lPartnerships Led Growth Project

Step 1

🔍 Choose your product. It should:

1. Be a tech product
2. Have achieved PMF </aside>

👉🏼 Eze Wholesale - A B2B global marketplace for new and used consumer electronics

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👉🏼 Eze is a global B2B marketplace for new and used consumer electronics. The platform, from its version 1 (since 2020), has facilitated trade for over 800,000 devices, clocking ~$30M in GMV in 2023. Eze has over 2000 active users in 19 different countries.

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Step 2

🖋️ Map the user journey for your product on whimsical. Identify gaps in service, possible customer pain points, and customer requests for a particular feature.

Based on your analysis, explain if the partnership can close gaps in service, and solve for customer pain-point. Can you build the requested feature yourself? If not, can partnership solve this?

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👉🏼 Seller Journey Map : Challenging side of our marketplace

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👉🏼 Sellers on the Eze platform are not exclusive to the marketplace. Alongside Eze, they do sell on other marketplaces like eBay, Backmarket, etc. There are two types of sellers: Type 1: uses Google Sheets/Excel for inventory management; Type 2: uses Omnichannel tools and Inventory Management systems. The ideal scenario is to have Type 1 transition to becoming Type 2. But also, we want to attract more Type 2 sellers, and we see an integration partnership with omnichannel and inventory management tool companies as an easy way to do this. This would enable almost real-time inventory updation and reduce manual effort for the seller to have to update Google Sheets/Excel on a weekly basis.

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Step 3

🔬 Conduct a litmus test to check whether your product is ready for partnership.

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👉🏼 Final litmus test result: Yes, we are ready to commence partnership activities

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Apply the Partnerships Framework

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Step 4 - Identifying the right partner

👉🏼 State the following for your product:

1. Who is your ICP?
2. What are your brand values?
3. What is your current market? (Types of companies, industry sectors, geographical reach)
4. Create a list of possible partners and perform a partner fitment test.
5. What does your partner gain from this partnership?

👉🏼 Explain your ICP here:

Eze's ideal seller profile includes businesses specializing in a wide range of both used and new consumer electronics, including brands themselves, looking to sell to buyers in wholesale quantities. They prioritize quality, reliability, competitive pricing, and global reach. These sellers are tech-savvy and are committed to excellent customer service.

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👉🏼 Mention your brand values here: Trust-Driven Commerce: At Eze, every transaction is built on a foundation of integrity and transparency. We've dedicated ourselves to eradicating fraud, ensuring that every member of our global community can trade confidently.

Eco-Conscious Circulation: Our commitment goes beyond commerce. By rejuvenating the secondary electronics market, we're championing sustainability, reducing waste, and promoting a greener, more responsible approach to technology consumption.

Unified Global Connectivity: Eze isn't just a platform; it's a worldwide bridge linking diverse markets. We seamlessly connect sellers and buyers across continents, ensuring that cutting-edge technology is accessible and exchangeable everywhere.

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👉🏼 Explain your current market here:

1. Types of Companies: Eze primarily serves businesses involved in the wholesale trade of consumer electronics. These may include wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers dealing in products like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and related accessories.
2. Industry Sectors: Eze operates within the consumer electronics industry, specifically focusing on the wholesale sector. It facilitates the buying and selling of electronic devices from brands such as Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, HP, and others.
3. Geographical Reach: While Eze is a global marketplace, its seller base is strongly focused in North America. This suggests that a significant portion of their sellers may be located in North America, although they may still serve buyers worldwide.

👉🏼 Share your list of possible partners here:

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💡Perform a partner fitment test using the template below

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Scoring Method Yes - 1; Maybe - 0.5; No - 0

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Step 5 - Outreach strategy

📝 Create a list of possible PoCs

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👉🏼 Mention your PoC list here:

Head of Partnerships, **Channel Partner Manager, VP Partnerships, Strategic Partner Manager

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Use the decision framework to finalise your first outreach PoC

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​Scoring Method Yes - 1; Maybe - 0.5; No - 0

📝 Draft your first outreach message to the PoC. Mention clear subject, your introduction, the ‘why’, goal alignment, and clear CTA.

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👉🏼 Subject: Integrating Eze as a marketplace on Channel Engine

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👉🏼 Hi XXXX,

I’m Dhiren, Head of Growth and Partnerships at Eze Technologies Inc., a global B2B marketplace for wholesale consumer electronics.

I am reaching out to discuss a potential integration partnership between Channel Engine and Eze. As the Strategic Partner Manager at Channel Engine, I understand offering newer marketplace integrations to your customers to drive their GMV and CE’s revenue is your goal for 2023-24 as you expand in the US, and this aligns with our goal to acquire new customers in the electronics segment and help them drive GMV through our marketplace.

A 30-minute call sometime this week to discuss this opportunity between CE and Eze sounds good to you?

Thanks, Dhiren

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🚨 Uh oh! Imagine haven’t received a response for any of your outreaches. Your filled out their partner form, tried contacting them on LinkedIn, found a POC from the company but to no avail.

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Use the FES job matrix to identify potential follow-up approaches for different POCs.

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What would your strategy be to get your foot in the door to reach a meeting?

Outline the channel you’ll reach out on, the message you’ll send, and any follow-ups you might want to do. Build a comprehensive strategy from A-Z on how you’ll reach out on email, socials, cold calls etc.

👉🏼 Submit your strategy here

Follow-up emails and LinkedIn outreach outlining the following:

1. The success of our platforms and our acknowledgements in the media to establish credibility
2. They might not have the bandwidth for development, but Eze has a dedicated team to build out these integrations, taking less effort on the partner’s end
3. Outline how our existing customers without an IMS/OC tool have grown their GMV over the past 6 months and how an IMS/OC tool integration could drive this further

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Step 6 - First Call Design

Before the call

Research your partner’s current goals (what do they talk about on their website, social handles, content blogs, recent events, other resources)

👉🏼 Write partner’s current goals:

1. Grow their user base and GMV transacted in the US
2. Provide more integrations to their customers to sell through

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Do these goals align with your current goals?

👉🏼 Justify your reasoning here:

1. Eze is looking at growing its user base by acquiring sellers that use an inventory management system/omnichannel tool for product listing
2. Eze is looking to grow its GMV 7-10x over the next year and is actively deploying features and product improvements to hook users on

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Why should the partner consider you? Perform a competitive analysis + identify mutual customer pain point to find your edge against the competition

Competitive Analysis Template​

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Create a value prop for your partner

👉🏼 Submit your value prop design here

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📞 During the call

Create a conversation design for your first call with your partner PoC. Set expectations, discuss how your joint solution benefits mutual customers, build trust, outline deliverables

Optional: Take a feeler on possible GTM opportunities you could explore

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👉🏼 Submit your conversation design here:

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👉🏼 1. Company and Team introduction 2. Introduce Eze in depth and establish the common concerns of mutual customers 3. Establish what we intend to achieve with integration 4. Learn about the partner’s company and what their goals are and their current customer base focused around electronics, region, GMV driven etc. 5. Understand how they look at GTM and co-marketing 6. If there is a mutual fit, discuss next steps: NDA, Business Expectations and Tech Call 7. Outline the deliverables that will be discussed on the next call for Business and Tech 8. Mention a follow-up email outlining Intent, Partner Goals, How eze can help achieve that, Next Steps and agenda for the next call

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📝 After the call Create a summary that you’ll send to your partner PoC

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👉🏼 Submit your summary here:

Intent, Partner Goals, How eze can help achieve, Next Steps and agenda for the next call

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Step 7 - Company buy-in and alignment

💡 Mention your stakeholder and team concerns for this partnership. Explain how you would address each concern.

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👉🏼 Stakeholder concerns:

1. If we should build out integration with them first: share data obtained on customer profile, region focus and GMV driven.
2. Costs and Terms of Partnership: share complete details obtained from the call. If there is a cost involved, also deliver value on how just a few customers from there could cover the cost.

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👉🏼 Product team concerns:

1. Would there be any changes required to the product?
2. Bandwidth of the product and engineering team

Response: A follow-up call to understand tech integration has been scheduled, and that would give a clear understanding of the expectations, and the timeline can then be decided.

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👉🏼 Marketing team concerns:

1. Do they carry out any co-marketing activities?
2. What kind of marketing activities would be carried out?

Response: A follow-up call to understand business and marketing has been scheduled, and that would give a clear understanding of the expectations, and the timeline can then be decided.

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👉🏼 Sales team concerns:

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Step 8 - Building Trust

💡 Solving for trust and engagement with the partner

1. Create a strategy for building trust with your partner at each step of the partnership
2. Create a strategy to improve transparency between you and your partner
3. Create a strategy to increase engagement with your partner </aside>

👉🏼 Introducing customers that use Google Sheets to the partner to drive adoption of the tool, develop customer success stories on behalf of the partner outlining how the customer achieved success using partner tool to drive GMV on our platform, communicate potential blocks and challenges uncovered from customer conversation

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👉🏼 Sharing performance metrics of customers acquired through partners, update on upcoming features to the marketplace early on to build better integrations, running partner newsletter to communicate company performance and achievements

👉🏼 Co-marketing activities on LinkedIn, Website real-estate displaying our integration, Video to demonstrate the ease of integration and listing, co-hosting webinars to discuss how common customers can find success

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Step 9 - Plan and Launch GTM

💡 Before creating your GTM strategy, answer these questions:

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👉🏼 What is the problem you are solving for?

Providing wholesale electronics buyers and sellers a dedicated marketplace to trade globally and grow their business without the hassle of operations.

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👉🏼 Is there a demand for your offering?

Yes, the secondary electronics market globally is pegged at $250Bn. As for Eze, we have seen our GMV grow 100% with the busiest quarter still ahead of us.

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👉🏼 Who’s your brand offering for?

Eze's ideal seller profile includes businesses specializing in a wide range of both used and new consumer electronics, including brands themselves, looking to sell to buyers in wholesale quantities. They prioritize quality, reliability, competitive pricing, and global reach. These sellers are tech-savvy and are committed to excellent customer service.

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👉🏼 Where does your ICP spend most of their time?

WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook, Conferences

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💡 Create a co-marketing strategy for your partnership, including the teams involved, timelines, and effort. If the co-marketing activity is on the partner’s real estate, please mention the approach you'll follow to convince your partner.

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