AudienceLed

103 experts interviewed and counting. 1056 pieces of content created and counting. 10 brands helped and counting. Building networks of trust for our. clients. We help teams go-to-market WITH their market. No one wants another AI-slop SEO blog post written by non-experts. Buyers want to hear from the exact people they trust. That's the brands, people, and places they listen to, transact and engage with daily. 

Our offer? A done-for-you service to generate demand and build fast-converting pipeline. We execute multiple expert-led campaigns deployed into your existing marketing systems, with additional distribution with and through third-parties.

We also help scale community & user generated content and throw events with the ecosystem.

DM me to learn more. 

And watch me change the way the industry looks at go-to-market in a paradigm shift, all while doing it ourselves.

Co-Founder & Chief Partner Officer

BD Paths

I help companies orchestrate their ecosystems with better partner operations. But... not all partners are made the same.

"We are hitting target but don't know how to scale" is too common. Become profitable by aligning partner types to the core revenue metrics within your business.

I am only taking on one other client, so DM me to see if there is availability.

Partnership Leaders

Member

nearbound.com

Getting Nearbound into the dictionary and distributing through network effects like no tomorrow. Nearbound sales + marketing will revolutionize the way you do business.

This section was post-acquisition of www.partnerhacker.com by www.Reveal.co where we rebranded to www.nearbound.com.

Director of Strategic Partnerships

*First hire as Head of Partnerships

- Supported key relationships that resulted in an acquisition in record time for a media company.
- Executed on ~$1million in sponsorship programs including communications, debriefs, reporting, engaging key stakeholders, and relationship management.
- Lead all project management for sponsorship programs resulting in over 1,000,000 impressions and 10,829 leads for our partners.
- Created a category for technology through marketing strategies related to brand, media, social, networking, partnerships, nearbound, and guerrilla tactics.
- Coordinated multiple internal stakeholders with clear tasks of who does what and by when, following DARCI models.
- Evangelized the nearbound category, partnerships, brands, our partners and sponsors all through content creation including social, long-form, short-form, video, audio, and event related content.

nearbound.com is the #1 source of clarity & guidance, news & journalism, opinion, and connection during the paradigm shift in B2B.

I made this a reality alongside our partners and peers. They all deserve a BIG thank you in these efforts.

Subscribe to the Nearbound Daily to get your PhD in partnerships :)

It's time to PartnerUp.

Director of Partnerships

Reveal

At Reveal I manage ISV partner relationships, as well as using nearbound strategies to get what matters most done: delivering value to the clients to ultimately drive more revenue.

I work with other tech vendors, consultants, and influencers in order to deploy partnerships expertise and value to our clients. We run referral, co-sell, and influence campaigns focused on educating and enabling the ecosystem.

Reach me at wtaylor@reveal.co if you'd like to partner with Reveal or want to learn more about nearbound.

Head of Partnerships

RevGenius

Uvaro

*First guest instructor, helped build the process for effective external instructor contracting and communications.

I believe in life-long learning and empowering others to become their best self - I am proud to participate in, and present during, internal + external events for Uvaro students. These events include demo days, in-class speaking engagements, and instructional sessions.

Some background on Uvaro:

The technology sector needs 250,000 new sales professionals, and our colleges and universities aren’t training them on all practical pieces. Uvaro is building a different type of education system - one that is focused on the objective of preparing students for a career in the talent-hungry tech industry. Simply put, Uvaro has created a better way to grow sales careers in tech.

Guest Instructor

Mailshake

*First and only partnerships hire

At Mailshake, I built the partnership program from the ground up. Here's a list of all things accomplished during my time with the team:

Partnerships:
- Engaged elite brands to get Mailshake a "seat at the cool kids' table"
- Achieved 135% of partner sourced revenue quota for Q1 2022
- Started strategic partnerships that filled gaps in client needs
- Guided integration partners in a "big fish:small fish" dynamic
- Aligned upsell initiatives with partner efforts
- Spent $0 on sponsorships

Business enrichment:
- Built the process for webinars + events from the ground up
- Created a sales playbook for marketing <> sales webinar handoff 
- Trained sales team to adopt and utilize video
- Coached sales team on how to capitalize on prospects warmed by marketing efforts
- Developed first iteration of ICP that aided in direction setting

Became a marketer:
- Executed on various marketing functions with no prior experience:
-- Drip campaigns, webinars, landing page development, social branding, a large summit event, affiliate marketing, SEO + backlink fundamentals, & creative content ideas

Director of Partner Marketing

Vidyard

*First Partner Enablement hire

Milestones:
- Increased partner retention by 70%
- Doubled total agency program revenue over 6 months through enablement initiatives
--- Revenue from partner program flipped from 20% partner-sourced clients and 80% partners to 80% clients and 20% partners.
- Partners are ready to sell services in 60-120 days

Day-to-day:
- Managed 120+ partner accounts ranging from co-sell agencies, referral partners, and technical partners
- Created training resources & co-sell models for partners, partner managers, and internal team
- Established end-to-end partner launch for more successful onboarding + enablement
- Developed a new certification that fast-tracked partner adoption, go-to-market readiness, and aligned better with overall company growth goals
- Built a partner directory for continued refer-back opportunities
- Launched PRM software + integrated into existing systems

Partner Enablement Manager

Bonfire Interactive

- "Municipal Rep of the Year, 2019" - closed highest ARR on immediate team during my first year of ever being an Account Executive
- Closed largest major city (by population) in company history
- Managed the largest multi-year contract upsell in company history, resulting in 2x ARR and a 12x TCV
- Oversaw 20 States in my territory, responsible for fully-operating my own opportunity generation
- Engaged with multiple C-Level executive roles to build relationships and ensure a strong business case to close business

- Maintained relationships with influencers in industry, ranging from large accounts, presidents of associations, educational experts, and those with a loud voice in the market
- Partnered with a BDR and was responsible to set prospecting strategies and provide ongoing mentorship as we prospected this patch together
- Regularly met with marketing to collaborate on national programs, local programs, travel programs, conference programs, and provide feedback
- Coordinated new approaches in selling to different personas, fast-tracking and increasing the success rate of sales cycles
- Pioneered cross-selling initiatives with sister companies to not only leverage relationships, but create strategic plans on how to facilitate an even stronger business case

Account Executive

*First BDR hire

- Developed 102 new opportunities worth $1,836,000 USD in pipeline, leading the BDR team in pipe and opportunity generation 
- Overachieved on quota (115%) and was thus moved from supporting a single rep on the commercial team, to three on the public team 
- Engaged with multiple different C-Level executives (CFOs, CIOs, CPOs) in both the private and public sectors 
- Trained and managed ongoing performance of team members, helping to onboard, create training materials, and conducting interviews to qualify potential hires

Business Development Representative

I make partnerships profitable with RevOps, sales signals & tactical playbooks • Advisor • Buyer alignment, signal selling, and partnerships • Tech stack recommendations • Stop selling on hard mode

I help SaaS revenue teams integrate third party expertise (the people, brands, and places) that influence their buyer to surround them (instead of spam them)  👉 where buyers already transact and spend their dwindling attention credits 👇

Buyers don’t believe brands as much as they believe the people, brands, and places they already work with and listen to.

That’s why your sales and marketing team need a network of trusted people in your ecosystem.

When you activate that network, you get:
👉Warmer doors opening faster
👉Higher win rates
👉Deals that close sooner
👉Bigger deal sizes

Proof I’ve lived this:
✅Built enablement programs that boosted partner retention by 70%
✅Created a partner motion that matched sales revenue with 1/3 of the headcount
✅Outperformed a full SDR + AE team using ecosystem plays
✅Scaled a business to $1M in 12 months → acquired

(And yes — I’m in the room developing relationships with the influential people your buyers already listen to.)

Activate an ecosystem-oriented modern go-to-market system that focuses on QUALITY and CONVERSION by:
1) Following me here for weekly systems sharing
2) Or DM me if you want me to show you how to:
- Map who your buyers already trust
- Layer partners into your GTM to build pipeline with less spend (without building any new systems)

Oh, I'm also writing a book on rewiring your mindset, which incorporates psychological, sociological, and philosophical concepts. Go-to-market with your market at www.audienceled.com

Just got back from 10 days in Italy… Here are 10 lessons it taught me about B2B sales:

Gotcha. 😏

The real lesson?
There’s more to life than loading up the next spam cannon (surprise!).

Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of one thing:
the rising need for connection and community.

In business. In culture. In society. In ourselves.

That’s why Maggie Arai built her business around Social Fitness - because we’ve lost the plot on human connection (especially in GTM).

Meanwhile, I came back to:

- Pitch-slaps from random LinkedIn requests

- A bloated inbox of spam

- Slack DMs of people cold-pitching in communities (BAN THEM!)

Noise.

And buyers don’t want more noise.

As I was just discussing with Olivier Roth, the pattern is clear:

👉 Buyers want to be met where they already are - through trusted networks, communities, peer groups, influencers, and partners.

One year into building AudienceLed, we’ve helped 10+ marketing teams tap into those channels - without ditching traditional tactics.

Because nothing in marketing is “dead.”

But the era of easy buttons?
That’s over.

And that’s where your opportunity lies: to amplify everything you do through networks of trust.

And it's easier than you think. I share tactics on it every week.

Ciao!✌️

Will Taylor

🚨Stop shouting at buyers 👉 surround them with influence that converts • CPO @ AudienceLed • Building to $3MM so I can work with Alex Hormozi • Build pipe with & through existing trusted people, brands, and places

AI just got so much right about our small company it's scary. With only these few datapoints it completely profiled us 👇

A one-page website. 
Lots of social activity.
Barely any third-party mentions.
A handful of podcasts and podcast transcripts.

But Common Room still was able to summarize that with their platform (definitely connected to the back end of this quiz).

In the video I take the quiz live, reveal my result, and show how it lines up with what we do at AudienceLed: mapping the people who actually influence your buyer - even when the signals are thin.

Not to mention, the community and ecosystem-level information is already hard enough to track... but that's why I'm an advocate for Common Room.

They are the masters of data signals. 
(Check the comments for a bonus resource of 100+ signals)

Their AI helsp find the hard to find data, with limited information (like what's out there about our business) and about 100x more things too.

That means your prospects that may seem like they are hiding from you, are much easier to track and engage with.

What's your superpower? Drop your results in the comments and let me know if they hit the mark about your business.
----------
Also, shoutout Linda Lian - they spent more on billboards for this campaign than their first year of marketing. Bold, customer-first, and it shows.

Customers like Grammarly, Notion, Semgroup, Zapier, and thousands of others (front and centre with all of their own superpowers!)

Love what the Common Room team is doing from their platform to their content. 

Multiple links in the comments for more resources!

Brand partnership • 🚨Stop shouting at buyers 👉 surround them with influence that converts • CPO @ AudienceLed • Building to $3MM so I can work with Alex Hormozi • Build pipe with & through existing trusted people, brands, and places

This is what you look like when you pitch slap on LinkedIn.

stop it.

please.

(this is me BTW)

Consulting with 83 partner pros and 52 companies told me this is the biggest miss in programs:

"It takes 12-18 months to generate value in partnerships."

So I set out to change that.

It lead to figuring out WHY people say that:
1) Conventional knowledge comes from the channel.

Lots of bureaucracy. Slow moving big corporations. Much different from the Series A startup.

2) "Partnerships" is too widely defined.

With #1, it misses including affiliates, influencers, community sponsorships, etc.

3) It's a safety net to keep your job.

Real talk. That was a good strategy... but most companies can't wait that long for value.

Imagine if marketing said that...

The CFO would laugh them out of the room and never approve budget.

So what did marketing do 10+ years ago?

They started to prove it.

They integrated marketing into more parts of the buyer's journey.

Now they get the largest budget in the business.

I created a model that looked at reality (check the comments for the resource) and where partners can actually drive impact.

This exercise told me most partnerships are built for co-marketing (not all, but most).

For marketing, "brand" is valuable... but brand alone doesn't convert. Systems of demand gen and alignment with sales does.

That's why I co-founded AudienceLed. To PROVE that partnerships can be integrated into the business as a strategic overlay.

Not a bolt on that "might" work.

We KNOW marketing is better with partners and third parties...

So why does the community struggle to show that?

I flipped the script, and now 10+ marketing teams are seeing the benefit of leveraging third party expertise (partners) in their marketing.

Not all partnerships are made the same.

We're proving value CAN be generated in less than 90 days.

That includes LEADS and PIPELINE.

I'm moving the needle for businesses and their core revenue metrics. Want to learn how? I post weekly about this.
----------
👋I'm Will Taylor - helping brands reach buyers through scalable, authentic third party trust that converts to tangible impact. 

📸 taken at PartnerStack's Toronto meetup this past summer.

Today is the day I fight Dom Odoguardi. I can't believe this guy would do all 3 of these things in the same year:

1) Fly to Ontario for my birthday back in May
2) Have the courage to start his own business
3) Be capable of helping companies reach buyers in a better, more human way

So why am I fighting him?

He can't have it easy. Business is tough. I am going to constantly challenge him to avoid the pitfalls that I've been going through for the last year.

Launching a business is scary.

But we can't sugar coat it. So get ready Dom!

In the short time I've known Dom, he's seen his own massive growth, showed up as a friend (and taken the first step), and challenged himself to become better.

I respect that.

If you are in marketing and want better employee-generated videos (that are easy to create) then talk to Dom Odoguardi.

Buyers buy from people they trust.
Your customers trust your employees.
Your employees are pretty dang close to the customer.
Dom's offer lives through what we know to be true at AudienceLed.

Faceless content does not cut it anymore.

Don't take my word for it... Companies like Gong, Common Room, Aligned, ChiliPiper, Lavender, Warmly, Klue, and Clay all implement this strategy.

And I bet you haven't heard of their competitors much either.

There's a reason these companies are successful and prolific.

They create a plan of action for employee generated content.

Then they implement it. Track it. And iterate on it.

Dom will help you do the same.

How do you get more followers on LinkedIn? There is no secret. No trick. No hack. And it's definitely not the B.S. AI "comment to get X" posts.

It's #partnerships.

Collaborations with other people.

Been saying it for 5+ years. It's not just about followership, but BUSINESS INFLUENCE.

Here's a comparison of my own post (regular ol valuable content)
...
versus
...
When I posted about people needing to follow Louis Butterfield.

Folks...

I posted about pushing people to go follow SOMEONE ELSE and I received MORE FOLLOWERS and OTHER METRICS compared to my other posts.

Why does this work?
I pulled Louis Butterfield's audience into my world. They like him, so will they also not like me (if he positively comments, etc.)?

Sure, people might like the feel-good nature of me promoting someone else and sharing some lessons... but let's break it down further:

If I provided EVEN MORE value by doing a deeper collaboration (coming soon) then this would garner EVEN MORE on these metrics.

Now apply this to you...

Who is influential in your space?

Create content about them. Network with them. Comment on their posts.

I didn't ask Louis Butterfield for permission to post this last week. I didn't let him know it was coming. None of it! I just did it.

Better yet... invite them into your own content.

Want to learn how to do this?

1) Go follow Louis (if you haven't already from my other post... GOSH DARN IT!)
2) Take notes from the collaborations he does and how he structures his content
3) Follow me for how you can do this for your business tactically (in more than just LinkedIn content).

PARTNERSHIPS > ALL OTHER STRATEGIES

How much more do you need to be convinced? 😭😭😭

Be human. Collaborate. Cross-pollenate. Grow.

Saw this on LinkedIn today. Auto-enrolled... luckily an easy opt-out. What even is "Content-generating AI"

and how does it enhance my experience...

Less authentic content? We already have it...

What do you think the future of social media is with #AI like this?

I will die on this hill: Your partnerships strategy should be directly aligned to your buyer's journey, or else...

You'll be partnering and praying.
You'll be misaligned with what the business actually cares about.
You'll miss the biggest opportunity to plug partners into the rhythm of your existing business.

Not all partners are made the same.
Not all businesses are made the same.

That means you cannot partner the same as someone else in the community.

This is made even more complex given the breadth of partner types and knowledge across industries.

My advice?

Focus where your internal teams are focusing.
Map (with a very VERY critical lens) which partners can impact which parts of the buyer's journey.

Then only activate with those partners and no one else.

Do you have a brand problem?

Agencies likely do not have enough reach to help you impact that.

Influencers and complimentary tech companies might, though.

More on this and my hot take that MOST partnerships should be co-marketing only on the Alliances Podcast -Strategic partnerships I did recently with Maxime Imbert.

Full episode 🔗 💬 👇

Taplio

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