An untapped opportunity to build software for partner teams at B2B SaaS companies

Around Series-C or so, B2B SaaS companies begin to scale through partner programs. Basically, they partner with mid-sized tech services companies, agencies & freelancers and incentivize them to sell their technology to their customers.

• Example 1: Shopify partners with services companies that build websites to use only Shopify when doing an e-commerce project

• Example 2: AWS partners with services companies that do enterprise cloud solutions use only AWS for their clients

This strategy is proven and is the only way for B2B SaaS companies to truly scale because:

• Each partnership brings in multiple new customers. If they were to attempt doing this themselves, their sales team headcount would go through the roof.

• It’s a great wedge into new markets, especially non-English speaking ones to hit the ground running. Hiring, training and managing sales reps in new markets where the company is unknown and doesn’t have local insight is a massive waste of time and money.

Tally broke into India in the early-2000s and still holds >80% market share in the accounting software space with a partner-led strategy. They went to went to CA firms and paid them to implement Tally and similarly paid CA institutes to teach Tally. Business owners love offloading all drab financial matters to CAs and so Tally got built into the fabric of almost every business in the country

And so, a sizable chunk of GTM budget allocation in growth-stage B2B SaaS goes into partner programs. These teams are the cash-cows, which of course makes them perfect to sell to. And surprisingly, there isn’t much competition in this space.

Some ideas on what to build:

• Partner relationship management software: Track, communicate and assess all partners under one roof. This is especially helpful when there’s one repository to access marketing/sales material + express technical support that the partner can use to close sales faster

• Education solutions to partners up to speed on the products and how to sell them

• Geo-specific, high-quality databases of partner leads

Tip: This strategy applies to infra companies (crypto protocols included) too. DevRel teams at these companies are basically the partner team equivalents.