Maurits Pieper

Early days - I find individual champion reps in different departments or roles. I also spotlight specific deals from reps. If a specific SDR is booking a high % of meetings by mentioning we partner with X, I give him/her kudos, their manager and the wider team to see if anyone else wants to book more meetings in a similar fashion :) Similar goes for a CSM/AM who makes referrals to partners to help the health of their account, retention rate and get an additional $ in their pocket or for the business. It's an additional plus if CSM/AM cross-functionally enjoys the logic that intros to partners will likely lead to introductions back to their sales department. Early champion spotlight shows that reps think outside their traditional roles to hit KPIs and get others to follow (if they want).

Review your current ecosystem and what gaps need to be filled by potential new partners. Ensure there is of course resource and internal (team and customer) appetite if partners are interested to move forward with you. It can be risky if you outreach to potential new partners with and you have nothing to give and no dev/marketing resource to provide. When reaching out, make it very clear where you stand as a business, where you currently have an mutual interest overlap and the value you can bring to them as a partner yourself. Early stages, always important to mark down a list of priorities to get things in motion and for internal buy-in. We try to not over-promise at the start so that expectations are never damaged too easily. Learn from the first few partners (successful and unsuccessful) and iterate.

It takes months for your own sales reps to get ramped and effectively sell your own product. They spend most of their working hours training to be as successful as possible in doing just that. It is unreasonable to think that a new partner can do it effectively in a short period (considering that they are busy selling/learning their own product/service). I usually only get the more experienced team members involved with partner co-selling. Prior to that, pairing reps to share intel and learn each others business in micro 1on1 sessions is a great way to start having reps understand 1 partner at a time.

- What does the MVP look like of the integration? - What resources are required to build it - What resources are required to maintain it? What about an SLA? - What communication/tech support is needed from both partners? - Product images, recording and support material to share and enable internally? - Breakage protocol? Any data/security minimum requirements needed?

If you form strong partnerships with the right companies/teams, you can get to a setup where your partners act as extended ears/eyes in the market. If you train/certify correctly, then they understand what value your product/service can bring and to what type of customers so that any of their reps from AMs to SDRs can act as an additional intel source for your team. Rather than just relying on your direct outreach, marketing and sales team, partners can exponentially extend your reach and qualify effectively. They would be motivated to introduce or let you know of opps for your organisation through referral kickbacks but more importantly, general partner collaboration as hopefully you are doing the same for them in return.

Agree with Daniel. I think it is crucial to balance the number of new partners you bring into your ecosystem with the amount of commercial/marketing/product offering you can provide. It is more important to enable your team to work with some top selected partners to build momentum and get lots of value with a select amount of partners, rather than bring in too many and try to spread out activity too thin internally and externally.

- My colleagues are asking the right discovery questions in their customer and prospect calls. - They are initially bringing me into some customer calls to help with discovery but then afterwards are able to run that process by themselves. - The number of introductions, intel or efforts we as an organisation provide to partners (and the other way around). - Number and success of marketing activities that take place with partners. - Tracking % of partner influence on new revenue but also existing reoccurring revenue. The best is when you see the momentum increase and you as a partner manager become less of a bottleneck.

Some* factors to consider: - Use case of a possible integration and what value it can provide to existing customers and new prospects. - What gap does the partner fill in our product. Are we going to build anything similar internally? - What overlap do we have from an ICP, revenue, region and account perspective? - Is this tech partner relevant just from a product perspective or can it be used to help co-sell, co-market or assist with retention of existing customers? Always important to find the healthy balance of variety tech partners with similar services/value. e.g. partner with a variety of QA tools at the start but too many. Too many options can spread partner momentum too thin and can act as a blocker for your internal team to feel confident selling partners within their roles (choice overload/paralysis).

Typically I would have categorised them into different tiers/groups. Some partners are more relevant for marketing, others for retention whereas some are all-round. Below an example for a top tier tech partner that is relevant for all departments of my organisation (not in order): - Landing Page on Marketplace - LinkedIn/Social Announcement - Add into our monthly customer newsletter - Setup an enablement session (both ways) - Partner referral agreement (but this financial add shouldn’t be the primary driver!) - Account mapping on both a macro level (partner manager to partner manager) but also a micro level (pairing of regions/vertical reps) when appropriate - Mutual customer success story (this is of course dependant on if we have mutual customer at start or not - as you want months of joint value to display) - Where possible but is prioritised.. giving introductions and intel to new tech partner :)

On board with Franz-Josef. Be selective with which AEs can and want to work with partner teams to co-sell. It isn't for everybody and it can actually negatively impact performance on deals if done incorrectly so it shouldn't be enforced widespread on all AEs. Great way is to start small with pairings, sharing intel, understanding each others business etc.. learn from those interactions before allowing other pairings to occur.

Very dependent but looking at departmental value is an interesting approach. Choosing a regional partner to support your brand expansion into new regions by hopping on their establishing brand equity. Choosing a product partner that clearly fills your product gap to help with retention. Helps to understand from your product team which has no near timeline to build any internal products that might be similar. Choosing a co-selling partner that effectively assist with your joint value proposition to new prospects/brands. Others include ICP, region, overlap, sales cycle, team collaboration, branding etc..

Absolutely. I think inbounds, customer requests and prospect requirements are a great way to build out an ecosystem of potential partners but the long-term and strategic partners will often come from you outbounding and reaching out proactively (if you are the smaller partner).

I would say an easy and frequent 'backfire' could be overpromising too early and too quick. Partners are then disappointed as the expectations were too high and then it takes 3x energy/commitment to get back to previous level of excitement. Remember that partner reps always (eventually) tier their partners so if you fall down a tier, another partner might take your spot in their list. If you want to get back there, you'll probably have to earn that spot again.

Quick marketing wins at the start of an ecosystem build are combining a mutual customer success story with an internal and external enablement session catered to specific department (e.g. CSMs or AMs instead of multiple groups).

In an ideal case - the partners you choose/find are great fit for your program overall (with similar categories/ranking to Daniel's message). However I think that you will also find that some partners are fantastic fits for your program but just for specific departments (e.g. a partner which is fantastic for on and offline marketing events but not ideal for co-selling with your sales reps).