In this expert playbook, Brian Jambor shares how to create an operational model for partnerships and breaks down why it’s a key tool to bring to conversations with leadership to win favor and buy-in.

Watch and listen to Brian Jambor on Get It, Together, powered by PartnerStack.

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Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how Jambor creates and uses models to get the C-suite on board with partnerships.

Look to existing models — like sales or CSM — for guidance

Most departments rely on models to show that with X input, they can reach Y outcome. In sales, for example,  there’s a roadmap to the expected ramp time, output and quota of every new hire.

You can use the same kind of model to justify partnerships to the C-suite. In fact, Jambor’s CFO once asked him directly what kind of operating model Jambor was going to use for partnerships.

But you don’t have to start from scratch. Look at existing business rules and see how they apply to partnerships. “I can map immediately with sales,” Jambor says, “and I can do the same thing with partnerships.”

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Identify critical financial targets and align to business goals

When building your operational model for partnerships, make sure the output actually matches broader business goals. Jambor’s CFO, for example, emphasized a return on sale, looking for a three times lifetime value ratio target for every revenue-generating function including marketing. 

Once you’ve identified your biggest target, take a deep dive into specific metrics and figure out how they contribute to the big picture. That means understanding details like:

• Whether partners will generate partner qualified leads
• What that qualified lead will cost
• How that stacks up to the cost of the marketing team generating an MQL

Keep an eye out for ways to improve these metrics, too. Jambor predicts that future partnership leaders will see the best return from go-to-market acceleration motions and use AI tools to reduce the operational expense of managing a partnership ecosystem which, he says, “makes their contribution metrics look incredible to the business.” 

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Cultivate executive trust through transparency 

Standing in front of an executive and saying, “I don’t know” might be scary, but it’s better to be honest than pretend you have all the answers.

The key is not to end on “I don’t know.” Instead, follow it up by suggesting a plan to find out the answer and stating the time and investment it will take to figure it out. By being transparent, Jambor says, you’re showing that you know your numbers and your business, which builds trust with leadership.

In his own roles, Jambor has fostered trust by opening a feedback loop not just with his CFO, but with the president of the company. Every quarter, Jambor had a conversation with leadership where he stated plainly what assumptions he used to make inputs to his operating model, what he was actually seeing in the outputs and — most importantly — how he was going to adjust the inputs based on what he’d seen. If the C-suite feels confident that you know your business, he says, “you can be given leeway to make mistakes and then pivot and iterate.”

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Continuously review, test assumptions and pivot when needed

Review your model monthly to make sure it’s working with the latest data. It’s also a good idea to book quarterly check-ins with the executive team to reflect on what went right — and wrong.

The point isn’t just to see where you can make additional investments, but to figure out when your assumptions were wrong and how to make them better. “We would really dig in with first principles,” Jambor says, “thinking to figure out where the gap was, fix it and then go from there.”

Sometimes this means walking back big decisions, like divesting from partnerships in underperforming industries. But the point isn’t to make the right assumptions 100 per cent of the time. Rather, it’s to recognize when your assumptions are wrong and understand why you made them in the first place, so you can learn from the situation. 

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Be decisive and have difficult conversations in person

If your monthly or quarterly review shows that the ROI just isn’t there in a big partnership, you’ve got to end it — in person. A lot can happen over Zoom, but when it comes to unwinding a strategic partnership, it’s best to get on a flight.

“You need to actually look the individual dead in the eye and say, ‘Hey, we need to talk about this partnership that we have,’” Jambor says. “Be upfront, don’t beat around the bush. Say, ‘We need to unwind it,’ and then pause for a moment, let that sink in, and then go into the why.”

Don’t put off the conversation for fear it will be uncomfortable, because the delay might harm your own business. Jambor points to a time when he knew he had to unwind a partnership, but put it off for two quarters, and says “the pain that caused for the organization was material.”

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Don’t do it all yourself — ask for advice from the experts

You don’t have to be an Excel wizard to build your partnerships operating model. You just have to find someone who is, and then ask for their help. Jambor did just that when building his own model, admitting that he needed someone to put the formulas into the spreadsheets, and his CFO agreed to lend him a financial analyst for a few days.

Even with an expert’s help actually creating the model, you’ll still need to make some assumptions to start, like ramp time and churn. Get as close to the mark as you can — Jambor says his team went through lots of dialogue and debate around details like partners’ ramp time — but don’t worry about being exactly right at this stage, because you’ll test these assumptions later.

By implementing these steps, partnerships teams can make the case for their work and tie the growth of their department to larger business goals. PartnerStack centralizes all your data, so once you’ve got your operating model up and running, it’s easy to update your inputs and track your progress toward targets.

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Meet Get It, Together expert guest Brian Jambor:
This partnerships pro is an expert at managing scalable strategic partnerships and is the current Head of Partnerships at Synthesia