The 4 Things We Announced at the Connector Summit

It’s a momentous day for us here at Crossbeam. The ecosystem world’s eyes were all on our first-ever virtual user event, the Connector Summit. With more than 1,300 companies in attendance, we shared some incredible new capabilities and resources for the Crossbeam community.

There has never been a more important time for this progress. We’ve heard you: You’re expected to do more with less in this market. We know your company is more focused on efficient growth than ever, yet traditional paths to growth are becoming more expensive and less effective. 

Today’s announcements, in particular Crossbeam Sales Edge, shift around how companies can grow in a time when they need it most. It allows revenue teams to finally leverage their most prolific, efficient, and scalable channel for growth: The partner ecosystem they’ve already built.

We announced:

I’m thrilled with the incredible pace of innovation from our team so far this year as we go into the final stretch of 2022. Here’s what we’ve been up to that we’re proud to share today.

In May of this year, we acquired Partnered and proclaimed that co-selling would never be the same. Today we made good on that promise. 

In just four quick months, the Partnered product has been integrated into the Crossbeam data network and its sales-focused capabilities are now available as an add-on for companies on Crossbeam’s Connector and Supernode tiers. We’re calling this new product Crossbeam Sales Edge. 

Much like LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows users to explore their LinkedIn networks for insights on sales opportunities, pathways to introductions, and intelligence about prospects, Crossbeam Sales Edge allows salespeople to do the same with an even richer data set: The networked data from their partner ecosystem. 

Sales Edge works by building on the connectivity and data sharing that already exists in the Crossbeam network. It empowers salespeople and sales leaders to source new leads, communicate with counterparts at partner companies, and attribute partner influence to the deals they win. And it does this all while keeping partner teams as involved as they need to be — allowing them to choose to play traffic cop in the middle or give unfettered access on a partner-by-partner basis. 

Using our Chrome Extension and other powerful integrations, sales teams can access the insights from Sales Edge in the systems they already use: Salesforce, LinkedIn, Slack, and more. For power users, we also provide a robust new interface in the Crossbeam UI where sales teams can opt to dig even deeper into exploring their partner ecosystems and advance their pipelines. See where we demoed Sales Edge in today’s keynote:

Our team is letting waves of companies onto the Sales Edge platform at this moment, and if you’d like to see a demo or get on the early access list, let us know.

The best Crossbeam users are wizards in their own right — but becoming one shouldn’t require seven years at Hogwarts. Crossbeam Academy finally makes Crossbeam mastery accessible to every single user of our platform. 

The Crossbeam Academy shines light on what was once a dark art forged by scouring documentation, poking around our UI, and filling in the gaps with our customer success team. Now, this expertise can be built through simple and intuitive learning paths that range from basic Crossbeam onboarding all the way to some of the advanced topics covered in the Connector Summit today. 

Today, learning paths in the Academy include:

We’re excited to grow this library of content over time as we learn more about what our community needs and wants.

As The Academy scales, we will offer exams, certifications, and other ways to show your Crossbeam expertise to the world. Enter the Crossbeam Academy here. 

On the heels of our sold-out Supernode Conference this past May, we heard clear feedback that a product-focused user summit would be well embraced by our user community. While Supernode helped us define the industry and where it’s headed, Connector Summit is a conference for the doers who want to use Crossbeam to its fullest potential. 

Our incredible content, events, and product marketing teams joined forces to pull together an amazing roster of content, speakers, and more than 1,500 Crossbeam fans. Together, we learned about the best practices, new functionality, and exciting roadmap items that will advance a new generation of Crossbeam power users.

The full content of the Connector Summit can be found on our resources page (or wherever, insert link) and a few of of my personal favorite sessions are summarized below:

The Connector Summit is here to stay, and we’re excited to review feedback from attendees and on-demand viewers to make it even bigger and better next year. 

This past March, we launched the Connector Tier of Crossbeam to create a low-cost, self-serve tier for companies who want more features but aren’t ready for a full “Supernode” license.

Since then, our capabilities have grown significantly and we’ve learned a lot about how and where people get value from Crossbeam when ramping up on the platform. We’ve put that knowledge to use and released the latest iteration on our pricing and packaging, all built around user journeys instead of feature lists.

Starting today, if you log into Crossbeam you’ll experience simpler pricing, clear lines between the tiers of our platform, straightforward paths to unlock more value over time, and clearer value stories linked to the features of each tier.

As always, our pricing page lays out the difference between each tier. 

Things at Crossbeam are more exciting than ever, and our vision has never been clearer. Over the past few years, we’ve proven that the business world wants and needs our category of software. The “lost data layer” at the intersection of partner datasets has finally been unearthed at scale, and we can now begin the important work of creating value from that data. 

Crossbeam Sales Edge is an example of how this value will be built. And it’s the first key component of something even bigger: An engine of partner influence. This engine, made up of an entire economy of networked applications fed by Crossbeam data, will touch every stage of the revenue funnel. From marketing to sales to growth and retention, partner data will unlock a new playbook of best practices for growth and compelling evidence of the value they create. 

It all starts right here, and we are grateful to our entire community for building with us at this key moment in our journey. Onward!