Partner-led growth does not start with a pitch. It starts with understanding what clients already know, what they are already building, and where they need the right support to move faster. From industry conversations in New York to hands-on workshops in Zagreb, this experience reinforced a simple idea: the strongest growth comes from listening well, aligning early, and building together around real business priorities.
Summer, 2012, on Earth. Harvard Business Review (HBR) publishes “The end of the solution sales”. The authors argue that “customers in an array of industries, from IT to insurance to business process outsourcing, are often way ahead of the salespeople who are ‘helping’ them.”
May 2025, New York. Q sales team recognises that that observation remains equally relevant over time. Having the opportunity to participate in the INMA congress, we learned that the media industry leaders know their key pain points “by their name”.
They are navigating through the ongoing shift from traditional print to digital media and actively developing digital products. Also, they keep track of innovations in digital storytelling, and are aware of AI’s impact on jobs and content creation. They are nurturing the monetisation formula built on engagement and retention.
June 2025 – February 2026, Zagreb. The broader industry understanding came to life through partner-led growth around a single meeting table.
We were glad to welcome our long-term media clients to live workshops, where in a practical and focused setting we explored how to make their internal processes faster, clearer, and easier to manage.
With HBR’s proposition in mind, our focus was to ask, listen, and create space for client’s expertise to come through, so we could build on it and support them better.
Within the first days, we focused on listening. We asked a lot of questions, trying to observe the challenge from multiple angles to understand goals, needs, and context. In the following sessions, we dove into the topics defined in advance, reviewed what clients had already built, and explored what they aim to create in the future. By the final day, we aligned on priorities, and drafted MVPs together.
This season was also a great reminder of five partner-led growth concepts.
Concepts we nurture
1. Interaction > AI
We live in a time where AI can detect pain points, make suggestions, recommend next steps, and definitely write a more structured email than most of us can. But prompting only enriches AI.
A face-to-face conversation with clients helped us all grow by sparking reflection, expanding context, and building shared understanding.
There’s still nothing that beats sitting across from someone, talking it through, clearing things up, and sharing ideas (and Bajaderas).
2. Remote works, but presence works better
We’d had several short online calls with each team before. They were only short prep meetings, but even there we could recognise the remote limits; details slip, easier to lose focus and sometimes the big picture gets blurry.
Things moved faster and went deeper when we were in the same room. Sitting around one table, we shared real examples, discussed goals, raised questions, and took a lot of notes (yes, some even handwritten).
3. A cross-functional team is always a good idea
Because this actually means that the problem was observed from several angles. Here’s an example from one of the sessions. The client helped us understand their creative and technical context.
Viktor, our Business Analyst, focussed on the process. Marija, our UI/UX expert, paid attention to the content, style, and the user’s perspective. Niko, Nikol, and Zvone (Engineering) made sure the solution made sense technically. Zoran, Solution Architect, observed monetisation and analytics opportunities using the market-ready solutions. Also, we translated AI potential into something useful and grounded.
4. To stay agile, we need time to reflect
My favourite reminder of this season. We stayed together after the workshops to compare perspectives and talk through what we heard.
One -hour debriefs helped us avoid missteps every single time and hit the next session sharper. Slowing down for a moment helped us move forward with more clarity.
5. Our ultimate goal is the long-term success of the client
HBR said it back in 2012 — clients often have a clearer view of what’s not working. They just need space to work through it. That’s why quick fixes aren’t enough.
Although it sounds like a cliché, it’s worth repeating: never forget the end goal. 🙂
What could be done better?
We genuinely believe the best learning comes from experience. From big ideas to small observations, the real value comes from sitting together, asking questions, and building something step by step.
We’ll keep the detailed insights to ourselves — consider them part of what we’ll bring to the next collaboration!
And if you ever need an excuse to talk about process optimisation supported by tech solutions over coffee and Bajaderas, feel free to reach out to us.
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ABOUT AUTHOR
Vesna Palada
Presales Engineer
