How Intellistack Leverages Crossbeam and a 3x3 Play to Drive Partner-Led Revenue by 125%

In basketball, the 3x3 game brings a fresh twist to the traditional five-on-five format, focusing on speed, strategy, and tight collaboration. The smaller court and fewer players allow for more focused action and quicker decision-making. This approach has also been adopted by businesses looking to maximize their partnerships and pipeline potential.

Believe it or not, narrowing your focus to a select few target accounts — just like in a 3x3 basketball game — can yield impressive results. By refining the focus, teams can develop deeper relationships and deliver faster, more impactful solutions.

As Intellistack scaled into new verticals like healthcare, nonprofits, and higher education, the team wasn’t just looking for who to partner with — they were looking for a better way to drive results with the right partners. They needed a repeatable motion to generate pipeline, accelerate co-selling, and drive revenue with intent — not just reactively respond to what surfaced.

Kayla Miles, Technology Partnerships Manager at Intellistack, a leading provider of powerful, no-code productivity solutions, recognized the value of this strategy. By applying a 3x3 Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG) approach with Crossbeam, Kayla and her team achieved over 110% of pipeline goals and 125% of revenue goals across Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. 

Read on to learn how Intellistack leveraged the 3x3 play pioneered by Zak Pines and the Intellistack partner team to build a high-impact partner motion and drive revenue.

The challenge

As Intellistack sought to grow partnerships’ revenue impact and move upmarket into verticals like healthcare, non-profits, and higher education, the partnership team faced a major challenge: their “one-size-fits-all” approach wasn’t working.

“We were partnering with over - 400 partner, but it wasn’t yielding the results we needed,” said Kayla. “Our goal is to recruit partners that align with our customer segments, but we needed a more focused approach.”

Intellistack had a strong and growing ecosystem and a clear vision to expand into strategic verticals like healthcare and higher ed. But without a consistent way to turn that ecosystem into revenue-generating motions, the results were mixed.

The team realized that in order to scale effectively, they needed to refine their strategy, prioritize high-value partnerships, and focus on accounts that could drive the most impact. This shift required rethinking how they defined and selected partners.  The team zeroed in on developing a proactive framework — one that would prioritize the most strategic partnerships, align with sales, and turn mutual overlaps into fast-moving opportunities.

The solution

To address this issue, Kayla and her team defined their Ideal Partner Profile (IPP)—the type of partnerships they are most successful with—and leaned into those.

“We’ve been using Crossbeam for a couple of years now, and it’s been great in helping us get to a more narrowed focus,” said Kayla. “I specifically started using it when I was beginning any technology partnership.”

To make their partner program work, Kayla and her team decided to step back from their current program to get a bigger picture. They’d defined their IPP, but what came next?

That’s where the 3x3 play came in. Rather than simply identifying which partners aligned with their IPP, the team developed a repeatable motion to activate those relationships through focused, high-impact account collaboration.

They understood that they needed to know who our best partners were — and a way to generate revenue with them. That meant building a proactive structure to drive pipeline together.

They decided that it wasn't just about companies meeting the IPP criteria, but also being able to evaluate the momentum and opportunities as well. Today, Kayla and her team use Crossbeam to find out if building an integration is a good idea. The first thing they check is the number of mutual customers, which will be the basis for their beta testers list. 

“They are going to help lead us as we build this integration,” said Kayla. “I’ve been using Crossbeam a lot in the beginning of the partnership conversation, during discovery, to know if the partnership is worth our time, because we look at the number of customers we can bring this new integrated solution to.”

They didn’t stop at qualification — they operationalized the momentum into a co-selling strategy. That’s where the “3x3 play” became a game-changer.

To keep the momentum going with those partnerships, Intellistack developed the “3x3 play,” where partnering with their sales team drives more pipeline from partners. Here’s how the play works:

1. Kayla connects with the partner and together they take a look at a handful of accounts. She checks general metrics like: the number of overlaps, potential revenue, whether it’s a tech partner, win rate, and opportunity size.

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Crossbeam’s Partner List’s tab

2. Once the partner agrees to share data, they plan a discovery call where Kayla outlines the expectations and timing of the 3x3 play. She then prepares her list of accounts for the next meeting.

Crossbeam’s account mapping matrix

3. Kayla runs a “customer vs. prospect” or “customer vs. open opportunities” report. Then, with the help of her Partner Sales AE (from her team), they identify the three target accounts that are valuable for Intellistack. The characteristics that make these three accounts valuable include:

• Where they are focusing their expansion strategy, such as region and vertical
• Their tech stack, which includes Salesforce or other technologies they work seamlessly together or integrate with 
• Pain points that can be solved by Formstack by Intellistack (enterprise or mid-market customer)
• Industry and number of employees

These accounts aren’t random overlaps — they’re strategically chosen based on where the partnership can have the most mutual impact.These accounts need to be strategic and a must-win for both Intellistack and their partners. “By selecting these accounts, we’re helping our partners get their most strategic customers or ideal prospects,” said Kayla. “This helps build trust and drive value early on in the partnership.”

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Crossbeam’s prospects vs. customers report

4. Once the accounts are selected on both sides, they have a follow-up meeting (which can be held on a quarterly basis) with their respective sales reps. This is where they dive into Crossbeam. “We pull up a screen share, explain how and why we chose our accounts, and how our partner can help, and vice versa.”

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Crossbeam’s shared list tab

During this call, both partners share intel and anecdotes about the strategic accounts. If they need to dive deeper into the conversation, Kayla also includes the account manager in a separate call so everyone can gather the golden nuggets. The play is lightweight by design — simply three accounts per side — but rich with insight and follow-through.

5. Then, with the help of her Partner Sales Manager, Kayla shares this intel with her sales team. “Having only three accounts to focus on at a time helps the data to be really actionable,” said Kayla. Her sales team then leverages Crossbeam Copilot in Salesforce to identify which partner can help them move a deal forward or provide assistance.
   
   1. Because it’s  three accounts, the insights are easy to digest — and more importantly, easy to act on

“One of the aspects of Crossbeam that helps get buy-in from our sales team early on is being able to have that Crossbeam widget in Salesforce to easily look and say, ‘I’m stuck at the account at 90-plus days, what can I do to move this forward?’”

Crossbeam Copilot in Salesforce

“Connecting with partners on Crossbeam and running the 3x3 play significantly helped us with this overachievement since it narrowed the focus on strategic target accounts,” said Kayla. “The small number of accounts was approachable and immediately actionable, and most importantly, it was mutually beneficial for our partnerships.”

The ELG play in action

Last year, Kayla was working with one of her partners. After looking at Crossbeam, they had a good number of overlapping mutual prospects but a limited number of overlapping customers and opportunities. They felt a bit discouraged, but after running the 3x3 play and selecting three accounts, they were able to build some great in-person activities like meetups at conferences such as Dreamforce.Instead of walking away, they used the 3x3 play to focus. And that focus led to impact.

From that play, one customer signed the deal, and now they’re running webinars with them.

“The 3x3 play really helps you focus and gives you confidence that, even if the populations are too small or too big, you’re still going to find real opportunities your team can leverage,” said Kayla.

Lessons from Intellistack 

Kayla’s journey with Intellistack highlights a powerful lesson: the 3x3 play allowed her team to take a more targeted approach, working closely with partners to focus on the most impactful opportunities. 

It transformed ecosystem data into partner-led pipeline.

As Kayla puts it, “When you really narrow the focus for these partnerships, you can see awesome results — and having your customers speak to it is the biggest kind of reward that you can have.”

The results speak for themselves, Intellistack exceeded their pipeline goals by 110% and booking goals by 125%. 

Kayla’s advice if you’re trying to do the same? 

“Even when you look into Crossbeam, and you see that your overlapping populations aren’t what you expected, there’s still golden opportunities in there. The key is to stay focused, be flexible, and always aim to deliver value.”

The bottom line: focus drives momentum. And momentum drives results.

Ready to shift your focus and start seeing real results? Book a demo to see how Crossbeam can help you refine your partnerships and unlock new growth opportunities.