How SaaS CEO’s can nurture and support a 1:1 partnerships strategy w/ Nik Sharma and Dillon Duchesne

HOW THEY DID IT! Unique stories partnerships-led sales and success.

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the last episode where Will Taylor and I chatted about the viability of a partnerships-led-only growth strategy.

I’m the luckiest podcast host again this week because I get to speak to an ecommerce thought leader who now runs a niche product and partnership offering supported by someone who cut her teeth in partnerships at Gorgias - an ecomm platform known to have a well-oiled partner program.

Coming to this episode today is Nik Sharma, CEO of Sharma Brands, HOOX, and 1180 Media. With him is the amazing Dillon Duchesne, who leads partnerships and biz dev for HOOX.

The theme of today’s episode is How CEOs need to be heavily involved and support a 1:1 partnerships strategy to ensure its success - especially early on.

Today, Nik, Dillon and I chat about:

• How having a niche offering eases the partnership equation

• What the GTM was like given the fact Nik operates an agency and a tech that does offer some of the same creative services as the agency (i.e. landing pages)

• How HOOX positions itself with agency partnerships

• “Let us pay your rent” - increasing the margins and ROI on services… not necessarily commissions as an incentive.

• Why Nik uses the “Kim Kardashian red carpet experience” analogy with his partnerships strategy

• How Dillon enables her partners differently now vs in her previous tech partnerships role

• How Nik “paves the road” to ensure Dillon can continue driving her race car on the road behind him

• Nik’s advice to CEOs on launching a partner program

Sponsors:

Reveal - A free account mapping solution.

‍Partnerhub® - for finding and managing your partnerships.

‍