Over two weeks in June/July, we held an incredible series of events, the Elevation Tour, to bring together partnership leaders from across Europe. With over 270 partner leaders joining us across five vibrant cities—Paris, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, and Berlin—the tour surpassed all expectations.
Here we recap the highlights of the tour, the insightful discussions, and the new connections we made with so many outstanding partnership leaders in the region.
The Events
The Elevation Tour, organized by Partnership Leaders and sponsored by WorkSpan and Impartner, served as a platform for partner leaders to gather, share experiences, and gain insights into the always evolving landscape of partnerships. Our mission was to empower these leaders with knowledge, inspiration, and practical strategies to elevate their partnership programs to new heights.
So Many Companies Attended!
Paris
The tour kicked off on June 26th in the glorious city of Paris, with an event held at the headquarters offices of Aircall.io. We had a tremendous turnout with over 70 partner leaders from the area participating. It was so great to see and feel the energy of the partnering community in Paris!
We appreciated Aircall and Reveal for joining in to sponsor the the Paris event and our outstanding panel of speakers including:
🔵 Simon Bouchez, CEO and Founder, Reveal
🔵 Erica Lailhacar, VP Partner Demand Activation, SAP
🔵 Matthieu Gombeaud, Global Partnerships, Aircall
🔵 Russell Bradley-Cook, EMEA App Partner Manager, HubSpot
London
The energy continued to soar in London, where an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 100 partnership leaders joined for a high energy event in the heart of London. The panel discussion showcased the power of partnerships in driving innovation, market expansion, and customer success.
🔵 Jo Wright, Director, Partnerships EMEA, 6sense
🔵 Matt Bray, Vice President Ecosystems & Alliances | SAPSignavio, SAP
🔵 Jo Holliday, Vice President Of Channel Sales, Exclaimer
🔵 Daniel Lancioni, Director, Partnerships (EMEA & APAC), Deel
Manchester
Our next stop took us to the vibrant city of Manchester, where the focus shifted towards practical strategies for partner enablement and ecosystem growth. We held the event at the amazing and innovative Manchester Technology Centre thanks to support from Teijas KY and XXX?
While Manchester was a smaller location, we had terrific conversations and one participant even flew in from Ireland for the occasion and they weren’t disappointed. We had a fantastic panel including:
🔵 Teijas KY, Head of Business Development, Strategic Partnerships, Wakelet
🔵 Anna Townsend, Healthcare Alliance Manager, EMEA, AWS
🔵 Brendan Kemp, Partnerships & Business Operations Director, KnownOrigin
🔵 Dan Baddeley, Partner Manager, Infinity
Amsterdam
After a weekend in Belgium, we flew to Amsterdam to kick off the second week of the tour, where the discussions focused on partner marketing challenges and opportunities with digital marketing and aligning your targeting efforts across multiple partners.
In Amsterdam we had a fantastic rooftop Argentinian barbeque at the cool and modern offices of Teamleader. Thanks to Jisse P for making such a fantastic office location possible!
The session featured another terrific panel including:
🔵 Chelsea Rider, Marketing Director, Impartner
🔵 Torkel Öhman Ohman, CTO, Amanda AI
🔵 Ties van Strien, SEA Specialist, Consultant
🔵 Daan Mannaerts, Director, Google Ads, Impartner Software
Berlin
We wrapped up the tour in Berlin at the offices of Ultimate.ai and had another terrific turnout with 60+ joining for the event.
We had a fantastic panel session talking about building joint solutions with tech partners. Such insightful experiences and contributions from our panel members tonight including:
🔵 Greg Greenberger, Consultant
🔵 Thorunn Devoy, Head of Partnerships, Talon.One
🔵 Martin Scholz, Co-Founder, PartnerXperience
🔵 Chip Rodgers, Chief Partner Officer, WorkSpan
Thanks to Greg Greenberger for planning the event tonight and Sylvain Mlodyszewski for arranging for the Ultimate.ai offices in Berlin!
Key Takeaways
Throughout the tour, some key takeaways emerged:
Paris
- Your board should not be getting into operational issues like metrics etc
- Boards should be making connections, helping with market feedback and be a sounding board
London
- Inbound and Outbound have been effective but may not be working as well right now which is the perfect opportunity to introduce Partnership motions
- Be aware of thought leaders on linkedin who may not have done Partnerships at scale
Manchester
- Think about how you retain partners. Acquiring partners is tough, so you don't want to lose them easily either
- From time to time you should let some partners go for the health of the entire partner program
Amsterdam
- Use marketing motions for partner marketing
- Think of the conflict that can arise between marketing and partner marketing teams and make sure you carefully manage any potential conflict
- In paid search, make sure to coordinate search terms between partners, otherwise, if all partners bid on the same terms prices can shoot up unnecessarily
Berlin
- Learn to manage a P&L. That is the language of business and leaders who don’t manage their business will be managed out
We Shared Videos Along the Way!
Throughout the 2 weeks, we shared the journey as well as interviews with some outstanding partner leaders, so we wanted to include the links to those posts here since they're such an integral part of the story. In all, the posts we shared seemed to resonate with the partnerships community including:
- 27,000 views
- 71 hours of video watched
- 663 likes
- 129 comments
Here they are:
- Preview post ahead of the Tour
- Heading out! From SFO Airport
- Arrived in Paris! (Drone of the Eiffel Tower)
- Partnership leader interview in Paris: Erica Laiharcar
- Partnership leader interview in Paris: Russell Bradley-Cook
- Heading from Paris to London (Paris XXX station)
- Partnership leader interview in London: Jo Wright
- Arrived in Manchester (In front of Manchester train station)
- Arrived in Amsterdam (Drone of the Amsterdam canals)
- We’re here in Berlin (Drone above Brandenburg Gate)
- Partnership leader interview in Berlin: Thorunn Dover
- Partnership leader interview in Berlin: Sergio Chavez
- Wrap up of the Elevation Tour! (Arrived back at SFO Airport)
It’s a Wrap!
The Elevation Tour series of events was an outstanding success, thanks to the participation, enthusiasm, and insights shared by the partnership leaders who attended. The connections forged, the knowledge exchanged, and the ideas sparked during these events will undoubtedly fuel the growth and success of partnership programs across Europe.
We extend our gratitude to all the participants, speakers, and partners who made this tour possible. Together, we are elevating the art of partnerships and shaping the future of collaborative ecosystems.
We’ve learned so much on this European Tour as well as our earlier Elevation Tour in Australia.
Next stop is Catalyst! We’ll see you in Denver on August 21st to the 23rd!
Let's continue to inspire, innovate, and elevate the world of partnerships together!
How About Some More Pictures!
Chip is passionate about building strong communities and ecosystems around enterprises to build excitement for the category, deliver value for customers, and grow the business. Prior to WorkSpan, Chip was with SAP for over 13 years, most recently growing the SAP Community Network to over 2 million engaged customers, partners, and developers. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and an engineering degree from Northwestern.
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