Ever thought about how a thriving partner community can supercharge your B2B marketing and sales? Frank Belzer, a seasoned expert, spills the beans on the Marketing Smarts Live Show.
In episode 54, Frank shared invaluable wisdom on building partner communities for B2B marketing and sales success. He emphasized the importance of putting faith in people and partners over technology and platforms.
Frank's insights are a game-changer for anyone looking to foster a community that not only supports but also amplifies your business goals.
The Right Mindset for Building a Partner Community
Faith over metrics: Sometimes, the numbers can't capture the essence of community. Frank suggests that faith in your community members can often yield better results than obsessing over analytics.
Visionary thinking: Before you even start, have a vision for your community. Know what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.
Avoid "Technology Hell": Don't let the platform dictate your community's structure or purpose. You set the rules.
Best-Practices for Partner Relationships
Clear expectations: Lay down what you expect from your community and what they can expect from you. Transparency is key.
Resource allocation: Provide ample resources that can help your community grow and learn. This could be in the form of webinars, podcasts, or articles.
Regular check-ins: Keep tabs on the community's pulse. Regular feedback sessions can provide invaluable insights into what's working and what's not.
Tips and Tricks for Partner Community Engagement
Use a multichannel approach: Don't just stick to one platform. Utilize social media, forums, and even offline events to engage your community.
Spotlight members: Regularly feature community members who are doing exceptional work. This not only motivates them but also sets an example for others.
Employ analytics wisely: Although Frank emphasizes faith over metrics, you shouldn't ignore analytics, he explains. Rather, use analytics to refine your strategies, not define them.
Next Steps
Ready to build your own thriving partner community? Start by laying down a vision and setting clear expectations, up front.
And watch the full episode for more eye-opening insights:
Make sure you don't miss any future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.
Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 54
- Live date: October 30, 2023
- Episode link: youtube.com/live/vblMDQCE6fY
- Original podcast episode: Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success: Frank Belzer on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Guest's social media profiles:
- Twitter: @fbelzer
- LinkedIn: Frank Belzer
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:
"From the #mpb2b Community" links referenced in the show:
- LinkedIn post by Nancy Harhut
Transcript: Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success: Frank Belzer
Hello to all Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I'm super excited to bring you EPISODE 54 of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week's topic is all about Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success.
So, if you're ready to get your learn on, buckle up, and let's get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I'm your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Frank Belzer.
Frank Belzer, an international business development expert based in Orlando.
He is the chief sales and marketing officer at ICON Park, and before that, he was the SVP of sales for Universal Parks and Resorts, where he oversaw all domestic and international sales strategies.
Frank is a featured speaker and panelist at conferences and tradeshows worldwide.
Now, remember the clips of Frank Belzer today are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode, and if you want to listen to the full interview with Frank Belzer and myself, make sure to tune into the Marketing Smarts podcast, link to the entire show will be in the description below after the live show ends.
Now, in this episode, again, I'm talking with Frank Belzer about Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success.
So, in the first question, I wanted to ask Frank about the mix of things to pay attention to when building out a partner program. Who should we be thinking about engaging right when building B2B partnership programs?
Frank: A consumer community, that's pretty straightforward, you're trying to reach out to your... in the theme park business, for us, it would be annual pass holders, customers who were just walking in and planning a vacation. It's a little more direct, you're hitting first level, you're talking right to that person. With partners, or with sales channels, or with resellers, it's a lot different because now you're trying to actually go through that channel and reach the people who are then selling, hoping those people that are selling will reach those consumers at the very end. So, there's two or three steps along the way where your engagement could go wrong.
That was my point in the last question. It wouldn't be enough to just engage with the ownership, for example, of all of your partners or resellers. That's nice, but that's not going to move the needle. What about the management level? That's still nice, you want those people involved. Really, what you're trying to do is you're trying to engage with the management team, with the executive, and with the front line, with the people who are working on your product or selling your product or supporting your product.
It's a lot more challenging, I think, than a consumer community. Getting the B2B community right has a lot more nuance and there's a lot more complexity to getting that to work for you.
Did you hear that?
There are several people to be engaging and multiple things to think about.
You can't just interact with one level of the humans you are selling and serving to.
Have you created a B2B partner program or, are you thinking about it in the future?
Put the answer to that in the chat pane or let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b and, of course, tag me using @georgebthomas.
We'll get back to Frank Belzer and his thoughts on Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success, But first, I have to ask...
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mptoday - That's mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now, it's time for one of my favorite sections ...
In The B2B News - Where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips we find on the Google news tab related to you and your B2B business. This week, the title is...
Forrester Predicts A Turbulent Year For B2B Marketers In 2024 by John Ellett and comes to us via Forbes.
Forrester released its five predictions for B2B marketers for next year and as Laura Ramos, vice president and principal analyst for the firm, puts it, "It's going to be a turbulent year!".
The rapid evolution of generative AI is at the heart of two of Forrester's predictions and Ramos explained why it will create turbulence.
"We went from desktop computers to laptops, and laptops allowed us to do different things. And then we brought in our smartphones, but those changes happened over a longer period.
Generative AI is going to create the opportunity for change at a much faster rate.
Figuring out where to focus the resources that you're using to turn your generative AI experiments into business value is where the pressure points are going to be.
Some organizations are going to do really well and get ahead, and others are going to struggle and fail."
Want to dive into the five predictions?
To read this article, check out the link below when the live show is over.
So, let's get back to Frank Belzer and his Marketing Smarts podcast episode.
When I heard Frank answer our previous questions, I thought, man, this sounds like a different animal than I might have thought about when historically thinking about partnerships.
What about you? Did it sound different?
Well, I asked Frank a simple but powerful question based on my thoughts and his first answer.
What does "Frank" think about when he thinks about partnerships or building a community of partners? What should we?
Frank: I do think it's a different animal. I'm going to be honest here, when I started—I'm going to give myself a pat on the back—one of the best things I did was, I had this piece of art that I put on the wall and it was basically a cheesy cartoonish drawing of a typical community. It was a village, it had a coffee shop, it had a gas station, it had a church, it had another church, it had a school. My whole message to the team was this is what a community looks like, it's made up of all these different components.
The most beautiful communities that we know, when we think about a beautiful community, what do we say? It has great schools. It has great coffee shops. It has good private businesses. It's very diverse. It's very artsy. It has access to the highways. There's a list of criteria for us with our typical neighborhood / community that we look for. That for me became sort of the strawman for what this partner community is going to look like. We have all these differences, but we're going to bring people together around this common purpose.
The beauty of the B2B community is that you get to dictate what that purpose is, you're building the community. As the founder of the community, you get to set the vision. For us, the commonality was these are all people who are involved in helping people make travel decisions, these are all companies who resell travel in one form or another. By that definition, they moved into this community. Not everybody went to the same church. Not everybody went to the same coffee shop. Not everybody walked their dog in the same park. But we brought them together around this common purpose.
I think if you don't lay the groundwork correctly on what your vision is for the community and what your expectations are, you're going to get sucked into what I call this technology hell of the vendor who is providing the platform dictating to you what a community should look like, and they're really building a community around their technology, not the other way around. So, I think it's really important to have a very clear idea of what does our community look like.
Are you in technology hell?
Are you building your community around tech or your tech needs around your community?
More importantly, do you think of your partner program as a community-building initiative?
We will get back to Frank Belzer in a few minutes, but first it's time for some...
Dope B2B Learnings From The Vault of MarketingProfs Articles
That's right, It's time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer.
Article one this week is: Five Rules for Better Marketing Partnerships by Robbie Baxter
Marketing partnerships can be one of the cheapest, fastest, and easiest ways to grow your business and test new market opportunities. It can also be a black hole for resources.
During the Internet heyday, it was enough to identify a potential partner and a cool idea, sign a contract and "see what happened." But we've begun to realize that although a partnership has no up-front costs... it can be expensive in terms of time, resources and mindshare.
To maximize success, keep the following rules in mind. Well, if you read the article after this live show...
Article two this week is: Avoiding Partnership Pitfalls by Karin Schaff-Glazier
Everyone wants to be your partner, ostensibly to help you increase revenue with the latest and greatest gizmos or "secret weapons."
But too many times we find ourselves in the "partner conversation" with what appears to be a great sales channel, only to find out quickly that it's a one-way street—you're finding sales leads and opportunities while your partner makes the money.
Partnerships, alliances, strategic networks... whatever you call them—they're nothing more than two companies coming together to find ways to leverage each other's products and/or services.
The goal typically centers on finding additional revenue streams and new market entry points.
Want to keep learning more? If so, check the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to Frank Belzer... Let's dive back into this conversation of Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success....
Here is what Frank had to say.
Frank: I don't know if the listeners from every vertical or every segment will relate to this, but there is a tendency in B2B across the board for people, there's always an element within any company that prefers direct business over business that comes through sales channels.
Marc Benioff from Salesforce and Brian Halligan from HubSpot are two men that I really admire. Brian, of course, imitated Marc. When Marc started Salesforce, he opened up his API and he opened up the idea of selling through channels. By doing that, they were the fastest growing software company ever. He knew that by working with partners he could provide a level of service, a level of capability, and a level of support that his company was ready to provide, so there was lower attrition, etcetera. HubSpot tried to model something very similar, and they also grew relatively quickly.
I always looked at that and I had a very positive view of resellers. Additionally, my data told me that resellers on average sold better product, they sold longer trips, they sold my premium products, they sold my ancillary product, their per caps, as we call them in the business, were higher than those from the direct side. So, I had a plethora of reasons why we should be working on the trade business, but, of course, you always have elements in your company who don't want to do that, who think it's better to sell direct and automatically assume that direct is more profitable than indirect business.
So, a lot of the pushback came from those elements. Like, "We're going to spend more money on doing something with these partners? Aren't your people already doing that? Why do they need these resources? Can't you just send this via email? Can't you just do this on a free platform?" That was all the pushback that we got. Not to mention that IT stack was getting higher and this involved an element of IT, and they weren't really super keen on doing something that involved working with all of these different partners and the potential complexities that has as well.
What do you think about partnerships?
Do you think they are complex, are they worth it? Have you thought about introducing one into your B2B organization?
What hurdles have gotten in your way?
We're going to get some words of wisdom from Frank Belzer here in a few minutes but right now, it's time to turn the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yep, time for...
From The #MPB2B Community
We searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversation to bring to the masses.
So, first, make sure you are using the hashtag, and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.
Then, we'll spotlight you or your crew on the show. This week, it's...
Nancy Harhut
Marketing Creative + Behavioral Science | Author | Keynote speaker | Consultant
Oh yeah! DJ Graffiti, who I met at #mpb2b, will kick off day 2 of #guruconference-the world's largest virtual #emailmarketing event!
GURU Events knows how to plan an amazing online event, so snag your FREE ticket now!
And don't miss the rocking kickoff to day 2 - or day 1, when I reveal 15 Email Mistakes You Don't Even Know You Make - And How to Fix Them Fast!
#persuasion
#guruevents
But you need to check out the description and (The great photo) click that link to check out the post and read or learn more!
Marketing Smarts viewer, I have to ask... are you going to be next to get the spotlight?
Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro-tip, it won't hurt if you tag me in your post as well, I'm @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
OK, let's kick it back to Frank Belzer and some words of wisdom around this topic of Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success.
Here is what Frank Belzer wanted to leave us with...
Frank: One of the things that's happened to us all in marketing, sales, bizdev, all of these places, is that we've had such massive advancements in technology, there are so many tools, there are so many measurement tools. Just do a Google search for marketing analytics and just watch what happens.
I think that's great, and I think those tools are a wonderful complement to what we do, but the bottom line is when I think about whether it's a community or I think about networking... People who were good at networking back in the '80s and '90s were good at networking. They would go to a lot of events, they would create a lot of content, they would hand out a lot of cards, they would meet a lot of people, they would shake a lot of hands. The principles are exactly the same as we have with social networking. If you were a good networker in the '80s, if you have that mindset about getting to know other people, then it works with these platforms.
I think one thing is don't forget about the customer, don't forget about the fundamentals and the basics. We have decades of consumer research out there that proves how people will feel and what people like. Many times, the data that you're going to get from a lot of the analytics tools is measuring what can be measured, but that doesn't mean that's all that is happening or all that is measurable out there.
Don't forget to think about the customer and think about what you're really trying to do. Don't get hung up too much. Don't let the technology become your strategist. I guess that's the bottom line.
Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know, use that hashtag #mpb2b on whatever platform you are joining us on.
