How can product leaders master strategic partnerships to unleash their product’s potential? In this webinar, ThinkLP Head of Product Colin Chong speaks on how to maximize your product’s impact by cultivating a robust partner ecosystem. He will share essential strategies, operational insights, and effective launch approaches for building and nurturing technical partner programs. Whether you’re a seasoned product manager or just starting out, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge and tools to thrive in today’s competitive market.
Join us for new conversations with leading product executives every week. Roll through the highlights of this week’s event below, then head on over to our Events page to see which product leaders will be joining us next week.
Show Notes:
- Strategic partnerships can take your product to the next level, enabling innovation, market expansion, and enhanced customer experience.
- 93% of enterprise organizations have partner programs, making it a table stakes requirement.
- The hardest aspects of partner programs are around business strategy, planning, participant value, and risk sharing.
- Product managers can add significant value in the strategy and execution of partner programs.
- Determining the joint value model is essential – understanding each party’s source of power and complementary capabilities.
- Aligning on policies, approaches, and clear paths to business gain is crucial for mastering strategic partnerships.
- Building compelling participant value and quality offerings is key to attracting and retaining partners.
- Navigating the “cold start problem” by focusing on the harder side (supply or demand) is important.
- Keeping things simple, especially early on, and focusing on high-quality partnerships is recommended.
- Leveraging existing communities, alliances, and platforms can ease the partnership onboarding process.
- Monetization can start simple with referral programs, affiliate marketing, and basic agreements.
- Partner programs require a cross-functional team effort, not just a single product manager.
- Operational aspects like legal, enablement, financial, and governance need to be well-managed.
- Common challenges include lack of compelling value proposition and maintaining balanced power dynamics.
- Clear communication, coordination, and alignment between partners are critical for success.
- Scaling partnerships effectively while maintaining quality and innovation is a key challenge.
- AI can improve partner program management by enhancing data utilization and collaboration.
- The future trends include community-based functionality and increased commoditization of partnerships.
- Product managers should focus on building commercial viability and gaining attention from larger ecosystem players.
- Mastering strategic partnerships is a team sport, requiring executive sponsorship and cross-functional collaboration.
About the speaker
Colin Chong currently leads product at Waterloo-based ThinkLP, building product to help the world’s largest retailers protect people and profit. He started his career as a business analyst and fell into Product Management while working on a BlackBerry time tracking app. Since then he has honed his craft through multiple product lines, including enterprise chat, search, IoT, data visualization, subscription billing, and multi-sided marketplaces.
About the host
Toronto Chapter Head for Products That Count I am a digital product executive with over 20 years of experience in retail, digital media, and e-commerce. I’ve held both strategic and operational leadership roles at Canadian Tire, Torstar, Postmedia, eBay, and PayPal as well as start-ups. I am a servant leader who is humble, self aware, always learning, and excels at collaborating with stakeholders. I am a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, a father of two, pancreatic cancer awareness advocate, moved to Canada 13 years ago, and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. I currently sit on the Product Management Program Advisory Council for York University which offers Canada’s first post-secondary product management program.