Deep down, you know your partner program is a key revenue driver, but others don’t seem to trust your professional instincts.
Sales reps are starting to give you the cold shoulder, even when there’s an abundance of partner-sourced leads for them to work with. AI is a recurring theme in your work life, but it’s unclear what it means for you and what the future may bring. You’re excelling in your role this quarter but are crippled by indecision as you look ahead. Where do you go next?
We don’t have a crystal ball, but we do have a hunch you might be facing one or more of these problems — and are uncertain how to proceed. After all, many partnership professionals feel the same.
To guide you in the right direction, we’ve solicited the wisdom of two partner pros, Ty Lingley, Senior Partner Alliance Executive at Workday, and Lindsay Cordell, Partner at GTM Partners. In this guide, you’ll find the fresh perspective you need to spark new ideas and tackle five common obstacles that prevent partnership leaders from achieving revenue success.
Problem:
I can’t seem to get executive buy-in. Why not?
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to feel like partnerships are working. You have to prove your strategies are working in a language that leadership understands.
Without constant tracking and measurement, you don’t have cold, hard facts to share. Without the right framing, those facts will fall flat. The keys to unlocking buy-in from your C-suite, therefore, lie within your operations and your advocacy. But you can shift the odds in your favor and consider trying some revenue-driving tactics that leadership will be happy to support.
Exercise more control over your program
In sales and marketing, operations is a well-defined function and is recognized as a critical piece of the GTM puzzle. But in partnerships, operations can feel more like an afterthought than a discipline.
Cordell points out, “Marketers have Slack feeds pinging them whenever someone signs up for a webinar or fills out a demo form. I rarely see that level of organization and tracking in partnerships.”
That lack of organization is holding partner professionals back. If partnerships is to be taken seriously, structure, systems and strategy need to be created to carve out a solid place in the industry.
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According to HubSpot’s State of Partner Ops Report, more than 71% of partner teams are unable to track the full ROI of partner relationships — and nearly 70% of partner teams miss go-to-market opportunities as a result. The key to solving this partnerships problem lies in tracking the right metrics. Through data, partnership professionals can prove opportunities that help leaders make informed decisions about their go-to-market strategies.
Without the numbers, a lack of transparency can deter business leaders from investing in innovative parts of the organization. By creating strong partnerships reports that track partner performance and identify which partners are earning or stagnant, partner professionals can add rigor and inspire data-driven decisions.
A PRM like PartnerStack can help you avoid letting good fortune slip through your fingers. It proactively monitors signups, revenue and paid customers and flags opportunities for new partnerships. Through partner performance tracking, it delivers important insights on the metrics that matter — so program managers can convince leaders you’re ready to take your program to new heights as you make the company money.
Nail your presentation
Changing the tides isn’t going to come easy, especially if you’re a newcomer to a GTM leadership team that’s already formed its opinion about partnerships. But it’s not impossible.
The first step in manifesting this change is to study your peers. Cordell suggests, “Start by mimicking the really good direct sales and marketing managers. Pay attention to how data-driven they are — how they share lessons learned and their visions for the future.”
For instance, if you are trying to communicate the importance and effectiveness of your channel program, outline:
You might also consider sending leadership a high-level dashboard on a regular basis. Not only does this allow them to see the data from themselves, it also encourages them to open their mind to the endless opportunities partnerships present and their value to the organization.
Problem:
My partners aren’t bringing me leads. What’s going on?
To bring you what you want, partners need a little encouragement — a nudge in the right direction. But your push can be misguided if you don’t understand those partners or their motivations. Cordell shares, “The biggest mistake I see with partner teams is that they don’t fully understand each type of partnership and how each type should inform their approach.”
This mismatch between expectations and reality can take your entire operation off course. What you thought would be intuitive may not make sense to partners. No amount of training, sales assets or marketing development funds can make up for that lack of understanding. Partners simply won’t do your bidding without clear onboarding and resources in place to take them from joining a program to closing deals with confidence.
Take a step back to leap forward
Don’t brute force it. Instead, ask whether the types of partnerships you’ve formed align with the engagement and incentive strategies you’ve designed.
For example: “If you’re looking at anything other than simple referrals, partners have to be able to recognize revenue in and around your product,” Lingley emphasizes. “Think deeply about how you’ll make that happen because if you can’t, you’ll be spinning your wheels — and wasting your money, on partners that just aren’t a good fit.”
At a very high level, here’s what makes each type of partnership tick:
They need upfront strategic thinking and joint marketing and close contact with other members of the ecosystem. Ecosystems operate best when you can spell out where each partner fits in the tech stack and recognize the contributions of your partners’ efforts in the GTM cycle through weighted sales and incentives.
Excel when they have a close relationship with the companies you want to sell into. These partners need an easy way to capture leads (for example, through a custom referral link) to see how many referrals have been submitted and get paid promptly.
Work best when they have access to an audience you want but don’t yet have. You’ll need to provide branding materials upfront, convey lead qualification and acceptance criteria clearly and motivate them with bonus commissions, sales contests and exclusive events.
Need an ICP who wants your product and will buy it (potentially along with other products) from someone they trust. To drive sales, offer discounted or even bulk rates.
Stake your bets on the right partners
If the stars aren’t aligned right now, don’t despair. Just figure out what you can offer and what types of partners work best under those conditions. Sometimes you only need one to work out.
Cordell shares: “We worked with a sales intelligence tool to restructure their partner program and incentives. Focusing on affiliate, we were able to add a major business credit card company to their roster and it changed the entire dynamic. Today, that partnership drives nearly 50% of their overall revenue.”
The better-together story is a good litmus test. If you can’t communicate it without bending over backward, the juice likely isn’t worth the squeeze.
Problem:
How can I motivate a resistant sales team to work partner-sourced leads?
Sales teams should be your friends, not your foes. Yet, at most organizations, the cards are stacked against partnerships, feeding the resentment and unintentionally fanning the flames. Reps have specific quotas they have to hit and expecting them to accommodate your partner pipeline for little to no return is a big ask.
By the same token, you really have no choice but to feed partner-sourced leads to your account executives. How else will they get closed? How else will you demonstrate your partner program’s value? Patchwork fixes like SPIFFs can help in the short-term, but you may need a completely different structure — like identifying the right AEs or creating a specific pipeline — to break this perpetual cycle.
Rethink your commercial structures
We’ve already discussed incentives from the partner angle, but they are just as relevant to your relationships with reps.
Per Cordell, “50% of your partnership agreement development needs to be about compensation. Co-marketing doesn’t count a lick if we haven’t thought through the commercialization of the partner strategy.”
She learned this first-hand at Terminus, an SSH client and terminal technology provider, where she reeled in the first exclusive partnership with a data partner. Cordell and her partner counterpart hosted joint happy hours, created compelling sales material and trained reps — they did everything to make the upsell of the partner’s product to Terminus customers a no-brainer.
But no one upsold. Why? Because reps were rewarded for selling integrations, additional features and implementation services. Not for selling data.
While it may feel uncomfortable, now is the time to have frank conversations with your sales leaders about how partnerships can slot into the current sales commission structure. This may spur an even broader conversation about the role of partnerships in general. And if that happens, let it — it might work to your advantage and ultimately benefit everyone’s bottom line.
Lingley adds his own experience with integrating partnerships into broader goals for the organization at Workday, an HR and financial software system for enterprise companies.
“At Workday, partnerships are now one of the four strategic growth initiatives for the whole company,” he explains. “Everything is impacted by it being a top-level OKR. We’re the fastest-growing department, so we’ve got the most budget and we’ve definitely got some sway."
Problem:
My boss keeps telling me to use AI. But how?
In the back of your mind, there’s a constant refrain: “If you’re not using AI, you’re behind. If you’re not using AI, you’re behind.” It’s easy to let that mantra turn into panic. Don’t let it. Listen to its message and ask how you can begin weaving the AI thread into your partnership fabric — and fear not, we’ve already done some of the thinking for you.
Embrace AI’s opportunity
On a partner level
At this point, AI has become the North Star for many technical teams scrambling to incorporate automation, natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning into every aspect of your product. But this journey is riddled with roadblocks. Just getting a few new AI features out the door without a hitch is a masterful feat.
Partner leaders may not feel they have a role to play in this race, but they’re mistaken. Partnerships are what will fill in the gaps. Lingley notes, “There are other companies getting AI right in ways that your product can’t — or won’t — for a long time. You can either try your best to compete, or you can form partnerships that take your existing AI value prop even further than you thought it could go.”
Take Microsoft, for example. They’ve got some AI features, but they don’t have all the tools. Lo and behold, they’ve formed a huge partnership — one with a company that does have what they need: OpenAI. If you look closely, you’ll see this pattern emerging across the technology landscape. The only question now is, how will you rise to the challenge?
On an individual level
Adopting AI doesn’t have to mean you use it in every single aspect of your program. A good way to identify where to start is to map your daily tasks to Cordell’s handy grid:
Home in on the highly repetitive, low-risk tasks. These are draining your energy and minimizing the time you have for higher-order thinking. AI can come to your aid:
Keep in mind that sometimes, AI’s power needs to be reined in and it's you who has to form a thoughtful message, handle a tricky situation or tap into your creativity to craft original content.
To make the most of your assistant, fuel it with the knowledge and experience you have, give it the guidance it needs and test its results at every turn. Practice day in and day out. The more you use AI, the easier it will be to strike the right balance between give and take.
Problem:
I’m ready to move up in the partnerships world. Where do I go from here?
If you’ve got a nagging feeling that you’re ready for bigger and better things, that’s normal — partnerships folks are naturally T-shaped, multi-capable and ambitious.
“I hear a lot of chatter about what people’s next jobs are going to be and it’s almost always a choice between joining an established enterprise program or taking a head of partnerships role at a scrappy startup,” Lingley says. But, he warns, “They’re two very different motions and job types, so it really comes down to how you want to spend your time.”
Chart your course
The crossroads in front of you can be daunting, but a pros and cons list can help you reflect on what you really want and nudge you in the right direction. Here are a few to get you going.
Head of Partnerships at a startup
On the plus side, you’ll form deep bonds with your peers (who you’re around all the time). However, you’ll also be in the mud, building, testing, succeeding and failing — which for some can be seen as a positive! There’s always the startup risk to be weary of though, since 90% of startups fail. The time commitment can be all-consuming and you’re also under the command of a founder or set of co-founders.
Senior partnerships role at an enterprise company
This role has more stability and gives you the ability to show how excellent your partner programs are run. You’ll likely have mentors you can look up to and a more consistent schedule and work-life balance. However, there are some cons, too. Multiple layers of bureaucracy means less autonomy. These roles can also be difficult to come by and you might need an MBA to get the attention of recruiters.
There’s yet another option — a road less traveled but potentially very lucrative one: pushing for a Chief Partnerships position where you already are.
Enterprise partnership leaders are constantly blazing new trails for all levels of partnerships. The work of turning a blank slate into a revenue engine takes bravery, ingenuity and a little bit of magic.
But forging that path can be a lonely and draining pursuit. Thankfully, there’s a team you can lean on for an extra boost of wisdom when you need it: your PRM customer success managers.
“PartnerStack CSMs are responsible for dozens of other companies that are going through the same or similar challenges and that institutional knowledge is priceless,” Cordell highlights.
“Use them as a resource whenever you get stuck — their expertise can supercharge your recruitment, measurement and engagement.”
PartnerStack has the product you can count on and the talent you can lean on to do your best work. Want to see what we think your future has in store? Get an interactive reading of your GTM fortune or qualify for a demo and we’ll send you your own deck for free.
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