Take a look at your company’s operating plan. Does the partner team show up on the revenue side of the equation, or the cost side?
You’re spending money on partner programs, but why?
The answer should be simple: To sell more. Period.
I’ve talked to several executives who still see their partner managers as relationship builders. Don’t get me wrong this is a very important part of the job but let’s be real, if that’s how your executive team views your partner org, you’re on the wrong side of the P&L. (Yes, that means the cost center side.)
In this market, partner teams must drive revenue and prove it.
Here’s the real problem: The systems partner teams have today don’t drive revenue. PRM is necessary to build a foundation of tracking and management but it’s not going to magically “source or influence” more revenue for your company. Partner teams lack the systems to “do more with less” It’s a huge problem because in today’s market they need to deliver the gold, PARTNER SOURCED REVENUE.
Here’s the real rub, sales and marketing teams have the best-in-class systems and tools. Partner teams? PRM maybe.
Jay McBain talks about the early adopters of technology in his “end of resell” post. The most innovative companies today are using systems to orchestrate the 28 moments prior to a sale transaction and have full attribution tracking. Take a look at your partner tech stack. What systems do you have that can truly help top of funnel motions? What systems are you using to find the gold and then fully attribute to revenue?
The truth is, partner teams haven’t lacked ambition. They’ve lacked the systems to move fast, scale impact, and automatically track revenue back to their work. The good news? That’s finally changing.
New tech is here to identify and source the gold partner-sourced pipeline. automate account mapping, and enable direct co-selling between reps and partners, without needing partner managers to be the middlemen for every touchpoint. The partner team continues to do more strategy, relationship building and assisting the sales teams to close more business that they (the partner teams) have generated. This is how partner teams start landing on the left side of the P&L.
The Hidden Opportunity Inside Your Partner Ecosystem
Every ecosystem large or small has untapped revenue hiding in plain sight:
- Overlapping high propensity new logo accounts to my partners install base
- Overlapping product level whitespace for increased wallet share across companies
- Opportunities in flight across your high propensity new logo accounts
- Shared customers aligned on products where integrations need to be sold
- Aligned account executives waiting to be connected
The companies winning today are those that are turning relationships into revenue. They map the money. They activate through channel and/or co-selling motions that were hidden in the data. And they measure real impact. Partner teams should not be fighting for credit, when partner teams can drive net new logo introductions (at scale), and they have the dashboards and reports to prove that revenue started with them, the revenue was truly influenced by them, there’s no fighting in boardrooms. The already lean partner team becomes indispensable.
1. Partner Teams Move from “Supporting” Revenue to Driving It
No one in the C-suite cares about how many meetings or trainings you ran last quarter. They care about:
- Partner-sourced pipeline How much is coming in, and how much will close? Ask yourself: how many of the right targeted AE-to-AE or AE-to-Channel Manager introductions does it take to get to one sourced deal? And how many more could you make if those intros weren’t manual? Without a system, partner managers are maxed out. Partner and Channel Managers need software to scale more top of funnel activities.
- Influenced revenue What was your role in creating it, moving it forward and over the line? Influence happens in the gaps, in the 28 moments before a sale, when sellers share intel, your partners whispering to your buyers behind closed doors. This influence can be orchestrated at scale. But if every interaction depends on Slack/Teams DMs or inbox roulette, you’ll never capture or unlock the full value of what partners can truly bring to the table. This will never scale without more people.
- Cost per $1 of partner-driven revenue Are we spending smart to scale partner motions profitably? Manual processes aren’t just slow, they’re expensive. You’re paying partner teams to play matchmaker, instead of scaling through tech and letting the partner teams spend more time moving more new business forward. If you’re not automating, you’re not only bleeding margin, you’re absolutely missing out on revenue your competitors are being ushered into.
2. Execute an ecosystem data sharing strategy
The best companies are data-driven, yet many fail to procure and harness ecosystem wide data. A robust data sharing strategy gives sellers the right insights and relationships at the right time. This is the gold, uncovering deals they’d never know existed. Most partner and channel managers don’t know what data they should be requesting from partners to drive effective GTM success.
3. Embed partner data everywhere
Partner insights must be seamlessly integrated into CRM, account planning software, sales enablement platforms, Slack and Teams, everywhere sales teams live. The easier the access, the more sellers will take action. There needs to be a bottoms up approach to serving partner data to sellers. The best sellers know how to work with partners, feed them the data, that gets them the right partner with the right relationships necessary to win the deal. Now in tandem with a bottoms up approach there should be top down orchestration approach to fully unlock the hidden revenue at scale.
4. Orchestrate Automated Co-selling Workflows
Once your organization has a true ecosystem data lake of the mapped relationships and product level whitespace analysis, it’s time to become the orchestrator of your ecosystem. Bring sellers together across multiple companies around the best accounts. I’m talking net new logo introductions these are the deals that no one can be fights in a boardroom for credit. Sellers, can opt in to work together or not, but your partner team is allowing the richest data to inform the best new sales motions. I always say, if you have a vast ecosystem, you need to take control and orchestrate it with data. If you are driving the plays, you hold the keys, you control the speed and have the ammunition in the boardroom with the full picture of defendable attribution.
5. Enable Your Sellers to Work With Partners
When partner data is readily available where sellers work all the time. Train these modern sellers to orchestrate the ecosystem in their territories. (more on this my previous article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/biggest-shift-happening-enterprise-sales-how-win-cassandra-gholston-sygmc/ )
Partnerships Is a Revenue Play
When your board asks where the next $100M will come from, make sure partnerships are part of the equation.
Companies that align their partner teams to real revenue KPIs and provide these teams with the systems and innovations available they supercharge growth.
Double down. Measure what matters. And activate the spark that fuels your next chapter of growth.