B2B marketers are turning to partnerships as traditional growth channels lose traction

B2B buyers have tuned out. Drowned in a sea of cold emails and copy-paste pitches, generic outreach doesn't cut it anymore. What moves the needle now is strategic collaboration—partnering to create value that no one can deliver alone.

Ben Roodman has spent his career building those kinds of partnerships. Now, as the founder of HeyBTW, he’s focused on helping marketers connect more meaningfully with their ideal customers by working together.

Better together: Partnerships, says Roodman, create value that no company can deliver alone. "That shared influence—leveraging each other's audiences and resources—puts you in the room with your ideal buyer when traditional outreach just adds to the noise." But the value isn’t automatic. "You need a story that creates value for the customer," he explains. "One that neither company could tell alone." Whether through shared audiences, budgets, or integrations, "you can change people's perspective about both of your solutions and how you're addressing their needs, the challenges, their fears together through something you've already solidified, working together."

Face time, not FaceTime: Old tactics aren’t just outdated, they’re actively being rejected in a market where teams are expected to leverage AI and do more with less. "Sending another email is not the solution," Roodman says. "People are saturated. Even LinkedIn inboxes are overwhelmed with vendor messages." Generic content and bloated lead lists just get ignored.

What cuts through now is real connection. "You need opportunities to actually meet your buyer and build a relationship." Content and demand generation may build awareness, but "it’s not the story they want to hear when they’re trying to solve an immediate pain point," he explains. "The only way to truly understand what they need is to be in the room."

AI alliances: AI isn’t just streamlining workflows; it’s redefining how companies partner. "There's huge potential to make partnerships an extremely efficient channel through smart collaboration," says Roodman. That efficiency, he adds, comes from connecting not just teams, but entire systems across companies.

Foot in the door: As familiar tactics get noisier, Roodman urges marketers to look elsewhere. "Your customers are in communities—niche Slack groups, in-person events, meetups," he says. For new companies, partner-led distribution and tapping into these networks is key. "Find the users who already value what you’re building." Even name-dropping complementary brands in case studies, he adds, can help open the right doors.

Uncharted territory: Roodman sees AI pushing collaboration into new territory, especially when it comes to showing, not just telling. "The fact that you can show somebody what you're thinking is really powerful," he says, pointing to demos, AI-generated visuals, and idea frameworks. His focus now is on how teams can work not just internally, but across systems and companies. "How can we collaborate in a way that actually builds something great together? There’s still a lot of unexplored ground there."