how do you put joint North
Stars together, and how do you do joint business planning, and how
(18:51):
do you make that work really well and teaching the muscles
to the people to do that? Teresa, what would
be a symptom that I may
be a little bit under the weather as a
company? That may be a signal for me to
say, hmm, I may have a partnering issue.
(19:13):
Yeah, well, in the book, there's a whole thing of
partnering deflators. And so it's all of these symptoms that
you are not maximizing your opportunity to partner. But
let's talk about a few of them. You know, one might be,
oh, yeah, we've got some partnerships. They're very transactional.
Whenever you hear, oh, their partnerships are very transactional, it probably
(19:34):
means you've got a big opportunity there and you're not leveraging it
strategically. I also, I also often hear, you
know, our sellers are competing with our partners, and
our partners don't bring any value. They just do fulfillment. If you
hear those kinds of things going, you probably have a big opportunity to
accelerate, to turn the accelerator on, because all you're doing in
(19:57):
that phenomenon is creating internal conflict, which
is preventing you from even maximizing what you could be doing
externally. Another one I hear
is we think we have an
opportunity to work with partners to bring us into opera,
to bring us into deals.
(20:17):
Okay, now what are you going to do for them? How does that
work? So there's. You probably do have an opportunity, but it goes
much broader than that. Because if all it is is referrals, by the way, that's
a good partnership motion, referrals, influencing.
But where you see that, you more than likely have much more
opportunity for integrated services, white
(20:39):
labeling, you know, much deeper levels of
alliances. Why don't
companies do this on their own? I mean, I
think they do. I think we're seeing. We're getting more
calls outside of the tech industry and other industries because
people are starting to realize how important this is. But
(21:01):
it's hard. Partnering is not easy. It goes back to how
you started the conversation about competition.
And, you know, we've all been bred in this competitive
world, and you have to shift your. We call it the partnering growth
mindset. Right. You've got to believe if you partner
together, you make the pie bigger, you make your
(21:22):
opportunities more, as opposed to, we're competing with one
another. And that's a mindset shift. There's a lot of sellers that don't have
that mindset. Right. There's a lot of individuals in the organization that sometimes don't
have that mindset. And so we have to shift the mindsets too.
Yeah. So there's
some great tips there. I heard some
(21:45):
of the things that you want to be aware of
in terms of, hey, maybe I could use some help
in this area is if I'm hearing that our
partnerships are more transactional than relationship based.
If we have what I used to call channel conflict. Right.
Where we've got sellers competing against each other in the
(22:07):
organization. And
I guess also if you've got departments within the
organization that are highly frictioned.
Very good example. Yeah.
In terms of strategy recommendations for how companies,
obviously they're going to want to read your book. They're going to want to take
(22:30):
the assessment, one of the assessment or the other and call you.
But what other practical steps can companies take to do a better
job of partnering? Well, we have an AI
partnering success hub which
will be even deeper with we are completing an acquisition
right now that will have an unbelievable
(22:52):
capacity of knowledge in partnering.
I would tell you the most in the entire world.
And they can purchase that for their
teams, integrate it into their own systems and have
a tool for the people to understand how they build
trust, and a tool for the organization to maximize
(23:15):
its partner building muscles. Excellent,
Excellent. Is there anything else that
I'm thinking about that you want to share
with the audience relative to partnering that I
missed? I would just say
that I would like people to think about
(23:36):
it in a methodology and a structure and a
system. The ad hoc, we call it random
acts of partnering. You know, the random acts of partnering
won't get you the results you want. And so it needs to be
really done. The degree to which organizations and people
get the strategy right is the degree to which they're successful two years
(23:58):
later. Excellent, excellent.
And I want to ask, because we in the CX space get pounded
about this ROI of CX all the time.
What is the ROI of partnering? And are there any concrete ways that
companies can go either to this, to the C
Suite or the C C Suite, asking themselves, you
(24:22):
know, tell me how, what's the ROI of this? Yeah, there is,
there are a number of different metrics. I mean, revenue, of course,
right? Revenue, customer loyalty. One of the things we've seen in the SaaS
world is, you know, land, adopt, expand, renew. You
know, we were, we were very focused on Land and renew. But when you
partner, well, the adopt and the expansion
(24:45):
that happens inside of customers because these partners are
out on your behalf with their own services, their
own ecosystems, their own. Think about Zoom, right? Think
about what Zoom has done and the ecosystem they've created around
their application. Microsoft, these partners have built huge
businesses on this technology with services, with
(25:08):
intellectual property, with all of these capabilities
that make the customer experience so much better and the
customer. And they stay in that customer for a very long
time. Right. And so that's the partner lifetime value
ripple effect that you get when you build these ecosystems
correctly. Excellent. Great tips, great
(25:30):
advice. If I were someone listening today and I
was interested, how might I
connect or get started? Yeah. Well, visit
AchieveUnite.com follow us on LinkedIn.
Follow me, follow, Achieve, Unite on LinkedIn. Subscribe to our
newsletters. We do not spam. We do not. We just
(25:53):
educate. You know, that's really, really important to me is to be an educator and
a thought leader. We published the 2025 Partnering
Trends in the world. So please check those out
and. Yeah, and, or you can call me or text me
or email me. Anyway, yeah, so would you like
offer a free consult? We do. I will offer free
(26:15):
consults, 100%. I'm happy to do that.
Excellent, excellent. Okay, so last question I'm
going to ask that I ask all my guests is what advice would you give
to your 20 year old self? Oh my goodness. Well,
one, we just, I just did a LinkedIn post
on the advice we would give to our 20 year old selves, four of
(26:37):
us. And so let's put that into the, we'll put
that link in there and it's all about the things we would do differently and
we would tell ourselves. But my number one thing would be
invest in relationships for the long run. You
know, invest in the business relationships for the long term.
Somebody you know from high school becomes, you know, your business
(27:00):
partner 30 years later.
Great stuff, great advice. And it fits right into
your business operation as well.
Absolutely. Teresa, thank you so much for being
a guest on the show. Thanks for having me, Mark. I really enjoyed it
today. I hope you
(27:21):
enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast. It would
mean so much if you would take a moment to subscribe. You can go to
Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to
podcasts. Click on the plus sign or follow button and that will ensure
that you don't miss an episode and it helps get the word out to
others while you're there. I'd love it if you'd leave a five star
(27:43):
review. I look forward to seeing you back here next Thursday.
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