The background

Ershad Jamil spent years inside ServiceTitan as their Chief Growth Officer. He now sits on the board of BuildOps and advises early-stage vertical SaaS companies through EQJ Ventures.

Why partnerships deserve their own team

Having a dedicated partnerships team is "very atypical" for an early-stage company. ServiceTitan did it anyway.

With fewer than 100 employees, they already had three business development people.

"We had a long-term strategy of building amazing partnerships with best practice groups, suppliers in the industry, and marketing agencies," Ershad says. "We knew if we built a good ecosystem around them, we would attract a lot of prospects in the future."

What makes a good partner

Finding a company and saying "let's partner" is the easy part.

The harder question is what unique value you can create for the partner, their members, and your potential customers at the same time.

Ershad gives a concrete example: best practice associations often collect member data through Excel downloads. A software company could build a dashboard that pulls that data automatically, giving the association and its members better visibility than they had before.

"You can build unique things with certain partnerships," he says.

How to evaluate a potential partner

Two things matter most: how respected they are in the market, and how big their member base is.

The best partners often run their own small trade shows. If they invite you as a vendor, prospects already know you came through a trusted source.

"It creates a lot of warm introductions," Ershad says.

How much pipeline can partnerships actually drive

"If you can actually build a partnership channel over time, honestly, 40% to 50% of more mid-inbounds could be coming from partnerships."

It scales year over year. Salesforce, Procore, and Shopify all built large partner ecosystems.

"If you build a lot of really fantastic partners that are referable, that could go a long way and be a big part of your revenue future," Ershad says.

Start wide, then figure out what's working

Early on, Ershad advises quantity first.

"20% of those partners actually end up in 80% of the revenue coming from partnerships in the future," he says. "You're never going to know in the beginning until you test it out."

Play the long game

In HVAC, the major OEMs like Lennox, Carrier, and Trane each run around $50 billion in market cap. For an early-stage field service management company, getting their attention takes time.

"You're a small fish in a big pond. It takes a while to build up a relationship, but fast forward five years from now, your business is growing, and it could be a massive part of your business if you do it the right way."

What this means

Partnerships are a long game. Most won't generate returns right away, and not all partners will refer customers.

"It doesn't mean those other 80% of partners are not important," Ershad says. "You have to figure out over time which ones are the quality ones."

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