171 – Founding a Movement and Community to Drive Partner Led Business Growth

Partnership Leaders Co-Founder and Chief Partner Officer Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

After years of taking a backseat to direct go-to-market and selling, the ecosystem is finally taking center stage as the next lever to business growth. Our next guest collaborated with two friends founding a movement and community to drive partner-led business growth. His organization is helping alliances and partnership leaders advance this revolution in B2B selling.

Chris Samila is the Chief Partner Officer at Partnership Leaders, an organization and community focused on empowering partnership professionals to advance their careers and build partnership programs. Along with Tai Rattigan and Asher Matthew, Chris started Partnership Leaders as the "catalyst" of change in B2B selling. I am so excited about our shared mission and what we all hope to do to put "partner-led" B2B growth front and center.

In Chris’s Words

"I would consider myself an enthusiastic evangelist for the partnership profession—currently the Co-Founder and Chief Partnership Officer for Partnership Leaders.Partnership Leaders provides a community and platform to support a vibrant global network of professionals in business development, partnerships, and alliances at modern tech and service companies. Hundreds of the top software companies in the world help drive success for their partner teams through Partnership Leaders.My career started in the clean-tech industry with GreenSummit, Adura Technologies, SolarCity, and Tesla before transitioning to the SaaS software space, driving partnership success at Optimizely for six years, which included moving to Australia to open the APAC market for them. Joined FullStory in 2018 and moved back to the USA to lead their Partnership and Alliance efforts globally before transitioning to Crossbeam. Proudly built Crossbeam's partnership program and the team starting in 2020 before having the opportunity to go full-time on Partnership Leaders in late 2022.

What You’ll Learn

* Chris's Career Journey (2:20)

* How Partnership Leaders Began (4:48)

* Importance of aligning the C-Suite (9:52)

* Gaining internal buy-in from your organization (16:57)

* Best piece of advice (26:58)

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

Let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper but never live up to their expected results. There are many reasons why partnerships fail, and at Ultimate Partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and frameworks. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website.

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