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Barrett King has built partnership programs at HubSpot, Ramp, and now Close CRM. In this episode, he breaks down how agencies can build SaaS partnerships that actually deliver — starting with a simple but underused question: what does partnership mean to you?
Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
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Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Barrett King. Barrett has spent most of his career building agency facing partnership programs at some of the biggest names in SaaS, HubSpot, ramp, and now he is at close CRM, where he serves as the head of partnership. Now, what drew me to Barrett is that he thinks about partnerships the way that most agency owners just don't, right? It's where partnerships are like this deeply intentional relationship that should be defined like extremely clearly before you even talk about signing a deal. Now, he has seen agencies build like 100 million dollar businesses through just like smart ecosystem alignment. But he's also watched others that stall out before they even hit 250k
Barrett King 3:06
in my career in sales, I remember I had a sales leader that said to me, somebody the effect of like, we really impact people. Like, he was, like, really bullish in this idea that what we were selling was a startup we were at this is again, decades ago, but that we were selling to companies, but really, like, it was the users, the people. There was an impact on on their life and their, you know, time spent, whatnot. And it was very shortly thereafter that I found my way to HubSpot. And when I was there, in my first days of training, they used to bring us all in and fly everybody from around the world, and we'd sit in this training room, and we were there for like, four weeks, or whatever, and it was maybe day two. We had, like, just set up our tech. We're sitting in this room, and I won't use the person's name, but the head of sales training at the time walks in in a big, dramatic way. They slam the desk in front of me because I'm a, you know, eager kiddo, and I'm sitting right down front, ready to go right and they look sort of me in the eye, not me personally, but, like, you know, the group, but me right in front and they say, HubSpot fundamentally changes people's lives. And we're here to talk about how you can help do more of that. And I remember just being like, whoa. Like, that's cool. Like, that's really valuable and insightful. And obviously I drank the Kool Aid. It got me excited when I was immediately, then, you know, days and hours later in this this partner world, the businesses that we were working with were marketing agencies, and we were selling this idea of, like, transformational growth and moving from project to retainer or delivering ROI centric services and all these things that, while they delivered meaningful impact to the company and the clients of that company, because the agencies were Small, like the median size was like under 20 employees. They were family businesses. These were human beings. And I remember, in one of my first partnership calls agency owner, when I said, Well, what does partnership mean to you? Why are we here? What are we trying to do? It was super simple. Barrett, I have a son and a daughter, and they both want to go to college, and so I want to pay for their college with.
Chris DuBois 0:43
because they've lost themselves just chasing whatever that bigger vendor wanted. And I think these lessons are hard earned and super important for agencies to understand. In this episode, we discuss why most agencies enter partnerships without ever defining what they actually want from them, the two biggest mistakes that agencies make when partnering with SaaS companies, why mcps and AI connectivity is changing what it means to be a strong agency partner right now and more. Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all in one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at get gia.ai/dynamic agency. No one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested, and right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today, so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join a dynamic agency dot community and now. Barrett King, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. You have built partnership programs at HubSpot, then you move to ramp now you're running the head of partnerships at close. What's the through line for your career? Right? Like, what drew you specifically to agency, the agency facing side of like, SaaS go to market.
Barrett King 2:55
It's a smart question. No one's actually, I don't think ever in my career asked me that, so kudos to kudos for coming up with it. Yeah, you win on that one. You get a gold star. Actually. No, I think for me, early
Barrett King 4:59
With this partnership with HubSpot, whoa, that's that's significant. And I think perhaps because I was young in my career, and I was impressionable in that sense, and or, like, just the altruistic feeling of we're actually helping humans, I have strayed away from enterprise. I did enterprise at ramp, and we can talk about it, but I was in the like GSI and upper, you know, upper market partnerships. And while that was interesting, I left there because I wanted to get back to agencies and sis and smaller firms. Because at the core of it for me, you know, I have this sort of operating principle of, like, I have to care about what I'm doing. I have to give a shit, frankly, like, it has to be meaningful. And when my seven year old looks at me and, you know, says, Dad, what was work like today, or whatever like, I just like this idea selfishly, of saying I actually help somebody. So for me, I think that's why I've spent most of my career, all of it effectively, barring a few years there, focused on SMB agencies and sis and consultants, because it's a people based business, and they're humans, and the work that we get to do has meaningful impact.
Chris DuBois 6:00
I want to go back to you asked a partner like what the partnership would mean to them, and they had a clear goal around the partnership, which I don't know that I've talked to any like HubSpot. I work with HubSpot partners all the time. I was a HubSpot partner, and I don't know that anyone has ever come into like, a conversation like that, and said, This is my exact goal for this like engagement, for this relationship, for the agencies who probably haven't even thought about like defining partnership for themselves, like, how would you define it?
Barrett King 6:36
I think what I so one of the things that I've done throughout my my time and working with agencies, with partners in general, I always start with, like, what are we doing here? Because we know it's about revenue. Like, there's that, like, elephant in the room. It's purple, it's on, you know, on fire in the corner, kind of thing. Like, you can't ignore it. We're here to generate revenue, and we can talk about better together. We can talk about, you know, NRR. We can talk about customer experience. And sure, I can give you 20 examples. But at the core of this, it's about generating, generating generating revenue. The differentiation that I try and get to when I talk about what does partnership mean, is what's your motivation? And I think that's probably, in my mind, a better way for me to I might even coach myself in that sense, but like to actually position this moving forward, because I was fortunate that this individual said, here's what I want, like, I know I want this revenue, and here's what I'm going to do with it. It was very tactical. It. It was very tactical, very tangible, very, very intentional. In that sense, when I think about what most firms are doing, they typically are an exceptional practitioner that left a company, a corporate entity, a space where they were very successful because they either wanted to do something to give themselves more freedom or do something to give themselves more earning potential. So it's either a lifestyle business or, you know, a growth firm, if you will. And maybe it's both, and that's rare, but it happens. And so I think what I have found more specifically is that by defining partnership, it's not sometimes it's like, what does that word mean? Like, are we talking about one way street versus two? We talking about integration versus integration versus go to market, you know, and selling and whatnot. That's a piece. Like, there's like, this sort of, like, rules thing that happens. How, you know, what are the rules of engagement? How do we work together? Sure, but the other part is, why are you here? Like, you wake up every day and you choose to be a part of this partner dynamic. What do you want from it? And actually, this is my, give you my trick. This is a fun one that I've used since I was a sales rep early in my career, and I still use it today. And I say trick because it's like, sort of tongue in cheek, but, you know, it's, it's disarming, and it's the truth, and it's like, I will literally say to you, how do you get compensated? Like, I'll ask partnership leaders at ISVs, right software companies, like, how are you paid? Big companies, small companies, like, and it's always, they're always kind of thrown off. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, let's be real here. Like, you have a motivation. You're trying to hit some sort of a goal. What is that? Let me know it. Because if I can influence that better, great. And if I can't, like, let's talk about that early on. And let's have expectations and frameworks. And I think that's for me, what motivates this idea of asking about partnership and defining partnership? You're an agency owner, and you get on with, you know, clothes, right? You get on with me, you get on with HubSpot and Salesforce, and whomever that big provider is that will always be bigger than you. Theoretically, they have a little bit of power. And the ones that are really good at go to market partnerships know that, recognize that and try and use it for good. This is the again, the like, feel good, version of Barrett's, who I am. And so I think when you define partnerships early as both KPI driven in terms of monetary or output driven expectation and the like, human part of this, right? I've met partnership leaders that are like, I'm just trying to get director, trying to get VP, I'm trying to get promoted. I'm really excited, right? I've met partner owners that are like, I care about college. Like I described to you. I'd want to use a joke. I'm gonna buy a bass boat. You did, like, cool, right? Whatever it is that motivates us, that's what drives the relationship. That's what drives the material value, so that when it gets hard, because it will, you can go back to this. Is the reason that I'm here, why I show. On what we're doing together. And I think for me, I get the truest of sense of the word, like partnership is about sharing in that insight and being intentional in the way you deliberately build something that delivers that outcome to both parties, you know, depending on your motivation, right?
Chris DuBois 10:16
Yeah. So I like being able to define that specifically, because I don't even know, like, when I was at an agency, that we had a clear definition, like, there were a lot of reasons for being a HubSpot partner. Like, we would often get projects directly from HubSpot. Like, they would be paying us to build things for them, which super lucrative. Awesome, they had big pockets, deep pockets. But then also, like, you get the payouts right for being a partner, but you also get like visibility for being like, for the different tiers and like, they'll introduce you to to the right people at the right times and stuff. And I think, yeah, going into the engagement knowing what could best benefit you, and being able to tell your partner that and like communicate those goals, makes it much easier for them to be able
Barrett King 10:59
to help you achieve it. It does, and it also it keeps you aligned, like I when I So, when I left HubSpot, I actually went to new breed, one of hubspots top partners at the time, right out of Vermont, and I was head of sales and partnerships and responsible for, you know, a lot of the revenue behaviors. And, you know, of course, HubSpot is the premier, the number one partner, effectively, in that dynamic and and I remember, you know, obviously everyone's excited. I'll Barrett from hubspots Now at an agency, like, let's go and try and drive the behavior we want, which is more sales. Let's, let's go faster. But I also had a handful of other partnerships, and I had this sort of like ethos that I would share with the CEO there, Patrick, all the time. We he believed this, like he was, you know, he was why I was there, in many ways, and that was that it was about delivering a better outcome for the customer. It's like, how do we go and actually build a meaningful tech stack, meaningful operating model, set of tools, whatever it is that actually gets this customer to their outcome. And it's, it's evolved over the years, like it's become more dimensional. I've said it before. I'll say it again now. Like, I don't think software is singular anymore, and I don't think there's like, this idea that one technology stack is one tool, excuse me, is the technology stack the all in one and everything. I think you have to have connected systems, especially with the MCP overlay that you're seeing now with llms, and you have access to so much more data. And so if you go way back to the ethos of like, we're in this because it's a better outcome for our customer, we're in it because it retains revenue better. We're in it because whatever that it increases market share. Like partnerships can be a good beachhead in a new markets, or new languages, or new, you know, regions, all of those things come back to the core values that we're trying to build. And like, I've actually seen partnership people. I've never done this myself, but I've seen folks and been on the receiving end of developing, like, mutual documents, not action plans. Everyone loves to talk about sales action plans. And like, that's all well and good. It's cool, it's helpful. But, I mean, like, why are we doing this? Plans, like, what are we doing here? And sticking on that? And again, to when it gets tough, you can point back to, like, you want a basketball, you want to pay for college, you want a promo, whatever that thing is that we're in it for together, right?
Chris DuBois 12:56
So, yeah, another, there's, like, a tertiary benefit. It's probably more important than that. When I was working with partner hub as an advisor, we did this a pretty large like survey across partners from Salesforce, HubSpot, like all the big ecosystems that where agencies would be involved, and through the numbers, it was like the larger the ecosystem grew, the fewer benefits that every member was able to receive, right? And I think that's it makes complete sense when you say it like that, but a lot of people don't see it. So I kind of, I coined the term the starving sibling effect, where it's like everybody starts fighting for those deals and opportunities within that but I think by going in and being able to have, like, one of these mutual one of these mutual agreements, right? Like, how are we each going to benefit from this and stuff, you can avoid some of those, that starving sibling effect. Because you might say, You know what, the deals aren't that important to me. But, like, it is the visibility. If you could just get me in front of an audience once a quarter, like that would be enough for me to want to be here. And so now we got to bypass that, and now this ecosystem that's growing massively can still be a benefit to everybody. There's a You remind
Barrett King 14:09
me of a story, and I won't use their name, because I don't even know, frankly, if they run the agency anymore, but there was this partner my first year at HubSpot, my first real year, like acquiring agency partners that I found in Georgia, and I won't use a town, but this tiny little town in Georgia and and he and I in our in our first call, I remember saying, like, what does partnership mean to you? That was my, my thing, like, I let off a lot of my calls that way back in the day. I still do. And I remember he said, partnership is about building something in my community. I was like, I haven't heard that before. Like, usually someone has, like, a monetary goal or some sort of an outcome, like, what? Outcome, like, what's that mean? And he was like, you know, I grew up in insert town here, and, you know, I want to see this town continue to thrive. And so Barrett, what I'm going to do is, by working with you, I'm going to build a 50 person agency in my town, like, buy 50. And he's like, it's a good number. Like, okay. Okay, sure. It's like, 50 people, and they're all going to be employed from here. It's like, All right, that's interesting. And he's like, yep, 50 people from my town. We're going to build an agency. We'll do a bunch of HubSpot stuff. We'll do some other things too. Like, we're going to do some design work and some branding work and some CRM and sales and Sure. But like, we're gonna do it all. We're gonna build something meaningful. And it was like three and a half years later. I remember picking up the phone and having one of our calls we had every quarter, and he goes, Hey, I'm done. I was like, done with what, you know, what are we talking about? And he's like, I'm done with the partnership. I was like, oh, like, you know, what do we do kind of thing? And he goes, No, man, I did it. Like, I built the agency. I was like, well, now what? And he's like, I'm good. Like, we're cool, we're happy. I'm square. I don't need this anymore, and we're just being like, wow. Like, you really were that diligent three and a half, four years later to have built it? He was like, Yep, we're, you know, 46 people, or whatever it was, and we're profitable, and we're in the town and, like, I don't want the pressure of of selling more. Like, I'm very happy doing this. And so I just sort of said, like, fine. Like, I won't bug you if you need help, we'll be here, and we'll have a passive relationship, moving forward, less proactive, less pushy. You let me know when you want to revisit. And he was set on as a partner for like, another maybe a year and a half, two years, and then I think, if I recall, he ended up merging with another firm, and they kind of moved on. But what was fascinating is, like, it's not always the singularity. It's sometimes it's actually this, like, very deeply personal thing that we're trying to get to in terms of why we, you know, we invest in these relationships.
Chris DuBois 16:24
Yeah, that's an awesome story. So he obviously had, like, very specific targets to be able to achieve this. What is, what is a mistake like that worked out great for him, right? Like, it just seems like the perfect, like fairy tale ending, almost. But the what's a mistake that you see most agencies like falling into when trying to make partnerships with, like SaaS products?
Barrett King 16:49
Yeah, I think it's actually, it's it's the perhaps what I perceive is more obvious thing, and maybe it's not. So let me just articulate here. So the first is losing yourself. Like, I deeply respect the businesses that say, here's an opportunity. Like, I'm seeing it at close right now. Like, there's a bunch of firms that are like, we're going to be a close, exclusive partner. We're going to build something big and meaningful around close. Love it. Let's go. Like, as a leader, it's awesome for me as a, you know, as a ecosystem. Like we deeply value that, but it's because their values align to that. And what I have found in my career in coaching and selling to being a part of agencies and supporting that that ecosystem in a variety of ways, like it's usually sort of acquiescing to what the bigger firm wants and losing your values, because then you get frustrated, like you saw it at Salesforce, at HubSpot, at, you know, Monday, like every big ecosystem hits this moment where the collective groan takes place. Like, you want us to do what now, you want to change what now. And I think that typically, that groan comes from the businesses that are so deeply ingrained and they believe that never would change. So like, maybe I'll share a couple. One would be like, keep your identity. Be true to yourself. Stay focused on you. The second is, and this is the tough love moment, so hold on to your pants. Here for everybody. But like, don't believe that that business cares at all. Like, that sounds really sad to say, but we're in partnerships. We're sort of programmed to believe that, like the better together, and we're going to get there together and, like this togetherness. But if we break the whole thing down to its core pieces, this is about two companies working together to generate revenue full stop. And so I think there's this, like, pragmatic, realistic, you know, pulling the emotion out, sort of just like honest thing that has to happen, in particular with the C suite in agencies, about expectation setting. And so that might be, like, I remember stages of my career, you have these partners, it would be like, we need MDF, you know, we need you to give us money. And I'd be like, Absolutely not. Aren't you gonna ask anybody? And I'm like, No, I know that conversation is going to go, I've watched it 100 times, and they'd be like, but we are different. You know, we matter. And you're like, Ah, I know you matter to me. But like, let's be real here. There's an economy of scale that takes place with these bigger firms, and it's just it's not going to get you there. And the other thing that I think I would offer here that that I have seen, and I it's just, like, very common pitfalls, like, don't be too big for your britches kind of thing. Like, just know this sounds really rude. It's not meant to but I don't know how else to deliver it. So it's like, know your place. Like, just know what you're great at and own the shit out of that. Be really good at x, whatever that is, and and make that your thing. Because I think I've seen this forced adaptation take place so commonly in communities like that and ecosystems right now where SaaS products will always move faster than your agency. So that's what software is like. Software is meant to be intensely scalable. Software doesn't have a human capital constraint like you do and a talent constraint. And just like in many ways, it's. They have this ability to stretch resources well beyond what you do, and when you try and keep up, you fail. I've watched it happen numerous times, and so I think it's sort of like combining all of those. It's like just being situationally aware, knowing where you're at, knowing what your place is always reaching right? Don't, don't stop pushing the boundaries. But like being honest with yourself, your leadership team, your organization around like, what can we really expect by investing here and balancing that investment? You know, go all in if you want to go all in because you want to build a company around it. There's times in my career I watched 100 million dollar brands get built, right because they leaned into a bigger ISV technology firm, right? And said, like, I'm in, let's go. How do we do this? And I've watched others get stuck at a million bucks, $20,000 like, these nominal amounts and say, like, I can't go beyond that. And you're like, Well, why? Because I won't compromise. Okay, great. Stand on that and be okay with that. And had the integrity to say, like, this is what I'm going to do, and I'm not going to go any further. So some of the things that I've seen certainly last 1015, years, yeah,
Chris DuBois 20:56
on your first point, staying true to yourself and just keeping your identity quick story. I think this might help the audience. The when I was, I don't know, maybe, like, nine ish months in to the business, like, right before my business started taking off, so I was still in that, like, maybe I get a real job type of mindset, right? Like, but first years, a lot, yeah, there was someone I knew from, like, as he's a, well, an Army vet and so, so, like, we got along really well there. We had met multiple times. He runs a an awesome SaaS product, like, super useful tool within the HubSpot ecosystem, and but he had a ton of agencies that were trying to use this product, and then really wouldn't adopt it and get the most out of it, because they didn't know how to, like, do simple marketing and, like, run their their agency. So he was kind of proposed that the option to me of like, hey, I can get you all in front of all of these leads. Like, we can get you can fill cohorts with the amount of people who need your help. That the one thing that he requested was that I would use his platform for delivering my entire curriculum and so and I debated back and forth over this for a while, sure, but with my positioning like, I very much value independence, and my goal is to give agencies independence like so you're not reliant on referrals or on any like, one thing, like, you can choose what you want to do with your business and just tackle it. And because of that, I had to say, like, Hey, I can't use your platform for everything, because then I'll be tied to it and I'll lose my independence. What that means. And we had it like it was zero issue, right? Like, we he understood, because he's a good human being, and so it was, like, easy for us to have the conversation, but that was one of those things, like even looking back now, I have no regret for making that choice. Yeah, like, I do think it would have pointed my business in a completely different direction that I wanted to take with it. And so I think agencies should probably be that critical about, like, the partnerships they're considering.
Barrett King 22:59
Yeah, it's like a it's like any relationship, you have to set boundaries, and if you misstep on that, like, yeah, you might last a couple years, or whatever it is, but you're going to end up not in the place that you want to be. And I think that's been my, that's been my, like, clearest observation throughout my career on agencies, just like the ones that set the boundary early and keep it win, the ones that don't struggle. And, you know, I respect the attempt to try and acquiesce and bend and stay in the trend and whatnot and keep moving forward, but at some point you just sort of lose traction, right? And then you fail.
Chris DuBois 23:29
Yeah, so shifting gears a bit. Is there a path you would recommend for agencies as they're looking to start partnering in regards to, like, who they partner with? Should they be finding tools that they're already using, they enjoy and they find a way to be able to deliver the same value to their clients. Or should they go seek out potential solutions, like knowing that we have these potential challenges, come up with clients all the time. Let me go find some solution to take care of this, rather than just refer business and things like that.
Barrett King 24:02
Yeah, I like to focus on early partnerships coming from your customer. So I maybe it's too simple, but it's worked for me. And it's always like, go ask your most successful customers what other technologies they're using, or because you're theoretically in something, a HubSpot, a Salesforce Monday or whatever, go and log into that system and see what else is connected. So that, you know, the examples are like HubSpot partnered with Vidyard because customers were asking for video based products. You know, ability to do video based prospecting and testimonials and whatnot. Easy win, right? You saw it with like Monday to diversion of that MailChimp, did Salesforce? Did, you know, close? Does we do it all the time? That, to me, from a technology perspective, is easy, because we get to pick and choose what we integrate with. I think, from an agency perspective, it's got to be grounded in customer value. And we know that because, like, obviously, retention is a priority, and, or at least should be, and a prime example of like, opportunity. Comes from misconception is like selling more software. It's actually not. It's selling more value, and using software to deliver that value should not feel weird and icky. I think it still does for some firms. You got to get over it, like this is not going to go away. And so I think there's, I've experienced a very important balance between the expectation of my customer knows what they want, and then my their expectation of me around, I should tell them what they should do as an agency, right? And so I think the second part of my commentary here is being a student of the space that you operate in. Like, go check out the industry trends. Go to the industry conventions, not just to acquire customers, but see what technologies are emerging, see what's happening. Like, for example, close right now, we have an exceptional API documentation, really strong API like, one of my just favorite partners from another ecosystem came into the close program and said to me, within 24 hours, he had generated 22 unique connectors. How did you do that? Like, do you do the best APIs I've ever seen, better than any CRM I've ever worked in, including the bigs. Remember being like, whoa. Like, that's pretty that's a compliment. That's a big deal. He was like, Yeah. And I'm like, why did you choose those 22 things? And he's, like, all the customers that I work with, those are the things that they asked for. I wanted it easy in case I start using, you know, clothes more often. Great. Like, that's great. The second thing that I've seen, too, that I don't know everything about to be clear, but I'm like a student of in learning, and that's this idea, like MCP server and the access to information, I think, as an agency, if you don't have somebody, regardless of your profession, whether you are creative, only web, you know, rev, ops, whatever it is, if you don't have somebody that is a technologist, excuse me, and like, really focused on the technology opportunity and problems that are presenting Shit, you're in trouble. Like, I mean that with like, due respect, but like, you are in trouble, and it's okay if you haven't hired somebody yet. But like, this year, part of your head count needs to be a technologist, somebody who is proficient and or student of AI and thinking about how systems work together. There was a great comment on LinkedIn in the day. I have to go figure out who it was, and if I do, I'll tell you after you can add them in here. But there's a person who said something to the effect of, like, if you're not looking at MCP and the data interconnectivity as an opportunity, you're already behind. And if you don't realize that it's no longer about, should we partner so much as you know. And like, it was always like, should we cool and then how do we do it? Oh, our teams had to develop something. It's going to take them six to 10 months. And like, now it's like, should we partner? Sure? Like, why wouldn't we do it? Because you can connect anything effectively that has, you know, their act together. You know, technology wise, right? And, and it's not that hard to do the things that were brutally hard three years ago. And so when I think about what partnership means now, you actually have to go and sort of like, pendulum swing back to, like, being very discerning, very intentional. What kind of tech stack do we want to architect for our customers? And I think, and this is just me on a soapbox for a second, but I think that's actually where agencies win in 2627 probably 28 and then we'll see what happens. But like, the next two to four years, you got to know what your stack is. Here is the CRM that we work in. Here is the calling tool that we use. Here are the like, two or three connectors that we apply to, like, some sort of a data enrichment, probably some sort of, like a reporting BI tool, if you need to, like, here's the three to five things that we do at its core, and we have to productize that a little bit. Do you know, agencies hate, least in my experience, and that's cool, I get it. Protect your creative, protect your like outlets where you get to be more inventive and be more outcome based, but like the modern buyer wants you to say, here's the three things we use, here's the 10 things we do in those things, and here's the outcome that we can get you to tactically, technically, here's the revenue, here's the everything. It's very black and white. And so I think that's important from a partnership lens, to take on the problem and say, like, we have our feel goods, our altruistic, you know, make everybody happy and sing Kumbaya moments, and that's around, like, perhaps the big picture stuff that feels good to talk about. But when it comes down to it, the brass tax, it's really about being very clear on the technologies that benefit our customer outcomes and the technologies that, while we might like like it's a good comment. Chris around, do we like them? Do we use them? We need to make sure that they are beneficial to our company and to the outcomes that our customers are looking for. Because, again, more and more now it's the outcome. It's not the idea of what we might be able to do together, right?
Chris DuBois 29:14
So now let's say, Well, I mean, we don't even have to say this. I guess you're out looking for partners, for clothes, sure, what are some of those traits that you're looking for in a promising partner?
Barrett King 29:28
So if you asked me that prior to joining here, I would have said, CRM practitioner. Because we're a CRM for small and scaling businesses. We focus on that. We focus on startups. Our unique value prop is everything is natively built, right? We've got your calling and your SMS and your call recording and transcription and calling in general, all your email automation and like, okay, cool. We got everything there already. And so the persona was agencies, sis, firms that are CRM specific, that are developers, to. Some extent, just in terms of being able to connect different elements and whatnot. Now that was like, you know, it's I've been here for probably three and a half months, four months at this point, what I'll say is like, Sure, it's that, but I want inventors. I want the the, you know, AI creatives. I want the technologists that are students of the problem. I don't think the modern buyer knows that they need. I think everyone is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of innovation taking place. And if you look back in history to when this level of speed is relative, but this this level of speed took place. The Industrial Revolution took, whatever it was, 50 years, or something like that, 65 years, for it to go from like an idea to true implementation. We went from, wouldn't AI be a cool thing to models building themselves in 24 months. You could argue 36 but like sub three years, that's no joke, and what I don't know is what I want my partners to teach me. What I don't know is what I want partners to help lead us into. So I think the students of the problem, the people that are close to the cutting edge of technology, those are interesting. The other thing that I look for, too, though, is somebody willing to build a business with me. And what I mean is like, it could be 20% of your revenue, it could be 100% of your revenue. That doesn't matter to me, that is your business and your decision, and I'll never push you beyond that, unless you ask me to. But what my team cares about. What I care about is you are interested in building something together. The most successful partnerships that I've seen from an agency perspective throughout my career, every firm I've been at has always been someone who said, I see the opportunity. Like, right now, close it's first movers. For the next year to 18 months, it's first movers. 24 months from now, I'm going to be like, here's an ICP, here's a team. They sit in. Here's the behaviors we want to see. Like, it's much more clear and succinct and repeatable right now. It's first mover. And you're like, I want to show up. You know? I want to tap a pretty unscaled North American market. I'm going to do some lead gen. I'm going to do some some creative solutioning. I want to collaborate. I want to share. Back to close. I want to give Barrett feedback on the product, on the solution itself. How we build something like it's those collaborators, those innovators, less than just a singularity in terms of ICP being like a specific set of technical behaviors.
Chris DuBois 32:11
Awesome. All right. Now, as we wind down, I guess I want to ask, like, the 8020, of partnerships. If I want to make the most successful partnership that we could ever imagine, right, what is that one domino that we need to knock down first, in order for everything else to just flow,
Barrett King 32:35
you need your your intersection of value, which feels incredibly buzzy to say on out loud, let alone recording. But it's like, you need to be very, very clear on what are we doing here. Why are we doing it? But the how is what matters like, I think, right now, what you see is a lot of ideating and pontificating and, you know, posting on social media and all that good stuff. But what you need to be able to do is sit down and say, like to start this thing off. Here are the two to four behaviors that we're going to exhibit as a partner. Here's the three to five things we're going to do as a, you know, an ISV technology firm or whatever like and be very clear about it. You got to measure it. It's got to be in some way repeatable, and then you have to be a student of that problem. I say that a lot. I'd probably say it too much. I like the phrase a bit, but like you got to you got to look at it. You got to look at your data, your numbers. You got to repeat the behavior enough to know what's working what's not. You got to focus on where you plus partner, equals better outcome for customer, and just maniacally obsess over that in the beginning.
Chris DuBois 33:45
Awesome. All right, I got two more for you. First one being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?
Barrett King 33:52
I think there's the easy answer of Eos. I read that early in my career. And, like, obviously, if you haven't, you should. It's interesting. It's dry as can be. Gino Whitman is like a brilliant writer and incredibly boring in my experience, but great content, like the stuff's really good and it's worth exploring and looking at, read the book, get a grips, a better version of it. The original EOS is, like brutally hard to get through. My experience. I was fortunate to be early at HubSpot, and when I was there, Mark Roberts was still there, the original CRO zero to 100 million. And Mark has wrote two books since. He wrote the sales acceleration formula as a sales leader like I deeply appreciate that book. It was very helpful, very insightful, very interesting. I lived part of the story, so I had that benefit. But I think rigor and diligence is incredibly valuable, in particular today, when there's a lot of distraction, and that comes from some of what he talks about in that book. He actually recently wrote the science of scaling. I have not read all of it. I've read pieces of it, and I was a part of the early ideation. I was at a was a VC, quite frankly, at a LP, excuse me, at a VC firm that he owns. And I got to see some of the early preview stuff. Like, I think what he does really well, and why I. Like it is like he helps you think about these inflection moments. He's a he's a mathematician at his core, and he uses that brain to build these like processes, these frameworks. And so, from my experience, most partners, most agency owners, sis are are very capable, but benefit from learning those frameworks and those abilities to make it repeatable. Those are some of the books that I would you know again, EOS is good to have in general, whether you follow it or not. But science of scale, sales, acceleration, formula, both really good books to read.
Chris DuBois 35:30
Yeah, I don't know any. So EOS has come up multiple times. I'm sure. Rocket fuel, traction, yep, but the nothing by Roberge, but the what's interesting. So I got to hear him talk at one of the mm conferences and stuff. But I was also fascinated by one of these concepts for your marketing sales, SLA, and being able to essentially map out, like in a three by three grid. It's like the value per client, so like client ABC, but then also the actions that they're taking in order to be able to for a marketing team, to be able to create, essentially, like their campaigns, to hand off, like, a certain value of leads to sales, yeah, and so yeah, I could give you a bunch of like C, like our lowest tier clients who just did a lead magnet, like, super low value. Or I can give you one, like a type client who booked a call with sales right away. And so, like, both can equal the same amount, but it's like, they're gonna be very different campaigns, yeah. And so it's like, but we're still giving sales what they need to hit their numbers. And so it's a awesome to just like to see the math behind it, and, like, completely restructured it, yeah,
Barrett King 36:36
for me, he talks about another mathematical equation is P, E, T, P is product market fit, and actually works well for agencies. So if you are not thinking about your services as a product, do that like, wake up tomorrow and start becoming a student of that ideology. It's really important. So just work that we're doing like you should productize it. You should make it scalable. Different Convo, but he talks about, or has talked about, P, E, T, P, percent of people do e event over tea time. And the idea was, like, you know, 80% of our customers take three or more actions in the HubSpot portal every month. And that was early product market fit. And so if we found that at some point that was not true, excuse me again, then like, All right, we got to change the product. We got to go back to what we're doing. We're going to pivot and sort of figure it out. And when I worked at the agency, when I've coached agencies, I've always talked about the same thing. I frame it a little bit differently, but it's this idea of, like, are the things that we're doing on a from a behavioral perspective, actually yield me results that our customers are looking for? Are they seeing repeatable results? And can we prove that month over month? And if the answer is yes, keep doing what we're doing. If the answer is no, don't just overdrive our people, which a lot of folks lean into, oh, they can work more work for them. And like, no, let's be studious of the way that we're doing that work to yield a different outcome so we can be more productive, so we can actually get to what the customer wants. That only works when you are actively monitoring it and looking at it month over month, you know, day over day, in many cases. And so it's so much so that, like, now I look at my reporting as a partner leader every day, multiple times a day. I'm even hard coding in cloud code right now with our snowflake server and MCP to a variety partner stack and a bunch of other tools in the background to pull in data to do analysis on like, what are the behaviors our partners are taking in our product that are leading indicators of success? You know, call it 15 years after learning about that. So I think that stuff's really important, in particular, as technology becomes more permeated into agency life, where you can take more data in building these like solutions that allow you to view it from a landscape perspective and analyze where you're having impact and where your weak points are, makes you more successful as a firm for sure,
Chris DuBois 38:36
I feel like we're just getting warmed up on a new topic here,
Barrett King 38:39
but next Round,
Chris DuBois 38:41
yeah, awesome. Yeah. We'll have to have you back so we can, we can hit that side too. I would love that awesome. Barrett, thanks for joining. Oh, wait, where can people learn more about you? Where can they find you? Let's go to LinkedIn.
Barrett King 38:51
Yeah. I mean, I spent most of my social media time there. I will buy anyone's welcome to join and add me in terms of being in my network, if you want to check out clothes like I welcome partners right now. I don't intend to make it a charge for program like others have. There is no barrier to entry, like we want everybody right now, because we're trying to innovate and be creative. So feel free to go to close.com and check out our site and answer your own questions there. We're revamping the partner experience right now, so kind of bear with me, but it'll be pretty meaningful here in next couple of weeks and months and then again, like just go back to LinkedIn. Come check me out. Shoot me a note. I'm glad to connect, have a conversation, spend 15 with anybody, and certainly help where I can.
Chris DuBois 39:28
Awesome. Thanks again for joining us again. It was a great combo. That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on substack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai