Partner sales with James Urie at Close

James' partner sales responsibilities run the gamut, from identifying partners and to co-marketing and helping them succeed. He shares his insights building this program, including:

• Ways to partner: Close offers three distinct partner programs: Affiliates, experts, and integrations. James walks through how each works and how they are incentivizing and engaging growth levers that were previously underutilized.
• Integrations: This is a hot topic and an increasingly important one in the SaaS (software as a service) world. James shares an example of their partnership with QuotaPath, how they identified the opportunity, executed on it, and how it's going. (Hint: It's going well!)
• Incentives: Several times in our conversation James talks about incentivizing partners and how financial motivation is an important part of the equation for partner sales... But it's not the only one. Sales support and training is another important consideration.
• Complementing vs. Competing: One area we explore is that it looks like to have a complementary partner sales relationship versus a competitive one. Product roadmap, customer base, and other factors come into play. 
• One to Many: When it comes to integrations, if you build one, chances are you are going to build another. So how do you know where to start? And how does that affect your sales and go to market motions? 

James Urie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-urie/
Close on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/close-crm/
Learn more about Close: https://close.com/