Alliances

Russell Bradley-Cook spent 12 years selling into the big banks before joining HubSpot as the first European hire on the tech partnerships team.

Four years later, the European ecosystem went from 220 to 649 integrations, and Russell is heading back to sales with a very clear view of what partnerships get right and where the whole setup is broken.

In this episode of Alliances, we get into co-selling with real numbers from the HubSpot x Aircall partnership, why usage beats installs, how to turn a broken integration around, and what the full stack sales leader looks like in 2026, when AI frees up time and the average CRO lasts 17 months.

What you'll learn:
- The easiest acquisition play in partnerships: find the partners stuck in your program criteria and unblock them. Russell hit 150% of his acquisition quota in six months doing just that.
- How the Hotjar integration went from a wall of one-star reviews to one of HubSpot's biggest wins: block a simple screenshot update until engineering shows up, fix the integration, then move it into the free plan.
- Co-selling: a 40 to 50% win rate for Aircall on HubSpot deals, 2x ACV on co-sold deals, around 10% uplift in retention, and still plenty of reasons to measure partner-driven usage before you burn your week getting two sales teams to talk.
- Skip the CRO, take the CFO to lunch: bring your CAC, LTV and usage data, and let finance carry the partnership case to the CEO.
- MCP is great for big blue sky questions and a bad idea for your monthly forecast, and the real problem for the next 12 months is that customers don't trust agents yet.
- Pitch contests and demo contests with partner reps, with one end goal: HubSpot reps demoing Aircall without anyone from Aircall on the call.

Bonus: Russell's AI setup, with Claude, an Obsidian second brain and ElevenLabs to rehearse his talks while running.

Russell is launching its own practice to help CRO and Sales Leaders sell better through partners:

Connect with Russell Bradley-Cook : https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellbradleycook/
Connect with Maxime Imbert: https//www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

If this one helped, subscribe, rate Alliances five stars and send it to the sales leader who still thinks partnerships is someone else's job.

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In this episode of Alliances, I sit down with Tim Cleary, VP, Technology Partnerships & ISVs at Coder, to break down the AWS partnership step by step: when it's worth it, how to get listed, and how to get AWS reps to bring you into their deals.

Coder has a free open source product and sells exclusively to enterprise customers. The company just raised its Series C.
Today roughly 20% of its revenue closes through AWS Marketplace, and AWS has become its largest reseller.

Tim has been in partnerships since 2019 and has run the zero to one motion at several early-stage startups. He joined Coder in the fall of 2024 as a partner team of one and is now building an alliances team across the US and Europe.

In this conversation, Tim shares:
- Why the first question is should you? and how a plus/minus analysis of his pipeline showed deal velocity was 2x on AWS compared to Azure, GCP or on-prem
- Build, Market, Sell: why you speed run the basics,
- Let Tackle, Suger or Clazar handle the Marketplace listing (4 to 6 weeks, one PM and one engineer)
- How ACE registrations unlock cosell eligibility, and why you need your CFO on your side so sellers never get penalized for Marketplace fees
- The two things that flipped the switch: the Global Startup Program and winning over AWS solution architects, which led to a deal close to $500K ARR closed in under three months
- How to pitch an AWS rep: customer stories first, then a spreadsheet showing how much of their quota you can retire
- Private offers, deals twice as big, and what he would do differently, from the SaaS listing to saying no to random acts of marketing

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Connect with Tim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-cleary/
Partner with Coder: https://coder.com/partners
Connect with Maxime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

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Elise Carbone leads Global Partners & Alliances at Deltek, with a partner network spread from the US to Australia and Southeast Asia.

She didn't start in sales: HR first, then consulting, then building a partner, sales and marketing team from scratch at a startup that Deltek acquired 11 years ago.

In this episode, we get into what it actually takes to run a global partner organization: why partner ops is the backbone, how to measure influence and not just sourced leads, how to keep sellers on your side, and where AI is already changing the job.

What we cover:
- Partnerships aren't just relationships. Joint planning, shared targets and real QBR are what make them work.
- Partner ops is the operating system of your partner org
- Keep 70% of your playbook global, flex the other 30% by country and culture.
- Sourced leads are easy to count. Influence is where partners bring the real value, and nobody has cracked how to measure it yet.
- Don't pay sellers less on partner deals. If you do, they'll stop seeing the value of partners.
- AI won't replace partner managers. But an AI conflict check that answers partners in 30 seconds beats waiting for a new PRM.

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Connect with Elise: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisecarbone/
Connect with Maxime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

If you liked this episode, like, share and subscribe. That's how Alliances gets discovered.

Video available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/JsggQiv44P4

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In this new episode of Alliances, my guest Hami Neisari is one of the smartest and top Tech partnerships operator in the world.

Hami has spent seven years at Aircall watching the tech alliances job get rebuilt underneath him. He started out doing what he calls a BDR on steroids, building relationships with HubSpot, Salesforce and Zendesk.

Today he runs Tech Alliances and New Bets from inside the CRO org, and he splits his week between the partnerships that already pay work well and programs that did not exist a year ago.

Voice spent years as the channel everybody wanted to shrink because it was expensive and needed humans on the phone, and then AI agents turned it into the hottest thing in customer communication.

Aircall sits right in the middle of that shift with 23,000 customers and more than 300 integrations, and Hami is the guy who decides which of those integrations still deserve time and money. He is refreshingly honest about the parts nobody has figured out yet, himself included.

What we get into:

• Why the readiness of GTM teams to work with partners is going down, and why his answer is upstream comarketing that lands reps on the deal with a pre-qualified opportunity already in hand.
• What MCP actually changes on the ground, from connection times dropping from a few weeks to a few hours
• Why he expects his team to get more senior without getting bigger, and why he wants people walking into every meeting with an artifact they built.
• How he runs the integration portfolio like an investment manager, checking whether Aircall grows with each partner or quietly declines with them.
• What New Bets means in practice, with six programs running on half of the team's time and a clear rule for killing the ones that don't take off.
• Why partnerships stays a people business, and why he thinks the loudest voices in the space are not always the best operators.

If you run partnerships and you are wondering what your job looks like in eighteen months, start here.

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Guest: Hami Neisari - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamineisari/

Host: Maxime Imbert - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships/

Share it around you and rate us five stars, it is what helps the show get discovered.

Check the video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/-DKNg1AiI0I

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Dans ce nouvel épisode d'Alliances, je reçois Mickael Eymauzy, Lead Field Marketer chez Alan.

Après 16 ans dans des fonctions commerciales, il a basculé il y a deux ans et demi sur un métier que la plupart des boîtes françaises n'ont pas encore nommé : le field marketing.

Sa cible ? L'expertise comptable. Un secteur qu'il ne connaissait pas du tout quand on lui a confié le sujet.

Aujourd'hui il pilote un secteur et lead une équipe de sept field marketers répartis par verticale, du retail à l'hôtellerie restauration en passant par la fonction publique et la tech.

Ce qu'on aborde :

• Le métier en clair : deux objectifs (notoriété et ouverture de portes),
• Comment pénétrer un secteur dont on ignore tout, et pourquoi Alan choisit ses segments pour deux raisons opposées,
• La vraie différence avec un sales : chercher des patterns dans un marché plutôt que traiter des comptes un par un,
• Le job interne que personne ne voit : un partenariat signé mais pas communiqué aux sales ne produit rien,
• Mesurer les MQL et l'ARR, et accepter que la brand awareness échappe en partie au reporting,
• La culture IA d'Alan : 90% des 950 collaborateurs utilisent l'IA chaque jour, et pourquoi ça ne fait pas gagner du temps,
• La BD de 18 pages sur la transparence des salaires, envoyée en papier aux 200 plus gros cabinets

Un épisode utile si vous construisez une fonction hybride entre marketing et commerce, ou si vous cherchez à installer une marque sur un secteur où vos leviers sales classiques ne prennent pas.

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Retrouvez Mickael Eymauzy sur LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickael-eymauzy-9a05242b/

Retrouvez Maxime Imbert : https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

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Dans ce nouvel épisode d'Alliances, je réunis trois partenaires et grands experts autour d'une des décisions les plus difficiles dans une organisation: faut-il construire, s'associer ou acheter ?

Arnaud dirige la Connectivité chez Pennylane, la plateforme financière B2B des entreprises et de leurs experts-comptables.

Charlotte est DGD chez Defacto, la fintech du financement du BFR, avec près de 20 000 entreprises financées pour plus d'1,5 milliard d'euros.

Philip pilote les Partenariats Stratégiques chez Chift, la plateforme d'intégrations financières et comptables qui propose une API unifiée

Dans cet épisode, nous abordons :

• La vraie matrice de décision build vs partner vs buy : le time-to-market et le core business comme axes qui décident de tout
• Pourquoi le choix n'est jamais figé : un partenariat s'internalise, une commodité se rebuild, et c'est sain
• Comment Pennylane a cassé les silos en réunissant produit, engineering et partenariats dans une seule BU
• Les différents niveaux d'intégration de Defacto, du redirect simple au natif, pour s'adapter à chaque partenaire
• Ce que la réforme de la facturation électronique change vraiment : la conformité comme commodité à brancher
• Pourquoi l'IA fait shipper plus vite mais élève les enjeux de gouvernance, et pourquoi les alliances resteront humaines

Une conversation cash sur les intégrations, les écosystèmes et l'avenir des partenariats dans les 18 prochains mois.

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- Retrouvez Charlotte : https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-gounot-30464783/

- Retrouvez Arnaud : https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnauddessein/

- Retrouvez Philip : https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipsch/

Vous pouvez me retrouver ici : https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

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Dans ce nouvelle épisode d'Alliances, j'ai reçu pour la seconde fois Romain Goueffon, Head of Partnership et Field Sales chez Qonto, pour parler d'un sujet critique pour des milliers de SaaS qui ont un module Facturation : la réforme de la facturation électronique.

Qonto compte déjà plus de 600 000 clients, dont 300 000 qui ont choisi leur plateforme agréée, et plus de 100 000 factures électroniques sont déjà passées par leur canal. Le sujet de fonds de cet épisode, c'est l'alliance entre les plateformes agréées (PA) et les éditeurs de logiciels.

Devenir PA soi-même coûte entre 2 et 5 millions d'euros, plus 1,5 million par an de maintenance.

Pour un SaaS vertical avec un module de facturation, ça n'a aucun sens. La bonne stratégie, c'est de s'adosser à un partenaire régulé.

Ce que Romain partage dans cet épisode :

• Pourquoi un éditeur qui ne se met pas en conformité avant septembre risque tout simplement de disparaître, ses clients allant choisir une autre solution

• Comment bien choisir sa plateforme agréée : fit technique, fit humain, fit marché et surtout solidité du partenaire, avec l'exemple mexicain où 30 à 35% des acteurs ont disparu en quelques années

• Le modèle Qonto Embed et la logique d'embedded finance : intégrer la conformité en deux clics via API sans refaire toute son infrastructure

• Pourquoi Qonto a fait le choix de ne facturer ni ses clients ni ses partenaires sur la facturation électronique, et comment ça booste l'acquisition et la rétention

• Le rôle clé des experts comptables dans l'éducation du marché : 9 sur 10 recommandent leur outil, mais seulement 1 client sur 3 a choisi sa plateforme

• Comment structurer une équipe partenariats de 8 personnes entre business developers, partnership managers et une équipe field sales qui fait remonter les insights terrain au produit

Forcément, on termine sur l'IA, et là c'est passionnant. Qonto est devenue une boîte AI first, c'est un OKR de l'entreprise.

Romain explique comment ses équipes cherchent et testent des cas d'usage IA, comment il bloque deux heures chaque vendredi matin avec ses équipes pour expérimenter, et pourquoi pour lui c'est autant un gain de qualité qu'un gain de vitesse.

Certainement un troisième épisode à venir avec le GOAT des Partnerships...

Tu as aimé cet épisode ?

Pour le voir sur Youtube : https://youtu.be/saZheDi3JA4

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Romain : https://www.linkedin.com/in/romain-goueffon-6a5472a9/

Maxime : https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

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I sat down with Chris Lavoie (Partnership Mastermind) and Peter Lorant (ex-HubSpot, Zendesk, Google, Workday and SAP ) to have an open discussion on AI and the impact on partner teams

Chris runs Partnership Mastermind, training 500+ partnership pros. Peter spent 30+ years at the biggest tech companies. He's seen every tech revolution. This one's the biggest.

Here's what hit different:

• Inbound is dead, partners is one of the answer: Marketing boards are panicking. The pipeline from inbound? Gone. Companies are flipping couch cushions for demand. Partnerships is the only channel with real conversion. But here's the catch: no more hiring sprees. Revenue per FTE is king. Lovable does $3-6M ARR per employee. You do more with less, or you're out.

• AI tooling is eating partner tech: Partner tools always got the scraps. Marketing gets $2, Sales gets $3, Partnerships gets $1. Now Salesforce launched headless agentic experiences. The future? No logging into 20 tools. Agents run workflows, partner tech becomes APIs. If your moat is UI, you're cooked.

• SI partners are in freefall: 71% of CIOs cut SI budgets to fund AI (Anthropic, OpenAI). The $100K implementation projects? Agents do that now. SIs used to wait for vendor playbooks. That's over. No handbook anymore. Workflows change weekly. Get technical fast or lose 30-40%

• The top 1% go all in: Peter's HubSpot playbook: let a thousand flowers bloom. Everyone experiments, documents, votes every 2 months on top 3 use cases, codifies, trains everyone. Mass personalization unlocks the long tail. Chris's advice: audit your month. What took 10 hours AI does in 10 minutes? Copywriting, follow-ups, prioritization.

• The messy middle: We overestimate short-term, underestimate long-term. Everyone works harder, not less. But efficiency gains are real. Experiment, don't freeze. This isn't hype. This is the reset.

Did you enjoy this episode?

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Watch at the episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/7nWDmv70Z3U

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• Chris: https://https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lavoie-phd-aaaa4111b/

• Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/palorant/

• Maxime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships/

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#partnerships #AI #partnerstrategy #SaaS #agenticAI #inbound #gtm

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I'm Maxime Imbert, Operating Partner Partnerships. I help B2B SaaS, AI native companies and Fintech build partnership strategies that actually drive revenue. Strategy call: https://calendly.com/maxime_imbert/30min

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In this episode, I sit down with Germain Bahri, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Zazu, a neobank for SMEs in South Africa and Morocco.

We go deep on how to build a fintech from scratch in emerging markets and why partnerships aren't optional, they're survival.

Germain spent years at the core of Europe's fintech wave, Bankable, Solaris Bank and saw models like Qonto, Pleo, and Shine scale from the inside.

He and his co-founder took everything they learned, packed their bags, and moved to South Africa to build the Qonto of Africa.

A bet in markets where the infrastructure is half-built, the banks are 20 years behind, and the playbook doesn't exist yet. Zazu launched in South Africa first: 3M SMEs, formal economy, solid payment rails. Then they expanded to Morocco to own the MENA region.

They're now scaling to thousands of customers through one strategy: partnerships. Because in these markets, you can't brute-force growth with ads and sales teams. You need distributors who already own the trust and the base.

Here's what Germain breaks down:

• Why they partnered with Access Bank as their Baas provider

• The distributor playbook: payment providers, legal/accounting tech, e-commerce platforms embedding Zazu into platforms with hundreds of thousands of merchants.

• The reality of building in Africa: PCI DSS compliance ignored by local partners, banking UX still need to be improved, education hurdles around neobanks

• How they hired an AI agent startup in South Africa. They loved the use cases so much they joined Zazu full-time

• Key advice for fintech founders: find the C-level decision maker early, make sure incentives are aligned, quantify everything (no press release partnerships), and start with a small POC to build inertia

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• Germain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainbahri/

• Maxime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

• Zazu: https://www.get-zazu.com

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ #partnerships #fintech #africa #neobank #zazu #distributors #banking #growth #southafrica #morocco

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In this episode, I sit down with two people who've lived on both sides of the VC partnership game. Abhishek Lahoti, Head of Platform at Highland Europe, and Roman Lobas, former VC platform operator and now co-founder of Icebreaker.

Abhishek spent 6+ years at Dropbox, then moved into VC at Sapphire Ventures before landing at Highland Europe, where he runs the full platform operation from talent and events to partnerships and enablement. Roman has led partnerships at growth-stage companies specifically targeting the VC channel, and has made every mistake in the book so you don't have to.

The VC partner motion is massively underestimated. A lot of companies either never touch it or blow it in the first call.

Done right, 10 solid VC relationships can generate a sustainable, high-quality revenue stream with better close rates, faster sales cycles, and lower CAC than almost any other channel.

No fluff, just the raw, honest playbook for how to actually crack this channel.

Here's what they break down:

• The right timing to contact a VC and Who to contact in the firm

• The discount conversation: 15% minimum, 20-25% sweet spot, 50%+ kills your pricing credibility

• Never kick back revenue to a VC: give them deal flow and senior introductions instead

• Pipeline is the real KPI, not number of VCs signed and don't expect anything in month one

• The biggest mistakes: sending a hit list on call one, expecting a 30-min intro to generate 50 warm leads overnight

• Be a sniper, not a machine gun: 5 deeply researched targets beat 200 cold blasts every time

This episode is a straight shot of reality for any partnerships person who wants to build a VC motion that actually drives revenue.

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Abhishek's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alahoti/

Roman's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-lobas/

Maxime's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximeimbert-partnerships

#partnerships #venturecapital #VC #b2bsaas #partnermotion #ecosystem #growth #alliances #startups

I'm Maxime Imbert, Fractional Head of Partnerships. I help B2B SaaS and Fintech generate revenue by leveraging strategic partnerships. Strategy call: https://calendly.com/maxime_imbert/30min

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