Javier De Bustos Lozano

It is crutial to involve all required stakeholders from the early stages. You can achieve that by getting executive support and involving key leaders in the early stages of your partner and recruiting planning. It is important to set clear expectations and KPI´s with all the different stakeholders that will interact in your strategy.

Like in any human relationship, COMMUNICATION is the basis of everything. With clear communication, trust can be built, and having trust, good things start happening in the ecosystem. I usually try to engage AE´s with partner executives from the early stages of the onboarding so that we can build a startegy together. Red Flags should be raised when communication is broken.

For a partner program to be succesfull, it’s crucial to involve the right team leaders across different departments to ensure alignment and collaboration. Critical leaders that should be involved are the following: -Sales leaders: hey will drive the revenue impact of the partner program. They need to be aligned on how the partner program can help them closing deals and how the partner can add value to the customers. -Product leaders: They allign product strategy to partner offerings. They also provide product guidance and technical support to partners. -Marketing leaders: They assist on co-marketing activities and partner marketing campaigns. -Customer Success and Partner Success leaders: They ensure that the partner program contributes to long-term customer satisfaction and retention. -Operations, legal and finance leaders: They guarantee partner compliance and structure in their deals.

The best way to coordinate early conversations with the prospect is ACTING FAST. Let your partner take ownership of the conversation, understand the needs of the prospect, make them feel valued and engaged, let them know that the partner and the AE are working together to provide the best solution for the them.

When designing internal partner training activities to help different teams and stakeholders in your organization, it’s important to make the learning experience interactive and engaging. Here are several activities that could be useful: Partner Webinars: Let your partners present themselves in a webinar to your organization, make it interactive with open Q&A. Partner mini clips: Create Brief Videos (5 min max) of your partners presenting themselves. Partner Role Play: Create role-playing activities where each team assumes the role of a different partner, or customer, to simulate collaboration scenarios. Collaborative Partner Success Stories: Facilitate a storytelling workshop where different teams can share success stories from your partners.

Partners are the extended team of a sales organization. They can enhance the overall value proposition, expand the reach, and provide specialized expertise that complements the product or service. Additionally partners can create Joint Marketing Activities and Lead Generation, they can leverage their relationships in customers to influence a deal, they can reduce time to value for the customers, and they can close deals with additional incentives or special/complex terms.

This alligment is crutial to have consistency in the storyline that both AE´s and partners have with Customers. Usually the best way to allign partners is having a workshop together with the sales organization, provide the sales pitch, and role play it after.