What should partnership managers look out for as blockers

Even more than usual, the focus of partnerships for 2023 is on driving pipeline growth for Sales. You will likely be working with less budget for events and so have to focus strategically on which partners are going to produce an ROI-positive partnership activity. Gone are the days when you could host a dinner or launch an extravagant event because you felt it would create a good “brand” experience. This probably a good thing, however, as ensuring that the actions you take are metric-based validates to stakeholders why you did what you did and provides a framework to base success off.

Thinking they need budget to make progress on projects. If you have a job, and there isn’t a budget, then, you are the budget. Figure out ways to drive revenue without authorization or funds allocation.

Partnerships have been exploding in 2022—it's so cool to see the growth this industry is experiencing. My advice for partnership managers is not to lose sight of the building blocks. That includes truly understanding your customer base. Many partnerships fail because although the partners involved were big + exciting, with sexy new opportunities to work together, the customer base was simply not aligned. My advice to all partnership managers in 2023: get on calls with your prospects and customers and better understand what their problems are, which products they're using, where the product could work better for them. This can be as easy as a weekly "fly on the wall" call with a salesperson or CSM + prospect/customer. In each call, ask the customer/prospect one of these questions: - Which other tools do you use? Why do you use them—how do they help you in your business? - What is one of your biggest headaches right now in your business? - What are you trying to learn right now to help grow your business? What kind of information would be helpful? Weekly calls like this will have you knowing your customer better than ever, and will make it much easier for you to prioritize partners, find new partners, have creative and successful co-marketing ideas, create better sales + partner enablement, etc. It'll also get your team better aligned with marketing and sales teams. Make it a habit and you'll avoid many blockers.