Partnership GTM Predictions for 2026 with Bryn Jones and Mike Head

Bryn Jones (00:00):

My biggest prediction is the change to education and therefore enablement. I think that this has been something that's been very static, whether you look at colleges, universities, elementary schools, more even into the way we educate and bring partners along. This is often something where we throw information into and it's left and forgotten about.

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Tyler Calder (00:23):

This is Get It, Together, the podcast where partnership and go-to-market leaders share the real stories behind programs they've built and scaled. Hey everyone, Tyler Calder, CMO at PartnerStack and in this episode of Get It, Together, I sat down with Bryn Jones, our CEO and Mike Head, our CRO, and we got into 2026 predictions. This is definitely an episode you're going to want to sit down with a pen, a paper, because we get into all things AI, we get into influencer and affiliate and what that's going to look like in the new year. And we got some pretty cheeky and interesting takes on where to spend your budget, how to really go to bat for that budget, how to, in Bryn's words, maybe just ignore the C-suite and we got a couple new terms coined throughout, so stay tuned.

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Mike Head (01:15):

Hello, I'm Mike Head, Chief Revenue Officer at PartnerStack and we are talking today about 2026 and how this is the moment for affiliate marketers to not screw up.

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Bryn Jones (01:26):

Hi, I'm Bryn Jones, co-founder and CEO of PartnerStack. We're here today to talk about predictions in 2026. Long and short of it is you're going to want to throw out that playbook.

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Tyler Calder (01:35):

Alright, so I'm going to dive into question number one. Everybody's talking about AI, so we're going to start there. You go on LinkedIn, everybody talks about how AI is going to transform, go-to market, pretty safe prediction. I think we can all agree that that's going to be the case. Let's maybe try to go into some unsafe, unpredictable places. So we're kicking off 2026. What very specifically, very tactically do you think are areas AI will truly take over and go to market? So what workflows, what decision making, what parts of the funnel stop being fully human led? And Mike, let's start with you on that one.

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Mike Head (02:18):

Sure. I am going to speak for most sales leaders, we're going to stop banging our heads against the wall because the CRM is no longer updated. I think AI is going to transform that. It has the ability to take unstructured call and email data and get your CRM into a much better place making the lives of sales leadership and reps and CSMs just in a much better place.

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Tyler Calder (02:49):

So your prediction, this future of CRMs updating themselves, is that coming from something you lay on top of your existing CRM? Do we think coming from new players and entrants that are going to displace incumbents, what do we think?

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Mike Head (03:03):

I think it's going to come from both and it depends on the situation that you're in right now. Everyone knows it's very hard to rip and replace A CRM. And so if you have something that's in place like a Salesforce that isn't going to be able to do this on its own, you have to layer a technology on top of it. But if you're an earlier stage company, you absolutely have the opportunity to leapfrog and to be able to get a CRM that will do this natively, which I think is really exciting for early stage companies.

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Bryn Jones (03:30):

Cool. Bryn?

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Bryn Jones (03:31):

I think the thing that's going to get automated is going to be the buyer journey, not perfectly, but it's going to be customized and tailored to specific buyers, right? We try to push people through a funnel top of funnel, their custom experiences, custom landing pages. Now I think the level of customization that you're going to get is going to really speak to every buyer and it's going to come through a lot of the intense signals that you collect beforehand. But I would bet on top of funnel, I might bet on what you just picked, but if you made me pick something else, I would put more top of funnel custom buyer experience and it starts top of funnel and it leads all the way through the journey. And I think that the different tools that we're going to see come online, which I don't believe are here yet, I think it'll be a whole bunch of new incumbents, some of which we've been building for a while. I think you're going to see really a much better buyer experience and it'll be good for buyers, it'll be good for sales teams and go-to-market teams that are trying to drive more revenue too.

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Tyler Calder (04:23):

Alright, I want to take some of that where we stayed a little bit high level, we stayed around the tool lane, kind of the functional areas. If we get down to the specific roles, the jobs within go to market, again, you go on LinkedIn, you hear people posting about, I laid off my whole team, replaced them all with agents. You dig into who they are, they have their own bias on why they're making those statements. But if we were to really think about where this idea of an AI first agent can take on some of the day-to-day work that humans are diving into today, what are those areas? Where are we handing off that human first work to agents?

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Mike Head (05:04):

I have a bit of a contrarian view and that AI agents will not fully replace any function that's happening within go-to-market today. I believe that it's going to augment or supplement and add leverage to a bunch of different roles within the go-to-market team, but AI on its own still is too wild to let loose and you're going to cause problems for yourself if you allow it to do that. Areas that I do believe you can get a lot of leverage are around account research and preparation. I think a lot of those things that were pretty manual, you can now build the right prompts, you can get the right data and you can save anyone on your team, whether it's on demand generation, sales or customer success, a ton of time in prep and research and getting ready for the calls, which will then allow them to engage with customers and prospects much more proactively and productively.

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Bryn Jones (06:02):

Similar to Mike, AI's going to unlock productivity, leverage, whatever you want to go in and call it. I think that there's a real opportunity for these agents to enable customer success to actually be part of the go-to-market stack. I think customer success today is really largely an extension of support and they're put in a really, really challenging spot. And one of the reasons they're put in a challenging spot is there's so much administrative work that's required for it, but if we can service the right type of data to success reps so they can actually act in a more strategic manner with the absolute limited time that they have, I think they're going to move away from that more support oriented role, which is required every company needs it and be able to speak more strategically to customers. So I would actually say it's more on again, customer engagement side that you're going to get more out of it.

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Mike Head (06:50):

I would agree. Just adding on to that and you think about the redundant questions that they quite frequently get asked, the more you can leverage AI to give very timely and accurate responses around that will also free up the success team to be more proactive.

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Bryn Jones (07:06):

Totally. And these jobs aren't going away. Just the impact is going to be so much bigger and we can see this throughout the last 25 years of technology. Everyone thinks it's going to be automated, some portion of a job, there's going to be more cuts. That's not what's going to happen. There's just going to be a bigger impact.

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Tyler Calder (07:24):

Alright, so fair to say that the prediction for 2026 is yes AI agents, but no, not necessarily widespread taking of jobs. It's really about how do we sort of uncork the potential of the folks that we have, let them focus on higher value areas, let sort of AI and the agents take some of those more menial, repetitive type of tasks. Is that what we're stating?

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Mike Head (07:46):

Yes, with the caveat that I would add, you will see fewer roles within any given function. And so an example on the outbound prospecting side of things, you will still have BDRs, SDR/MDR, whatever acronym you use, but you will see fewer of them. All

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Tyler Calder (08:08):

Right, I like it. Mike. We've done at PartnerStack a lot of testing experimentation around our own automation, our own workflows. I think we've probably learned quite a bit. Anything that you'd want to share with folks? The good, the bad, the ugly? As people kick off the year, how should people be thinking about their own testing experimentation around this?

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Mike Head (08:28):

Be willing to test, be willing to fail and assume you have to put two to three X more effort into any of these tests than you were expecting.

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Tyler Calder (08:42):

I think that's fair. Alright. Bryn, what about you? What about your perspective? I know you're watching a lot of the test experiments that we're running, some working some not. What's your perspective as CEO?

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Bryn Jones (08:52):

I think the way that we have AI and the naive approach that we've walked into 2025 with, I think that there's a lot more experience under our belt at PartnerStack and across the whole industry. My view is that a lot of these tools demo really well and then the application, that's where it struggles because in enterprise software, what we don't account for is the reason it's so important is all the edge cases and there's an edge case to every single account. You can make something demo really, really well and then it falls apart in practice. And I think it's a lesson that people learn 10, 15 years ago when we saw the rise of application software. And so I can see how people can be tricked. I think we'll be a lot less naive going into 2026, but I understand and it's because of people like me as CEO or boards, they see these things, they're like, oh my god, this is amazing. We got to bring this across the whole portfolio and then you go to actually implement it and it does 10% of what it looks like it can do.

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Mike Head (09:56):

You weren't even fully involved in one of the tests that we were doing that very much was this case. We looked at it, it had a ton of promise, but then once we actually got into onboarding, it wasn't exactly what we expected it to be, but we worked with a great team on the other side and so making sure that there's really good technologists, that they're willing to support you and work with you along that journey was critical. And it got to the point where once you saw it in action, you were pretty happy with it.

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Bryn Jones (10:30):

Yeah, I was pretty excited. I did not know how challenging it was to get it up and going though.

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Tyler Calder (10:34):

So is there a prediction in here somewhere where 2025 you saw a lot of new entrant into the market, a lot of AI first companies or at least being positioned that way is the prediction in 2026, the smoke and mirrors is going to become very apparent and the people who have real utility in the platform, they're the ones who are going to rise to the top. You're going to see companies maybe not rise to that level. Is there a prediction there around the whole smoke and mirrors of some of the tech that's out there?

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Bryn Jones (11:04):

No, I think there's going to be more smoke and mirrors. It's going to be more sophisticated. I think the changes, people are going to be pretty sophisticated in the delivery. We will reset what our expectations are. You go back to January, February this year the productivity people are talking about people not having to one person billion dollar ARR companies. Will it happen? Yeah, at some point. Is it going to happen in 2025? No. Will it happen in 2026? Who knows? Who really knows? This wave of AI has really changed the entire landscape. But I think the big change we're going to see is we are going to be less naive when going through any type of buying process and we'll be way more cynical. And I think that's actually a huge opportunity because there's a lot of room for upside surprise to be. The most interesting thing though isn't going to be that to me what's very interesting is many of these companies that already have distribution will they come forward with an AI, native AI first platform offering. And because companies with distribution have a significant amount of leverage, though I still think we'll see a continued rise of the AI native platforms.

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Mike Head (12:08):

And I would just add on the level of sophistication on the buyers. I would agree that's probably the biggest change going from 25 to 26 buyers now aren't going to just buy into the shiny object. They're going to need to actually see the proof and buyers also have a much better understanding of the use cases that actually work and can be executed versus the real shiny, sexy things that actually won't be practical for your business overall.

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Tyler Calder (12:37):

So Mike as CRO, any thoughts for how companies will navigate that sales cycle through 2026 where they're probably facing a ton of competition, some real some may be perceived? How do you work through that with your buyers where there's so much noise, they need help, they need handholding. What does that look like in the new year?

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Mike Head (13:01):

That's where I do really believe communities, peer networks, partners, trusted advocates, can truly help buyers navigate that process. And if you as an organization that's selling is able to put that at the forefront to be able to have that social proof, to be able to connect people with real buyers who have actually used your product overall and can articulate some of the things your team is saying, but honestly also the customer experience, I think that's a winning formula.

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Tyler Calder (13:33):

Cool. Bryn, anything you want to add to that?

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Bryn Jones (13:35):

Just get the C-suite out of the buying process of new technology. If your CEO sends over something that you should go and look into, you should automate a response back and make it custom and that's a great use of AI next year.

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Tyler Calder (13:49):

Right? So CEO response agent.

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Bryn Jones (13:51):

Yeah, CEO response agent. I like that.

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Tyler Calder (13:54):

I think that's a great call out. I mean that's something I think every marketer would love.

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Bryn Jones (13:57):

Yeah, yeah, check this out.

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Mike Head (13:59):

And to be fair, I think some people on our RevOps team would want that CRO response from me too.

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Tyler Calder (14:06):

That's awesome. Let's shift into partnerships. I think we can all agree. Partnerships historically has been under automated as much as there's tooling out there for automation. I think across go-to-market, there hasn't been as much automation as other functions, very much still leans towards the importance of the one-to-one relationship. What changes this year, what changes in 2026, what part of that partner motion can AI really start to come in and help support without losing the magic of that human element?

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Bryn Jones (14:42):

I think it's going to come down to partner discovery. When you're going and recruiting new partners, who should you go and be speaking with Discovery? The prospecting phase, there's so much time, energy and resources put into that and because of AI, because of data—I’m very biased, because of the data that we have inside a PartnerStack, we can see the value that's unlocking. And when you have the ability to turn on a distribution channel that never before existed and there's no cost to it and AI can tell you about it, I actually can't think of a higher leverage thing that a partner manager can do. And so we can help automate that motion so that the partner managers can continue to foster those one-on-one relationships. I don't think the one-on-one relationships are going anywhere, I just think that there's going to be more of them and not just more of them, them at the right time to hit the very specific customer segment. If you can do right time partner for a specific customer that's going to unlock a lot of value and improve just the overall experience.

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Mike Head (15:45):

I think there's a number of areas that it's going to help with, but I'll highlight one. And a lot of it's from some personal experience where I have spent hours continuing to educate sales teams on when and when to not pull partners into opportunities. And I'm a big believer in AI and utilizing the unstructured call and email data, and I believe that's going to be a massive unlock for co-sell teams. You're going to be able to start to really automate when partners should be included in opportunities and be able to accelerate getting those opportunities to your partners, which just creates a massive flywheel and makes the ecosystem thrive a lot more.

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Tyler Calder (16:30):

Alright, so two thoughts, two predictions there. One is on the discovery and recruitment side, leveraging more intelligence to go out, find the right types of partners, bring 'em in, kind of the bane of every partner team's existence is going and finding partners. So that's one. And then one, taking that unstructured data to help identify co-sell opportunities in your existing ecosystem. 

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Mike Head (16:51):

Yep.

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Tyler Calder (16:53):

All right. I like it. Let's talk about within partnerships, PRM as a category of tech. I think a lot of partner teams have really tried to make their PRM if they have one, a system of record. They haven't always accomplished that. Sometimes it lives somewhere else, sometimes maybe they don't have one at all. But let's just start with the category of PRM and the broadest question I'll ask is, is this even a category in 2026?

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Bryn Jones (17:25):

I think we're going to see a series of blog posts that says PRM is dead. It's not dead yet. I think the more valuable, less viral self-promoting blog posts are actually LinkedIn posts or the things that actually matters. And I think that what you're going to see is PRM move from a system of record to a system of action wherein the workflow can be automated in such a way to improve output from partners and just get more out of them, improve their overall experience versus just be a system where they go and record things that have happened. And so I think that that will be the truth, that'll be the most successful version of the transition in 2026. But I also predict there will be somewhere between two and three dozen viral LinkedIn posts that talk about how PRM is dead if we're going to be honest with ourselves. We're talking about as a technology platform that enables more revenue and a more customized action oriented technology platform that specifically targets the channel that's the best outcome for everyone in this space.

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Mike Head (18:31):

Yeah, I like PRM as partner revenue management, taking the ability to actually meet the partners where they are and solve real problems for their business. I think PRM as a relationship management portal and another tool that they need to go to just complicates things. And I do think that maybe not just this upcoming year, but as we look into 27, we'll start to see some real strong advances in what this technology can do to actually facilitate driving more revenue between organizations.

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Tyler Calder (19:06):

So jumping off of that, I like the new term you just coined. We'll run with it.

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Mike Head (19:12):

I got a trademark on it.

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Tyler Calder (19:13):

Yeah, let's see what we can do with that one. Less of a prediction, more so advice for folks that are listening, that transition from relationship to revenue, it's a bit of a leap for a lot of partner teams. They're really, really good at the relationship side. Don't always get to the revenue outcomes that they're potentially looking for. 2026, what are the one to two things regardless of tech, regardless of AI, that partner team should be focused on to take those relationships and actually convert it into the revenue outcomes that the company's looking for.

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Mike Head (19:48):

Make RevOps your best friend. Turn your department into a data-driven organization that understands TAM, ICP, personas, conversion rates, account mapping, everything you can do to really leverage that data, drive a funnel and take the best advantage of the revenue opportunities that your partner organizations have. Stop spending time with just the people that you like and you consistently want to spend time with and make sure you're prioritizing your day using data that's coming from your RevOps team.

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Tyler Calder (20:22):

And within that, do you see a rise of partner ops being embedded in RevOps? Is it all just RevOps?

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Mike Head (20:30):

Yeah, I think it has to sit with RevOps. I think RevOps in its core design is one of the most unbiased departments because they're just trying to figure out what actually works to grow revenue for the organization. And if you put the operations in another department, you could potentially start to get some bias. And so that's why I like it as a singular function singular group.

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Tyler Calder (20:55):

Cool. Bryn, into year 11 of Partner Stack, what are your thoughts on this topic of relationships to revenue over the past decade? Where have you seen maybe teams stumble making that conversion from the relationship to the revenue outcome? Any thoughts or tips there?

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Bryn Jones (21:12):

Yeah, I mean I think the most successful teams that I've gone and seen, they behave like marketing or sales teams in that they understand the funnel and they're not scared to create value and then ask for something in return and then even more, they don't overcomplicate it. At the end of the day, we have to drive revenue as partnership leaders, as go-to-market leaders, you have to drive revenue in a set period of time. You're only going to get so much investment before you unlock a new set of investment. So knowing that it's not about the touch points, it's about the value exchange and you have to give before you get too, right? You can't just go in knocking saying like, Hey, give me all your leads. No, show up with something of value for your partner. But don't be scared to follow up and make the ask and know that at the end of the day we sit in revenue and that's a huge privilege and a huge opportunity.

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Mike Head (22:09):

Can I add one more thing? I'm a believer in partner-sourced revenue, but that is not the only metric that you need to look at. There's a lot of value in partner assist and partner-influenced revenue. And if you can find the justification in your funnel as to where those other partner engagements add value, don't shy away from it, but it can't be the only thing you rely on. You have to have that partner sourced in addition to the influence and the assist.

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Tyler Calder (22:42):

So is it fair to say you need to hit whatever your sourced number is, so own a source number, hit it and that almost you tell me what you think. What I hear you saying is that almost buys you the right or the privilege to now talk about influence and attach and the impact that has. But if you're not hitting a sourced target and almost who cares,

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Mike Head (23:04):

Correct, fair or unfair, not for me to say, but that's the reality of what partner teams are working with. But where you can, looking at the funnel, there's conversion rates. And so if you could say, because partners get involved, we can close 10 to 15% more of that pipeline that's meaningful and you should be vocal about that. But to your point, as long as you're also driving some of that pipeline in.

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Tyler Calder (23:30):

Sure. Alright, cool. Let's talk about something that really blew up in 2025 and it's certainly going to continue through this year, AEO/GEO/AIO, whatever you want to call it, let's just call it AI visibility for the sake of this conversation. I think in that conversation almost everybody agrees that the buyer's journey is changing to shifting. Lots of folks are starting their search for a product or service ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whatever it might be, versus just going to Google search Within all of this, what role does partnerships play in this kind of new world of discovery through AI?

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Bryn Jones (24:14):

I think partnerships has an opportunity is the way I'll describe it, and to capture this and really transform what partnerships means in the go-to-market stack in general. And the reason I believe that is so many of these LLMs are trained off of people and of content. That's how it's designed. And I think that, I mean we've gone and seen already date that many of the rankings are driven off of affiliate, are driven off of comments on Reddit. They're driven off of so many things and partnership. People need to understand that there's an opportunity, there's a moment where they can lean into this and capture that value because it's already something under their purview, it's already something under their portfolio that they're going and managing and it's already something that they actually know how to drive specific part or behavior on that will in turn help support the ranking in an LLM.

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(25:08):

But partnership people also need to know that the entire go-to-market stack is going to solve this. And so it will either be partnership people that do this or it will be marketers. And there's a bit of a coin toss right now on who's going to win it, but I'll tell you it really, really matters. And if partnership people can understand that they need to put their attention towards the things that matter most, I think that they will make the most of this moment. And then the impact after the fact will be enormous pipeline will be an improved customer journey and more partner source revenue. Everybody wins if we can capture the opportunity and not just measure it but influence it so that it actually drives improved results in these LLMs. And the last thing that I'll go in and say is you have to be able to prove, you can't just say it, you have to prove your work. And so you better use tools and platforms to be able to communicate up. It's one of the big challenges that partnership folks have is that we don't communicate up enough and make sure to use the right set of tools so that you can communicate to your C-suite, this is why we're ranking here and this is what it requires for us to rank instead of three into number one.

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Mike Head (26:14):

I think it's super exciting talking about partnerships. Partnerships is a very broad term and so I want to talk about a couple of specific examples actually outside of affiliate and digital partnerships that I think is really exciting for traditional channel and partnerships teams, your technology partnerships are now even more important. And so you would always do some co-marketing together. You'd always enable one another's teams, but now actually getting out there and writing content about one another is another way that these partnership teams can add value and help each other grow. Your solution partners, any of them can do this and you can do these content exchange in a real authentic way that will help with this buyer's journey in the new way that the LLMs are looking at reading content and making suggestions overall. And then for the affiliate side of things, I mean everything's about to change. It's super exciting.

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Tyler Calder (27:13):

Well, you can't just say that and then stop talking. Fair enough. Everything's going to change.

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Mike Head (27:19):

Yeah. One thing I'll say is for the affiliate industry, don't mess this moment up. You have a moment right now where content is being utilized to be able to provide recommendations. But for those that have been in the affiliate space for many years, and I've been in this space for about 15 years now, you know that there can sometimes be a tendency to be inauthentic, spammy, and just getting as much content out there as possible. And I believe that if the industry goes that way, the LLMs will stop utilizing the content. They'll figure out a way where they're deprioritizing it, but if we do this in a right way, it will make it so the value of that content goes beyond what was traditionally credited as last click, and you'll be able to build a lot more authentic content. Everyone will be able to get the value and compensation for building that content if they do it the right way.

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Tyler Calder (28:13):

Interesting. So maybe let's use that to move into a prediction around how affiliates, influencers, content creators might think about being compensated in 2026 or how they might end up being compensated. What might that look like through this year?

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Mike Head (28:30):

Yeah, I think one metrics overall need to change independent of compensation. So you need to evaluate the quality of the content, the authenticity of the content, the domain authority that the content's being placed, the number of brand mentions is also something that can change. And I think as you look at those metrics and how they're moving, then you can start to think about additional forms of compensation. The very straightforward answer today is pay for the content upfront, but eventually you'll be able to get paid per brand, mention paid per citation, and ensure that you're getting not only the compensation that comes from the clicks and the direct revenue, but also the value that you're providing for these LLM recommendations.

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Tyler Calder (29:16):

Bryn, anything you want to add to that?

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Bryn Jones (29:18):

Yeah, go fight for the marketing budget, go get the marketing budget, go get that paid budget. I think that the big opportunity if you go in and do that is you're going to unlock budget you've never otherwise seen before and there's money on the table, which is opportunity for your team and greater ROI for your company, fight for it, bring the metrics forward, show that you deserve to have more it. We're going to see a huge shift in the way that media spend, demand spend is allocated and just recognize that's on the table.

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Tyler Calder (29:49):

So let's lean into that one as a prediction for the year budget allocation you just mentioned. Hey, go grab the budget. Is that one of your predictions? You see budget shifting from maybe traditional SEO practices, maybe some paid media into driving AI visibility?

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Bryn Jones (30:06):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean we're seeing it in real time. We have calls about this every week. We're not just taking calls from marketers, there are product managers and CEOs on these calls because it's the most important thing for large enterprise. How do I get ranked? And it starts from the buyer experience, but also goes down to the underlying value of whatever their share is. And there's many reasons why companies want to be ranked correctly. And so therefore it is landing on the foot of the CEO board C-suite to say improve the rankings no matter what. And we can see that improved ranking improves conversion as well, right? The data is already early, but it's signaling that it's a much more efficient buyer journey. I suspect there's going to be a big shift. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to feel kind of natural in some ways, but what it will unlock will be pretty incredible.

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Tyler Calder (30:54):

Why is this important? So you mentioned the C-suite CEOs saying, Hey, we got to improve this ranking, our AI visibility. Why is that important? Now when if you look at the data, the majority of traffic is still going to Google. We're talking about maybe six, seven highest 10% of traffic coming through LLMs. Why now? Why go get that budget? Why lean in now?

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Bryn Jones (31:19):

Yeah, if you were to look at the numbers 12 months ago, it wouldn't be 11%, it would be less than 1%, right? And so if you look at the rate of adoption, that is the thing that matters more than anything. And then you can project out in six and 12 months, it will be the fastest growing top of funnel area for B2B buyers to go lean into. And so the reason it matters isn't the fact that it's 11%. The reason it matters is because it used to be zero.

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Mike Head (31:47):

Yeah, I would just add there's more blue ocean because it is newer. There's fewer companies that are investing in it right now, and because there's less competition, it's a little bit easier to execute the strategy. It is a dynamic strategy and changing, but the more well-versed and competent you are in it now, the better you'll be positioned into the future. 

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Tyler Calder (32:07):

Almost like we know where SEO landed and we know how important it was to so many businesses, it's almost like if I could go back in time and sort of seed my ground in the early days of SEO, that's the same moment as now. We've already seen this play out, get in there and kind of own your space

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Bryn Jones (32:25):

And not only for the company value, but for your career. This is a moment where you can capture this and make it your own. That's a huge advantage. There is no playbook and when there is no playbook, innovators can come in and completely flip everything upside down. And so what it'll mean to the individuals driving this action, it will unlock career opportunities and learnings that we aren't even thinking of.

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Tyler Calder (32:50):

Alright, so we were talking about shifting budgets and partner teams needing to grab a hold of budgets to drive some of that AI visibility. One of the areas I wanted to shift to is the past couple years has really been about discipline growth. You've heard people talk about profitable efficient growth, different variations on that theme. Is that what we're looking at in 2026? Is it discipline? Is it let's be conservative. Are we getting back to a world of hypergrowth and growth at all costs? What does that look like?

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Bryn Jones (33:23):

It depends on what's happening more broadly in the macro, and it is going to depend on a quarterly basis because that's the level of change that we could see at a macro level next year. And what I expect though, my prediction, which is why we're having the conversation is the discipline that we learned isn't going to disappear in Q1, but it could go away a little bit in the back half of next year. The reason it's not going to disappear is everyone's realized that you can actually grow at an accelerated rate without wasting money. And that's a good thing. It's a really, really good thing. And at least for the next year or two, I hope all go-to-market, see and learns that because there's a price to be paid when you start spending like crazy with the exception that if you operate in an AI world, there will absolutely be waste.

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(34:17):

We just don't know what that looks like. We are seeing AI companies do a lot more with a lot less, and many of them are raising two, three rounds of capital having never touched the initial capital they raise because it's all being done on revenue. We just don't know how sturdy that revenue is. Is it going to come back and pay the following year? What are the retention rates? So the net of it is we have become addicted and can see the value of efficiency and we're not going to give that up, but I'm reserving the right to say people are going to want to give some of that up if the macro continues to improve. And oddly enough, the macro improving could actually be the economy getting worse and then interest rates coming down because that will be the driver of spend B2B SaaS.

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Tyler Calder (35:05):

All right. Mike, anything you want to add to that?

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Mike Head (35:08):

Yeah, a couple things. He didn't say it, but I think growth at all costs is out the window for most businesses today and I think there's going to be some sort of efficiency as Bryn talked about. And one of the important things to look at where you will allocate more capital will be on the funnel math. Can you find opportunities that compound versus drive linear growth? And if you can find certain areas that can actually compound your results over time, I think companies are going to continue to invest in those areas.

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Tyler Calder (35:43):

Generally. Where do we think people are going to place their bets? Where are they going to be investing? You go back a decade, it's more reps, that was the math. What is the new math look like? Where do we think that investment is going to drive that type of efficient growth?

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Mike Head (36:00):

If you're looking at internally in different areas, it's investments that make your productivity per team member much stronger. And so if you can get higher output or more accounts managed per CSM, if you can get more support responses completed per support team member, if you can get more output per BDR, I think that's where you'll see a lot of internal investments. As far as external investments, I think it's pretty clear right now from a lot of the data that one of, if not the top category is going to be AI visibility for investments.

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Bryn Jones (36:36):

Yeah, I would agree with almost all of that. I think that we're starting to see a growing investment in ecosystem and people talking about that, we'll see how that plays out. Clearly we believe in the power of ecosystem led growth, but the numbers really do have to work out. I think that the opportunity is that people are willing to say yes to stuff and run experiment budget against things to see if it actually impacts the unit economics of the company or the unit economics of the individual. And that's the opportunity that we have right now.

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Mike Head (37:06):

I do think one category that I think was tested in 2025 was B2B influencers. I think it's going to continue to be a component of any B2B company's marketing budget going forward.

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Tyler Calder (37:21):

Alright, let's get into that. So B2B influencers 2025. Lot of conversation around it. We certainly leaned into it. Mike, for you, what did you learn through 2025 around all things influencer? And then you've already alluded to it, but what role does that play in 2026?

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Mike Head (37:39):

So one thing I learned in 2025 and LinkedIn, if you are listening, we need APIs, but seriously, it would be nice if the platforms where most B2B influencers are made it easier for marketers to be able to identify, engage with and utilize the opportunities on the platform. I also think it's better for the platform to have that type of engagement overall on the vendor or brand side of things, it was really interesting to see the way that companies were willing to test and work with influencers. You had some that were purely focused on we need more pipeline, we need more bookings, but we had others that were doing, we've changed our brand name. We want to use influencers to get that out. We have a new product offering, we want to use influencers to be able to help get that word out. We've made an acquisition and we need to tell the narrative and the story of the acquisition together and we'll use influencers for that. So I think they've really saw all of the opportunities that you can utilize B2B influencers.

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Bryn Jones (38:41):

Yeah, I think that B2B influencers is too broad as a category. I think that you have the folks that post on LinkedIn, which are different than long form content creators through podcasts, which is different than short form content creators on podcasts. And there's a lot of other types of influencers too, like there's influencers inside of communities, whether those be private or public forums like on Reddit. And I think what's going to happen is we're going to get sophisticated at categorizing the different type of B2B influencers and understand that it's not one influencer that will drive all the journey, but it's a series of touches across influencers that will ultimately make the biggest impact.

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Tyler Calder (39:22):

What about this conversation around AI visibility? What role are influencers playing in that?

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Mike Head (39:27):

I think a lot of it's still TBD on the exact ways that influencers can play a role. I think you see certain areas where influencers can play a role with their LinkedIn content, but you're not always seeing that show up. I do think influencers, if they're active in a bunch of forums, that will come up as well. And then it is very clear that YouTube influencers are having a very meaningful impact on AEO and AI visibility.

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Tyler Calder (39:56):

So fair to say, prediction still a thing in 2026, how we think about influencers and the definition of what an influencer is maybe changes a little bit, but certainly not something that was hyped up and died in 2025. Is that fair?

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Bryn Jones (40:12):

I think it's more important in Q4 than it was in Q1. And I think one of the lessons inside of there is like, sorry for this, you can't actually do an annual prediction. The predictions are quarterly. I actually think the world that we work inside today is quarterly and even monthly predictions. If we know that walking into next year, it's actually very exciting because it really puts an emphasis on action and experimentation. And so knowing in advance that whatever works for AEO/GEO influencer partnerships in January, 2026 will be different in December, 2026 is I think the most important takeaway.

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Tyler Calder (40:52):

So as a CEO founder, how do you operate in that environment where things can change monthly, quarterly, PartnerStack? What does that look like for you? How are you driving the team? What are the processes you're thinking about? How do you operationalize that speed?

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Bryn Jones (41:10):

Yeah, I think that's the question is how do you operationalize it? I think you need a really good dashboard. I think that RevOps matters now more than ever, so you can track any of these experiments and then I think that you need to provide autonomy with accountability and just get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so that is I think, the most important thing. There's the emotional unnerving part of it, but all of that can be managed if you operationalize it through dashboards and you give room for experimentation, autonomy, and then build in that accountability layer. And lastly, celebrate the experiments that work and don't work. Don't be scared to shut stuff down that work last quarter that's no longer working this quarter and return to it two quarters from now, if that changes.

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Tyler Calder (41:54):

Mike, anything you'd add?

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Mike Head (41:57):

Just celebrating the failures. I cannot underscore the importance of that, of being vulnerable, being willing to try new things and accept that it hasn't worked and you've learned because of it.

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Tyler Calder (42:10):

Why is that important?

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Mike Head (42:11):

With the world changing as face as it is right now, no one has the answers and you have to be willing to put yourself out there, try new things and understand that it won't work because if you're out there trying something new and you're not willing to admit that it won't work, you're going to continue to invest in the wrong areas and slow your growth down.

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Bryn Jones (42:34):

Maybe just adding onto that, throw out the playbooks. Don't rely on playbooks because playbooks were written for what happened, not what is going to happen. Frameworks work a little bit, but ultimately it's the metrics that you have in your business that matters.

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Tyler Calder (42:50):

Yeah, I think what you're pointing to or the importance of just first principles, not necessarily tactical playbooks that SaaS companies have been trying to lean on for years now and just simply don't work. And it's kind of like getting punched in the face when they don't work and you're scrambling to figure it out. Any first principles headed into 2026? You think folks should really be anchored to

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Bryn Jones (43:12):

Probably just explained all the first principles stuff is just getting uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, throwing at the playbooks, driving with data. I think just accepting that we live in this very fast paced world and there's huge opportunity in that as long as you're able to go in and manage your emotions, it's really important that you learn how to manage yourself in order to be successful inside of it. If you can manage yourself and find the opportunities in what seemed to be insurmountable challenges, you will unlock a lot. And then don't be scared to swing when the opportunity is in front of you.

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Mike Head (43:43):

Yeah, I would say, and I don't know if it's first principles or a framework, just because it worked in the past or didn't work in the past doesn't mean it will work or won't work in the future. And so making sure that you have diversity in the tactics and strategies that you want to use is very important going into 2026.

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Tyler Calder (44:06):

Yeah, I think that's great. Speaking of playbooks, I think historically a lot of SaaS companies, they think about going to market around a single motion and then maybe they tack on secondary motions, so they'll execute like a PLG playbook, they'll execute on a direct playbook, they'll execute on a partnership playbook going into 2026. Any predictions for how companies start to think about these motions? Are they leaning hard into one of them more so than they have in the past? Are they attaching them together and layering them a little bit more?

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Mike Head (44:42):

Like most things depends on the company. It depends on your ICP, what's worked for your business, the sophistication of your product, but overall, I see a blending of more of the tactics coming together. I think in general, B2B specifically is becoming more digital, more transactional, and you have to make sure that you're adapting to what the buyers are looking for there. And that doesn't mean you throw out all of your direct playbooks in the other areas. And so you look, how do you combine your data? How do you use the different signals? How do you target companies that are in different segments or different verticals to align with the way that they want to work with you? And when you can figure that mix out for your company, that's where you'll get that efficient compounding growth.

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Bryn Jones (45:28):

Yeah, I think it's blending, layering, being orchestrated. You have to do everything. You have to go up market, down market, you have to have PLG, you have to have enterprise. You can read all the posts, you have to do everything. That's just the world that we now operate in. The ones that will win are the ones that actually prioritize the right way and then make sure that one motion compliments and actually accelerates another versus just building silos.

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Tyler Calder (45:56):

And I think certainly one of the things we've seen at PartnerStack is regardless of the motion attaching partners to it has been beneficial. I'd love to chat about some of the more dominant motions that you see in SaaS. So PLG direct, obviously ecosystem led, but if we think about PLG, which has had its moment, the past decade, any predictions for how that might evolve in 2026 with a bit of a leading question, the role that partners might play in that or not?

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Bryn Jones (46:28):

Yeah, I think that PLG is going to be seen just as another go-to-market channel, more on top of funnel, and I think that partners will be involved in it somewhat, but I think ultimately that's going to be more owned inside of both product and marketing. And that's really what PLG is. It's a shared product marketing approach. It enables customers to come in and test the value before they make the full commitment. I actually think that you're going to see a bigger push upmarket and into enterprise. Now the companies that are able to have a really defined PLG motion will be incredibly successful because it will give them more time to work up in enterprise. So a little bit of switching back and forth, but I think that there's probably more value in the enterprise for partners to play a bigger role at least further in the funnel, right? When you get into that co-sell motion, like having a partner there really matters, whereas the partner type you work with top of funnel is going to be more content-oriented.

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Mike Head (47:22):

So for me, I'm all about PLPLG, Partner-Led Product-Led Growth. I it's a phenomenal opportunity to be able to add these offerings to any of your partner motions. If you think about your technology integration partnerships, being able to offer something special and unique and an easy way to convert those customers through your funnel. I think it's a winning formula and we'll see more of it in 26.

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Tyler Calder (47:51):

What about Brynn's comment on moving upmarket, moving into the enterprise. Any thoughts there? The role of partners, how would you think about executing on that?

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Mike Head (48:01):

Yeah, so specifically on PLG, I think it's proven that that can work in the enterprise. If you have a bottoms up motion and you can get end users from enterprise organizations using you in some capacity, it's a great entry point into an enterprise sale overall. And then overall just with partners in general, absolutely, the data is very clear. Any of the ecosystems that you look at to be able to move up market, you're not going to have the full solution for any of your customers. And so making sure that you have partners that can compliment the things you're doing that will one, help you win more business, but two, maybe even more importantly, and improve your NR Rrr.

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Tyler Calder (48:43):

All right, 2026, you got blank canvas. How are you thinking about building your partner program? Zero to one, all things on table budget isn't an issue. What does that look like, Bryn?

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Bryn Jones (49:02):

I think it's going to start with understanding who your buyer is and what product. All the things that are true this year are going to be true next year. The first principle thinking, right? What is my product? Who is my customer and what segment of my customer do I even want to advance further? If you don't have those answers, nothing's going to work. And then diving into who is the partner base I'm currently working with and what's working what's not. It's a different problem if you're launching a new program versus scaling an existing program. But I think that you will be investing in tech that can deliver some of the automation and some of the efficiencies. I do believe very strongly that the thing that's going to matter a lot next year is about finding the right partner at the right time to hit a specific customer segment. And I think that's where you're going to see platforms like Partner Stack, there's other great platforms out there. Crossbeam really continue to lean into this moment.

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Mike Head (49:59):

So one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to treat every partner the same. We know that different partners at different values should be evaluated in different ways and managed in different ways. Overall, I'm absolutely going to set up a way to manage a long tail. I don't need to do that in a manual way today because of platforms like PartnerStack and others out there. And so I'm going to think about those efficiencies. I'm going to invest in partner ops immediately and get my data right and look at personas, Tam, where I have the best opportunities. And then finally, I'm going to figure out a way to give first, how can I give to the ecosystem now that I'm just starting out to show that I'm committed and I want to add value? And I'll know if I'll do that. I'll start getting things in return.

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Tyler Calder (50:45):

Alright, I'm going to put you on the spot. What is it that we're going to be giving to the ecosystem in 2026? What's the give?

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Mike Head (50:54):

So one, our platform's going to significantly save time and help partner managers and channel leaders be able to focus on the things that matter by driving revenue. But we're going to be having strategies where we're going to be generous with our overall compensation. We're going to want to think about how we can give value with our customer base as well. And then we want to think about different and unique product offerings that align with our partners customer base so they can be giving value to their customers.

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Tyler Calder (51:26):

Cool. Is it fair to say in both of your answers, a common thread? There was just data. Brent, to your point around finding the right partners, right time critical that your data's got to be in a good place.

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Bryn Jones (51:36):

The data has to work, the data has to work before you dump money on something, lessons out of 20 20, 20, 21, you really need to understand the data.

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Tyler Calder (51:47):

Alright, love it. Bring on that partner ops person, right? Go as broad as you want. Biggest, boldest, spiciest prediction for 2026. Something we can come back to in a year and say, oh, we nailed it. Or my goodness, we were off the mark on that one. Bryn?

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Bryn Jones (52:05):

My biggest prediction is the change to education and therefore enablement. I think that this has been something that's been very static. Whether you look at colleges, universities, elementary schools, or even into the way we educate and bring partners along, this is often something where we throw information into and it's left and forgotten about. I think that this education and enablement is going to be way more real time to the point where it actually drives value. There's a reason why you want to engage, and I'm not going to say an LMS, but some type of an enablement platform. There's a reason you're going to be, and you can see it right now, whether it be again, in college students and elementary school kids and inside of partners. I think that that is the biggest unlock that can happen so that people can learn in real time and ultimately deliver more value. And to me that's really exciting because for too long go-to-market leaders have been flying blind. Their partners have been flying blind backwards. And so if we can unlock that, what that will do overall will be incredible.

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Mike Head (53:07):

2025 was all about the GTM engineer 2026 is going to be about the partner engineer. Now. There's so much technology and so many different ways that you can automate workflows that a person behind the scenes working with the different tools, technologies, teams, can truly create efficiencies for partner teams. So I'm excited to see that role take flight.

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Tyler Calder (53:32):

Alright, we'll come back in a year and see how we did on all of these predictions. I've got one last one because I think we all have some shared heartbreak from the 2025 World Series. Who's winning it in 2026? Bryn?

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Bryn Jones (53:46):

It's got to be Toronto.

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Tyler Calder (53:47):

Got to be Toronto.

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Mike Head (53:47):

It's got to be Toronto.

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Tyler Calder (53:49):

Mike, what do you have to say about it?

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Mike Head (53:50):

Well, I was really hoping this year that it was going to be Brewers Blue Jays, but next year the brewers are taking it all. We're breaking the curse. We're finally going to win one.

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Tyler Calder (54:02):

 You're going to win one.

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Mike Head (54:02):

You haven't had one yet, right? Haven't had one, Nope.

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Tyler Calder (54:04):

Alright. Well, we've had a couple.

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(54:07):

It's been a wahile.

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Bryn Jones (54:07):

It's been a while. It's been a while and it's been way too close. It's been way too close. It's been way too close.

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Tyler Calder (54:12):

Alright, we'll see. I'm going to have to vote Jays. Fair enough.

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Mike Head (54:15):

Of course. I expected to be outnumbered on this one.

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Tyler Calder (54:17):

I think that's fair. All right guys. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Like I said, we'll be back in a year, see how we did. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to Get It, Together. If you want more resources to help you build and scale your partnership program, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app and get more proven tips and tools at partnerstack.com slash get it together.