People unfamiliar with partnerships have a really hard time understanding their value.
Isn’t marketing already generating leads?
Aren’t sales teams supposed to be closing deals?
Why wouldn’t a CSM be responsible for adoption, upsell and cross-sell?
While that line of questioning makes sense, they’re missing the larger point — that partnerships make all those functions better. Partners generate more leads. They close deals faster. They make your customer relationships stronger, opening the door to long-term expansion.
According to PartnerStack’s CRO, Mike Head, partnerships should be driving at least 30% of your annual revenue. If you’re not there yet, it may be because upper management is still stuck on those questions, treating partnerships as a cost center rather than a growth engine.
And to change that perception, you have to speak their language.
Below, we share three main ways partnerships impact the bottom line in terms that your exec team will actually listen to, with tips from CRO Head himself.
Read more: Blockers to growing partnerships in big companies — and how to overcome them.
Revenue win #1: Risk reduction
When you’ve got one AE working an enterprise deal, there’s a high chance they won’t find out about a competing vendor already embedded with the buyer or a budget freeze that sinks their deal. That lack of insider knowledge can cost them, big time.
When your AE is working in tandem with a referral partner, on the other hand, they can get instant access to:
- The account’s org chart and decision-making structure
- A list of the most important stakeholders and what they truly care about
- A rundown of internal politics, the company’s tech stack, their goals and any future announcements that could impact a deal
- Details the partner knows about what the prospect hates about their current vendor or what turned them off in a competitor’s demo
Other kinds of partners reduce your risk, too. Think about it:
If you’re co-selling a deal, partners give you a second set of eyes on your deal strategy and can help you pitch a more comprehensive, best-in-breed solution to a prospect.
In channel or reseller models, partners are taking on demand gen, early qualification and even post-sale support, reducing your costs and expanding your reach.
“Partners diversify your risk because you’re adding an alternative strategy that allows you to reach customers from multiple angles,” Head explains.
You might also like: Channel sales vs. direct sales: what’s the difference?
Partners also help you stand out in a sea of sameness
Another way to frame partnerships as a way to reduce risk is to think about the typical outbound motion right now.
“Everyone is so inundated with ads that don’t differentiate products much and scripted LinkedIn DMs that they don’t know who to trust anymore,” Head points out. “A third-party recommendation does more for you than anything your own sales and marketing could do. By default, there’s a lack of trust when information comes from your company, but when it comes from someone else entirely, it’s received a lot better.”
Partners lower your risk by improving your odds — of getting in the door and closing deals.
Revenue win #2: Higher win rates and higher ACV
Every exec wants to see the company closing larger deals, faster. And sometimes partners can help with that — a warm intro can blossom into a full-blown deal in a few weeks. But that’s not always the case.
“I’ve noticed that on partner-led, sourced or influenced deals, time to close can take longer. There can be multiple entities involved, thinking through two different technologies,” Head says.
That said, the time sacrifice is often worth the revenue upside.
Head reports: “Win rates are significantly higher with partner-sourced deals, often 2x higher than direct sales. For executives, pipeline that closes at a higher rate is always going to be very appealing. I also see much higher ACV.”
Partner-assisted deals are bringing in top numbers, too. Head thinks this higher conversion rate is why huge companies like Microsoft are pushing as much partner attachment as possible.
Revenue win #3: Revenue predictability
Reliable revenue comes from steady acquisition and strong retention. But right now, it’s really hard to win new customers, and really expensive to lose them. Partners can address both sides of the equation by:
1. Improving your discoverability
Being featured in a partner’s marketplace, “best of” roundup or joint solution landing page isn’t just a brand awareness play — it’s a way to gain credibility in the eyes of answer engines.
“Partners are a great way to get more content into the LLMs,” Head shares.
“Answer engines are picking up FAQs, directory information, and other content that describes how you work together with other technologies, helping you show up in parts of the buying journey you may not be able to influence with your own content.”
See also: AEO for partnerships: how to rank in answer engines.
2. Improving your lead gen
It can take a while to spin up a robust partner program with incentives that drive partners to act. But if you can achieve that, your partners can be a continuous source of leads.
“The exponential scale that you can start to get is what makes investment in partnerships so valuable,” Head notes.
“Instead of one-to-one outreach, you can build an ecosystem where a good set of technology partners and solid service partners can work with you and each other to increase visibility and demand.”
3. Improving your retention
“With partners, your NRR is higher,” Head says. “Either you’re working with another technology in their tech stack, so you’re stickier. Or, you’re working with a service provider who is good at implementing and managing that technology.”
In turn, you get more expansion. It just makes sense for customers to (1) keep using what they know, and (2) graduate to higher-tiered plans that they need.
Start talking the talk
No matter how compelling you think the business case is for partnerships, you have to be communicating your success the way your C-suite is used to hearing about it from your GTM peers. Head recommends:
Framing the opportunity in market terms
“Say things like ‘Here is the universe of target accounts our partners already have access to,’ and ‘Here is the penetration I think we can get,’” Head suggests.
And get specific. For example, maybe partners can give intros to 15% of your 200-target account list. Based on historical data, you might estimate that they’ll convert 40% of those POCs into customers.
“This helps you start speaking the language around predictable revenue,” Head says.
Using pipeline metrics
Your executive team already lives in pipeline metrics, so report on partner impact the same way sales and marketing do. Track:
- Pipeline velocity: How much faster do partner-sourced and partner-influenced deals close?
- Conversion rate lift: What's the win rate difference between partner deals and direct sales?
- Partnership-attributed revenue as a percentage of total bookings
Picking the right PRM
If you want to get credit for the revenue your partners drive, you need a PRM that collects the right data — and makes it impossible to ignore.
PartnerStack ties partner activity directly to pipeline, with filters that let you segment performance by partner size and type, and pull board-ready metrics and create detailed dashboards without ever touching a spreadsheet.
Schedule a demo to see how PartnerStack can help you prove your program’s ROI, once and for all.
