The Partnership Economy

CHAPTER 3How Partnerships Can Help You Meet Critical Business Goals

“Partnerships are at the heart of our customer journeys,” explains Siara Nazir, head of digital marketing for the technology company Autodesk. “Our software is enormously complex and our partners, who are experts in their domain, can readily address customers’ needs from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom—and they can keep them coming back. Our partners create tutorials and come up with hacks. They unlock deficiencies that enable us to build in more value and increase usability. They bring innovation into our company. Partnerships, in my opinion, provide the umbrella around the entire customer experience.”

Partnerships Are Powerful and Flexible

Companies of all sizes, stages of growth, and business models, and in every vertical and region of the world, are employing partnerships to help them meet their most critical business objectives. In this chapter, I'll share some examples of how enterprises are employing partnerships to meet their critical business objectives. I'll also explore how these business objectives translate into specific partnership strategies. But first, let's start with a few more partnership stories.

Grow, Baby, Grow

Every company needs to attract new customers to stay in business; this is especially true for start-ups, which often have ambitious market share objectives and highly results-oriented investors. Partnerships can help companies quickly generate and capture demand ...