Joe Wright

Most partner strategies look like the burger on top 🍔 Polished. Layered. Perfect on a slide. Clear value prop. Clean tiers. Nice diagrams. Then you get into the field… And it looks like the one below 🤯 Because partnerships don’t run on slides. They run on infrastructure and with operators. You don’t need another executive presentation. You need: • Partner managers who can actually co-sell • Partner ops who understand data and workflows • Clear ownership across sales, marketing, and CS • A PRM that people use, not just log into once • Deal registration that doesn’t create friction • Real attribution, not “influenced pipeline” guesswork • Communication channels that keep partners engaged • Clean data that allows automation and AI to actually work Partnerships are not a campaign. They’re a system. And systems don’t fail at the strategy level. They fail at the operational layer. 👉 Think about your program… Are you building something that works or just something that looks good on slides?

Recently, a client told us the leads he received from us were low quality. I have a rule: when a client says that, we don't take their word for it. We pull the recordings of the conversations between them and the IT buyer prospect we matched to them. (We always do a hosted warm hand off and these calls are recorded) So we pulled the recordings. One was a 49 minute call between our client and the Director of Global IT at a 125-year-old global manufacturer, reporting directly to the CEO. Budget — $70,000 Authority — final decision-maker. Need — a four-pillar AI governance program already in flight, Copilot rolling out, developer hired in November, governance pillar explicitly named as the gap. Timeline — 3 months. Hire requisition going out mid-May. July 1 onboarding. The new hire would need exactly what the vendor sells. He scheduled the next conversation himself — "let's get back together middle of June." Textbook BANT. Lead two was a 39 minute call between the client and the VP of IT at an aerospace subcontractor. Budget — $200,000 Authority — technical decision-maker. Need — governance, risk, and compliance. They need to ensure strict adherence to NIST 800-171 controls and require that any cloud-based solution utilizes FedRAMP compliance. They are looking to identify blind spots in their current security posture to satisfy these regulatory requirements and address significant vulnerabilities in disaster recovery and incident response. Timeline — 6-12 months, with CMMC certification in the next 60–90 days. Also textbook. Two leads with two senior IT decision-makers. $270K of stated budget between them. Active compliance pressure. Buyer-driven follow-ups. The client complaint: "LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives me equal or better quality." It doesn't. Sales Nav is a contact list. The automation on top gets you 1–3% reply rates, mostly "not interested." Comparing that to $270K of stated budget across two senior decision-makers actively in-market isn't a difference of opinion. It's a category error. You can read the summary above and see this. We refunded him. I only want to work with clients who get it. The lesson: when a vendor can't convert, they don't blame the sales motion. They blame the lead. If you need a 30-day decision, you don't need demand gen. You need to have been in the conversation 6-12 months earlier. That's the whole point of what we do. Get our clients in the room when buyers are still deciding who to trust, so they're on the shortlist when it's time to buy. So, I'm curious. Do these leads look like they're lower quality than Sales Navigator? (And this is only my high level synopsis...I didn't even share the paragraphs of juicy lead notes)

Last month, I joined The J.M. Smucker Co. as Channel Commercialization Manager supporting the Away From Home business. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting back into the foodservice space and reconnecting with distributor partners I know well. It’s been a great transition so far, and I’m grateful to be part of a team and organization where the values genuinely align with my own. Getting to work across a portfolio of brands that are so widely recognized in this space has made it a really enjoyable role to step into. Looking forward to continuing to build from here.

My desk calendar stopped me this morning. "You were born to be real. Not to be perfect." I've been thinking about this a lot lately — especially as I've been putting things out into the world before they're fully formed. The need to sound polished. The need to have everything figured out before you say it out loud. I'm working on letting go of that. Because the most meaningful conversations I've had recently about business, marketing, and growth haven't started with perfect answers. They've started with honest ones. #Authenticity #GrowthMindset #BuildingInPublic #RealOverPerfect

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