Companies often view their partnerships as simple sales arrangements instead of valuable strategic assets. This common mistake surfaces repeatedly in organizations of all sizes, limiting their growth potential.

My experience as a partner manager has shown that successful partners can revolutionize a customer's entire experience. Strategic collaborations extend beyond simple referrals and create value at every customer touchpoint; they build connections from brand awareness to long-term advocacy.

In this article, we're going to delve into how you can blend partners smoothly into your customer's buying experience using the bowtie model. We'll dissect the customer journey into three stages:

1. Influence

2. Land

3. Expand

Plus, we're going to break down each stage into the following categories:

• Types of partners that are involved

• How partners can help in this stage

• Strategies you can implement with partners at this stage

  
  

The Influence Stage

Priority

Build greater exposure and educate potential customers about the problems that your solution solves.

Teams responsible in this stage

• Marketing: To drive awareness of your solution and acquire interested buyers.

Types of partners

• Influencers

• Affiliates

• Ambassadors

• Advocates

• Communities

• Consultants

How partners help

In this stage, buyers learn about your company, solution, and the problems that your solution solves. They also decide whether your solution can help them or not.

In short, this is where buyers do their research.

And the research process is not linear. As Jay McBain (Chief Analyst of Channels, Partnerships, and Ecosystems at Canalys) explains, every buyer has 28 measurable moments before they decide to buy a solution. In fact, most companies only own 4 of those moments.

The other 24 moments? They are LinkedIn influencers, communities, agencies, customers, and other word-of-mouth references. And they have established trust with your target audience.

By partnering with these 24 touchpoints, you can:

• Double market reach

• Bring more value to combined audiences by combining industry knowledge

• Share trust and influence with teams they already work with

Strategies to implement with partners

Run co-marketing strategies in the form of:

• Co-authored educational articles, e-books, guides, reports

• Podcasts & webinars

• Live events

• Case studies

The content you and your partner churn out should be educational for the purpose of building your audience's knowledge and trust. With this strategy, you are helping your and your partner's audience understand their pain points and relevance of your solutions.

The Land Stage

Priority

Turn prospects into paying customers.

Teams responsible in this stage

• Marketing: To create sales materials for sales teams.

• Sales: To share product demos and influence buyers to make a buying decision.

Types of partners

The partners that are involved in this stage are typically solution providers such as:

• Resellers/distributors

• Consultants & agencies

• ISV/tech partners

How partners help

In this stage, buyers are finalizing their decision to purchase your solution. They are looking for third-party references, analyzing the costs and benefits, and raising objections.

Remember that nowadays every buyer has become infinitely conservative when it comes to making a purchase decision, and they are also overloaded with emails and calls. So you'll want to do whatever you can to keep your company at the top of buyers' minds, or else you'll lose them.

This is where partners come in.

You need to depend on partners to:

• Get warm introductions to key decision-makers, avoiding crowded inboxes

• Access exclusive information on buyers to build stronger pitches

• Influence purchase decisions

Strategies to implement with partners

Provide more value to buyers by co-selling with partners e.g. a marketing consultant giving buyers advice on how to implement a marketing automation platform into the buyers' GTM strategies. This strategy primes buyers into purchasing your solution as they are slowly learning about the immense value of your solution.

To facilitate co-sell motions, a partner management platform is essential. With such a platform, you can:

• Share company decks, demo videos, and other resources to enable partners to give a compelling sell

• Track partner-sourced deals and progress

• Communicate seamlessly with partners on partner-sourced deals, removing crowded inboxes

• Gather exclusive intel that can move conversations forward

• Prioritize deals that have a higher win rate

The Expand Stage

Priority

Drive customer retention and lifetime value. Turn customers into success stories to drive awareness to the public.

Teams responsible in this stage

• Marketing: To create onboarding materials and share customer success stories.

• Customer Success: To work alongside new customers to implement your solution and offer strategic insights and consultation.

Types of partners

The partners that are involved in this stage are typically solution providers such as:

• Consultants & agencies

• ISV/tech partners

• MSPs & other solution partners

How partners help

In this stage, partners serve as invaluable catalysts for customer success, from implementing your solution to driving customer success stories. Partners:

• Accelerate implementation through deep knowledge of customers and their tech stacks

• Ensure seamless integration with existing workflows and complementary solutions

• Ensure that customers get the most out of your solution through continuous education and training

• Share customer insights to customer success managers (CSMs) so they can identify at-risk customers and drive retention strategies

• Amplify customer success stories to showcase real-world value of your solution

• Identify and facilitate upsell opportunities as customer needs evolve

Strategies to implement with partners

Have your CSMs team up with your partners to:

• Create joint success plans: Align partner expertise with customer goals and establish shared KPIs to track progress

• Build integrated onboarding: Combine CSM knowledge with partner technical expertise for smoother implementation and faster adoption

• Establish regular health checks: Schedule joint customer reviews to identify risks early and leverage partner insights for retention

• Drive value expansion: Use partner knowledge to identify upsell opportunities and create expansion paths based on customer needs

• Enable customer community: Coordinate partner-supported user groups, events, and education programs to foster peer learning

• Track shared metrics: Monitor joint impact on customer satisfaction, retention rates, and product adoption to optimize collaboration
  
  

Conclusion

The bowtie model clearly demonstrates that partnerships are far more than just sales channels — they're strategic assets that create value throughout the entire customer journey. From building trust during the influence stage, facilitating decisions in the land stage, to driving long-term success in the expand stage, partners play a crucial role in every step of your customer's experience.

By strategically engaging partners across these stages, you can:

• Amplify your market reach and credibility

• Accelerate the sales cycle with warm introductions

• Enhance customer success and drive greater lifetime value

• Create a sustainable ecosystem of growth

The key is to stop viewing partnerships as transactional relationships and start treating them as strategic investments in your company's future. Every stage of the customer journey presents unique opportunities for partner collaboration, and when executed properly, these partnerships become a powerful engine for sustainable growth.

Ready to transform your partner program and create more value throughout your customer journey? Expando® specializes in helping companies build and optimize their partnership strategies across all stages of the bowtie model.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you unlock the full potential of your partnerships.