
Ecosystem-Led Growth - with Bob Moore, Founder and CEO Crossbeam
03/12/24 • 44 min
Ecosystem-Led Growth is an evolution of Partner-Led Growth and is the vision of Bob Moore, Founder and CEO of Crossbeam and the author of Ecosystem-Led Growth.
Bob started his tech career as an investor at Insight Partners, and then founded RJ Metrics which was acquired by Magento in 2016, now part of Adobe, and then Bob co-founded Stitch Data which was ultimately acquired by Talend and is now part of Click.
Crossbeam was founded to unlock the modern platform's architecture and data layer enabling companies to collaborate by making it much easier to share data across multiple partner companies. The catalyst to Bob founding Crossbeam was a $2.6B mistake! That mistake was one Bob made at RJ Metrics where they found and then fell out of product-market fit as evidenced by lower growth. When they analyzed the factor leading to the reduced growth, they identified the emergence of the API economy and how buyers wanted to be able to buy point solutions that were easy to integrate with other point solutions - which was the inspiration to build a product that fully leverages the modern data stack and open API ecosystem.
What is Ecosystem-Led Growth? It is the ability to leverage a network of partners who can easily share insights with partners who sell complimentary products to the same target buyers. Simple questions like do we have customers or prospects in common, or do you have an active sales cycle going on that we could partner on to build a joint solution for the customer?
What is the difference between building an "app ecosystem" such as the Salesforce App Exchange and a "partner ecosystem"? It starts with a foundation built upon an open system architecture that enables the sharing of data to collaborate on common target customers, and those companies in the ecosystem are willing to share specific data with partners to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Why are most B2B SaaS companies still using a traditional direct sales model versus focusing more on partner ecosystems as a primary lead source? The answer starts with the negative reputation of how partnership models were implemented, managed, and operated historically. Partnerships were viewed as encroaching on sales rep opportunities and having a partner damage the reputation of their partners by not adequately communicating the value, feature, and function of their partner's solution.
Modern Ecosystem-Led growth does not rely upon an army of partnership reps, it leverages the data that already exists in each partnership infrastructure, such as their CRM system. Now, based upon corporate policy, rules, and intercompany workflows, an existing partner can share the relevant data with their partner(s) which will enable that sales rep to have access to data that will make approaching a new potential customer armed with relevant data regarding the tech stack and preferences of a potential customer.
If you are looking for new ways to increase revenue growth efficiency, decrease customer acquisition costs, and identify "best fit" potential customers by participating in an ecosystem with partners who share those goals and understand the concept of "give to get" this episode is chalked full of ideas, insights and applicable steps to leverage the emerging growth strategy of Ecosystem-Led Growth!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Ecosystem-Led Growth is an evolution of Partner-Led Growth and is the vision of Bob Moore, Founder and CEO of Crossbeam and the author of Ecosystem-Led Growth.
Bob started his tech career as an investor at Insight Partners, and then founded RJ Metrics which was acquired by Magento in 2016, now part of Adobe, and then Bob co-founded Stitch Data which was ultimately acquired by Talend and is now part of Click.
Crossbeam was founded to unlock the modern platform's architecture and data layer enabling companies to collaborate by making it much easier to share data across multiple partner companies. The catalyst to Bob founding Crossbeam was a $2.6B mistake! That mistake was one Bob made at RJ Metrics where they found and then fell out of product-market fit as evidenced by lower growth. When they analyzed the factor leading to the reduced growth, they identified the emergence of the API economy and how buyers wanted to be able to buy point solutions that were easy to integrate with other point solutions - which was the inspiration to build a product that fully leverages the modern data stack and open API ecosystem.
What is Ecosystem-Led Growth? It is the ability to leverage a network of partners who can easily share insights with partners who sell complimentary products to the same target buyers. Simple questions like do we have customers or prospects in common, or do you have an active sales cycle going on that we could partner on to build a joint solution for the customer?
What is the difference between building an "app ecosystem" such as the Salesforce App Exchange and a "partner ecosystem"? It starts with a foundation built upon an open system architecture that enables the sharing of data to collaborate on common target customers, and those companies in the ecosystem are willing to share specific data with partners to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Why are most B2B SaaS companies still using a traditional direct sales model versus focusing more on partner ecosystems as a primary lead source? The answer starts with the negative reputation of how partnership models were implemented, managed, and operated historically. Partnerships were viewed as encroaching on sales rep opportunities and having a partner damage the reputation of their partners by not adequately communicating the value, feature, and function of their partner's solution.
Modern Ecosystem-Led growth does not rely upon an army of partnership reps, it leverages the data that already exists in each partnership infrastructure, such as their CRM system. Now, based upon corporate policy, rules, and intercompany workflows, an existing partner can share the relevant data with their partner(s) which will enable that sales rep to have access to data that will make approaching a new potential customer armed with relevant data regarding the tech stack and preferences of a potential customer.
If you are looking for new ways to increase revenue growth efficiency, decrease customer acquisition costs, and identify "best fit" potential customers by participating in an ecosystem with partners who share those goals and understand the concept of "give to get" this episode is chalked full of ideas, insights and applicable steps to leverage the emerging growth strategy of Ecosystem-Led Growth!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Previous Episode

Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling - with Mark Petruzzi, Author
Mark Petruzzi, best-selling author of Selling the Cloud has just released his newest book "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" in collaboration with co-authors Bob Scarperi, Paul Melchiorre, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast!
In this episode, we discuss the primary concepts of the book, and the unique approach to including multiple titans in the B2B technology industry as contributors to the book
The "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" book covers each stage of the Sales process and how following the process dramatically increases sales productivity and revenue growth efficiency. The process steps and associated chapters discussed include:
- Ideal Customer Profile - which accounts will buy
- Buyer Personas - which decision-makers can buy
- Business Diagnosis - uncovering the value
- Functional Diagnosis - understanding the wins
- Solution Design - validating the value
- Data-Driven Funnel Analytics - the end-to-end view
- How to Measure a Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling Process
- The Predictive and Generative AI power move
If you are a B2B sales professional, sales team leader, or a senior executive looking for ideas to generate more efficient revenue growth - this conversation and the "Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling" process and book provide great insights, success stories, and applicable steps to take.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Next Episode

The Impact of AI on Customer Communications - with Craig Walker, Founder and CEO Dialpad
Craig Walker, Founder and CEO of Dialpad has trained their artificial intelligence foundational model using over 6 Billion minutes of customer conversations. If you are interested in how AI is currently and will positively impact the value, efficiency, and effectiveness of customer communications for Sales, Customer Service, and beyond this is a must-listen episode of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast.
During this episode, we cover a wide-ranging set of topics on how AI (Artificial Intelligence) and specifically generative AI will transform the productivity and business impact of customer communications including:
- The importance of large amounts of data in training AI models
- The future of Customer Service in an AI-empowered environment
- The potential to materially increase the productivity of a sales process with AI
What is the difference between "customer intelligence" and "conversational intelligence"? First, customer intelligence is built into the foundation of a company's communications infrastructure - think phone system platform. Because of this, in real time a customer intelligence platform can guide customer service and/or sales reps in real-time to increase the efficacy of every customer interaction. Moreover, any external communication can now be enhanced across every function and every conversation.
Artificial Intelligence is not new, but generative AI is new with the catalyst of OpenAI and ChatGPT in November 2022. Dialpad has been capturing customer conversations to score performance measurements like customer satisfaction and analyze if the customer was satisfied - all before the emergence of generative AI. Once generative emerged, Dialpad unleased their 15 Data Science PhDs to build their own large language model to better understand every customer conversation and in real-time offer up the appropriate response or next step action!
Now, think about the opportunities uncovered by taking every minute of your company's customer and prospect communications, and customize the large language model specific to your company, your company terms, product names and every other unique "variable" specific to your business?!
If you are responsible for customer-facing functions and are interested in better understanding how AI can dramatically increase the efficacy of every customer and/or prospect communication, this conversation with Craig Walker, founder and CEO of Dialpad is full of unique insights, ideas, and recommendations that have been formed from over 6 Billion minutes of customer communications.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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