Infusionsoft’s Partner Journey: The Five Things I Wish I Had Known at the Start with Clate Mask, CEO and Co-Founder of Keap

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association, we bring you the talk by Clate Mask, CEO and Co-Founder of Keap which took place at SaaS Connect 2019 in San Francisco, CA. Just in case you don’t know, the background of this talk is that Keap used to be called Infusionsoft until it was rebranded. Clate Mask gives a presentation about how to manage change with partners, and what was learned through the process. He speaks about change in general and what it means for you as you work with partners—to help them, serve them, and in turn to grow your business as they work with you. As Infusionsoft, the company ran off a model of onboarding all customers itself, and 20–25% of its revenue was service revenue. After the change to Keap, about 3% of the revenue is now service revenue, and partners do over 80% of that onboarding work and a ton of the service work in their customer base. That's just one of the many ways that the company has expanded the role of partners in its business. Learn from Clate: Communication is key in change (and in general), especially with partners. Be explicit and clear every step of the way. What Keap learned about partners (hint: serve them, get the right partners, sell through them and not to them. And the larger you grow, the more important partners are, not the other way around). Strategies for driving growth from partners. For example, when you are going through a product evolution, you need to educate partners on the benefits so that they see the value of selling it. You must address the “what’s in it for me” aspect. The differentiating factor in partner programs is this: to connect partners to the purpose and mission of your company. Building an empathic culture. Lessons learned. Resources Mentioned: Microsoft Thank you to our amazing podcast team at Content Allies. Want to launch your own B2B revenue-generating podcasts? Contact them at https://ContentAllies.com