In this episode, Josh Wagner, Justin Gray, and Sean Kester discuss strategic business partnerships and how they can be built and leveraged for business growth. They highlight the importance of assessing a potential partner's alignment with your business strategy and the customers you serve, and also touch on the idea of handling objections through partnerships. They also discuss various types of partnerships, including co-marketing, co-selling, referral, and re-selling arrangements, emphasizing the importance of continuing engagement and adaptation in these relationships. You’ll hear about the challenges of working with large organizations, the value of partnerships in competitive advantage, and the concept of achieving outcomes through partnerships.

Takeaways:

• Start assessing potential partners by developing clear objectives and making sure that the outcomes that are driving a potential partner align with your business strategy. 
• When finding the right partner for your business, it's important to serve not only the same customer but also the same buyer within that customer. If you service the needs of different buyers within the same customer, your partner may not have the connections or influence needed to sell your product or services.
• A good partnership often fills a solution gap in the market. A good question for finding partners is what business strategies can you achieve in the next two years, and what strategies will need to be sidelined? Partnership can address those sidelined strategies.
• It is critical to understand your role in the partnership. Whether you are the platform or the point solution, each has its unique challenges and opportunities. 
• It’s important to fully understand the different types of partnerships available, such as Co-marketing, Co-selling, Referrals, and Re-selling. On top of this, recognizing what stage your business is in can help guide the type of partnership that would benefit the most. 
• Partners can serve as perfect objection handlers for your sales team, enabling them to resolve issues effectively. Their feedback can improve your offerings in the long run. So, provide the sales team with triggers to listen for in order to introduce suitable partners.   
• A partnership is not a 'set it and forget it' deal. Actively engaging with your partners, and staying connected with their goals, progress, and customer responses is important for a sustainable relationship.

Quote of the Show:

• “Giving to get is the number one, dichotomy shift I think that needs to happen within partnerships” - Justin Gray

Ways to Tune In:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpM8myxsUinc5bfLIbjJz?si=0af576adfb8e49f8 
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cheat-code/id1692445190 
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/cb0b3afa-063f-4f3b-96be-b98214c74912 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CheatCodePodcast