Forming Partnerships with Software Vendors

I've spoken to 300+ SMB leaders who've spent millions on IT partners and end up with broken promises. Ask 3 questions to find one that creates real impact: 1) Do they manage outcomes in addition to supplying talent? Most tech partners follow a basic 'talent outsourcing' model: - Ask a few questions about your needs - Source talent that matches - Hand them over to you to manage There are a couple problems with this approach: → Worst Case: You're left with a developer-only team → Best Case: You get a diverse team but lack the technical background to manage them (This applies unless you're a management savvy CTO.) Talented developers and designers need strategic leadership to build successful software projects. Make sure your tech partner provides said leadership and holds themselves accountable for the final solution. 2) Do they have UX expertise or a design studio? Design is often the most overlooked aspect of software development. An intuitive, user-friendly design - Simplifies complex features - Guides users to solutions quickly It's just as important as making sure the software gets the job done. So, look for an IT partner with proven UX capabilities or a dedicated design team. They should follow a structured process, like: - Conducting user research & interviews - Detailed discovery workshops - Defining user personas - Creating user flows - Wireframing, prototyping, and testing (This is our method at @Incepteo.) Writing code should NOT start before finalizing design to avoid re-coding or re-designing. Last but not least: 3) Do they provide CTO advisory? The Project Manager is usually responsible for the software's timeline, budget and scope – but having a CTO prevents you from facing many potential roadblocks. They: - Spearhead strategy and implementation - Review the software's design and structure - Share on the dos and don'ts based on past experience The best part is: they don't need to be present full-time. 1 hour of CTO advisory per month is enough to help most businesses move in the right direction. — If your company's investing time and money into a solution, make sure your partner provides the talent, design, and advisory for you to succeed. Ask these questions on the vendor selection call to see if they could be a fit. And, if you're tired of failed projects and ineffective solutions, send me a message on LinkedIn so we can chat about your requirements and needs. (We answer YES to all 3 questions 😄)

Don’t Skip This Step in Your Partnership Program: Signing partners is the easy part. Integrating with their systems and training their teams? That’s where the magic happens. Too many companies sign partnership deals and then neglect the integrations. One leader I spoke with had to explain to his CEO that without integration, the partners couldn’t sell the product. The CEO didn’t buy it—and it cost the partnership program. Your partners won’t sell something that doesn’t work with their systems. Here are 4 actionable steps to help you start building integrations that work: 1. Engage with Partners Early to Understand Their Needs Before jumping into development, sit down with your partners and understand the specific systems and tools they use. This avoids unnecessary delays caused by building integrations that don’t align with their processes. 2. Collaborate with Product Teams on a Clear Integration Roadmap Work closely with your product and engineering teams to develop a roadmap that details when and how integrations will be built. Ensure it’s aligned with the overall partnership goals and prioritized based on impact. 3. Test, Iterate, and Improve with Pilot Integrations Start small by launching pilot integrations with select partners to work out any kinks. This will allow you to troubleshoot issues and refine the integration process before scaling across all partners. 4. Invest in Partner Training and Documentation Integration is only part of the equation. Make sure your partners know how to use your product effectively once the integration is live. Provide easy-to-understand documentation, training sessions, and ongoing support. Successful partnerships require integrated systems to deliver mutual value. By engaging partners early, collaborating with your product team, running pilots, and investing in training, you’ll set your program up for long-term success.

I’ve Bought a Lot of Technology. Here’s what Actually Determines Success. It’s not the features or price. It’s whether you’re working with vendors or partners. Vendors are transactional. They show up for renewals and upsells. Everything else feels like compliance, not care. Partners are proactive. They’re invested in your success before you even sign. The Attention team proved this perfectly. They invested weeks learning our business before we even signed a contract. When it was time for enablement, they didn’t just send us a canned deck, they packed their bags and embedded with our teams across Tempe and Denver. Facilitating one-on-one coaching sessions, hands-on workshops, strategic brainstorming for future use cases. They treated our success as theirs. By week’s end, they’d become part of the team. (Jacob Fleisher even snagged an invite to join the fantasy football league, Rory McDermott is still waiting on his 😉) The result? Our sales team was genuinely excited about a new platform. Zero complaints about “another tool to learn.” Instead, they were asking how quickly we could implement advanced functionality. That’s what happens when you focus on adoption, not just implementation. The difference: Vendors schedule quarterly reviews to talk about their roadmap. Partners slack you industry insights for your strategy. Vendors measure contract value. Partners measure your outcomes. Stop buying software. Start investing in partnerships. Thank you, Attention for showing us what true partnership looks like.

One of the biggest weeks in Hyperbound history: we officially cracked the Fortune 100 customers. Here’s what we did to get the deal done: 1️⃣ Sell the partnership, not the product. I treated every interaction like a joint initiative: Sharing roadmaps Co-creating success metrics Offering strategic workshops before we even talked pricing When they saw I was invested in their outcomes, the software conversation felt secondary. 2️⃣ Go the extra mile. Single-thread the deal after the demo. Jump on calls with every stakeholder, across every time zone. I even caught up with our champion in person at a conference to reinforce our commitment, and it shifted the dynamic from vendor to trusted advisor. 3️⃣ Lead with security readiness. Put our SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance documentation on the table immediately. Hosted a live Q&A with our security team. Removing that obstacle early gave their procurement team complete peace of mind. 4️⃣ Arm your champion with a business case. Model the cost of unscalable training - project rep churn, missed revenue, compliance risks - and package it into a concise slide deck they could present straight to the C-suite. It made our solution a clear ROI play. 5️⃣ Make your buyer look like a hero. Nobody wants to “go to battle” with legal and procurement. We built partnership terms and professional services packages designed to streamline approvals. That let our champion push the deal through without extra friction. 6️⃣ Demonstrate delivery muscle. Introduced our implementation partners early. Showing we’d done this at scale before reassured them that Hyperbound could handle a Fortune 100 playbook from Day 1. 7️⃣ Embed into their workflows. Built deep integrations with their tech stack. Reps encountered Hyperbound in the tools they already open every day, so adoption would skyrocket. 8️⃣ Never underestimate the human touch. Digital demos are efficient, but face-to-face connection still matters. Those in-person check-ins at conferences turned stakeholders into evangelists and that momentum closed the loop. Cracking a Fortune 100 account isn’t about features. It’s about the partnership you prove right from the beginning.

Before you kick off that outsourcing project, systems integration, or digital transformation -- pause and think. Two critical principles will make or break your initiative: - First: Your vendors will sell into the environment you establish during procurement. They'll adapt to whatever culture, processes, and expectations you set, for better or worse. - Second: The best vendors are sitting on millions of dollars worth of expertise and battle-tested insights. When they're genuinely invested in your success, they'll bring that intellectual capital to the table. Most organizations miss the connection: You only unlock that second principle by getting the first one right. And it starts before the RFx goes out. If you don't create an environment of trust and candor from day one, that expertise never shows up. If you treat procurement as a test, your vendors learn to play defense. They'll craft the perfect proposal, say the right things, and then deliver whatever you happen to ask for. But if you approach procurement as a learning vehicle, a chance to drive true alignment, and a genuine two-way discovery process, you signal that you value candor and that partnership matters. That dynamic carries forward and can make or break execution. During execution, this discovery and alignment will result in your new partner bringing its A-game, sharing insights proactively, challenging your assumptions, and investing their best thinking into your shared success. This requires them to be deeply vested in the outcomes, and that takes active, thoughtful engagement. Ask the hard questions. Challenge assumptions. But do it in a way that creates space for candid dialogue. Difficult conversations handled with transparency are worth their weight in gold. This isn't overhead. It's an investment in outcomes for you AND your new partner. Are you maximizing the ROI on your vendor relationships, or sacrificing long-term value for short-term "transaction efficiency"? #TransformationEnablement #NegotiatingForHumans #LobsterSox

How do partnerships like Salesforce × AWS actually come together? It’s not just about integrations, it’s about strategy. In this episode of The AI Report with Nick Johnston, we go behind the scenes of how enterprise alliances form, scale, and serve the customer. Here’s how it plays out at Salesforce: ➡️ Customer-driven demand kicks off many ideas. -Customers want frictionless, integrated experiences, so the “better together” stories start there. ➡️ Strategic focus also shapes who they partner with. -When a best-in-class solution already exists, Salesforce builds around it, rather than trying to own it all. That includes partnerships in areas like AI, infrastructure, and vertical tools. “We’re not trying to be a large language model company for everyone. There are amazing companies that already do that. You should go work with them.” → How does your team approach build vs. partner decisions? #EnterpriseStrategy #PartnershipsInTech #SalesforceEcosystem #GoToMarket #AIReportPodcast