It’s tempting to dive straight into a partnership as a new partner manager. You might have a perfect coffee-chat with a potential partner at a conference, and you suddenly can’t wait to do some co-marketing campaigns together and sign a partner agreement. Feel familiar?

Hold your horses there cowboy. Before you know it, you might find yourself launching a channel partnering strategy with no process, no support, and nothing to help facilitate the partners’ success outside of a single campaign or deal. When a partner is not performing to expectations, most of the time, they’re not supported with the information, tools, and processes that they need to be successful and it’s all too easy to attract and sign up partners that you are unlikely going to be successful with.

So before any partner contract signing meetings take place, you need to first be very clear about the intentions of your overall program, and your partnering criteria of who you want to be working. It all starts with planning.

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What are the goals of your company?

The goal for all B2B companies is to drive more growth and revenue. But if we get a bit more granular, the methods of how B2B companies do it are not always the same.

For example:

• Do you want to expand into a new market?
• Do you want to increase brand awareness?
• Do you want to integrate with another technology that supports yours?

Your partner program should directly correspond to the goals of your company. Without knowing your goals, you can't develop the right program.

What are the goals for your partner program?

With the understanding of the company’s goals and strategy - how can partnerships support the goals?The key here is to be realistic, transparent, and synchronized.

• What are your goals for 6, 12, 18, and 24 months?
• What are the leading indicators of success?

Partnerships take time to setup and create and take even more time to start generating ROI for all parties. Partnerships are like plants, they take time to thrive and grow. Ensure that your C-level and all related stakeholders are on the same page about your goals, timelines, and the program's progress and communicate your progress along the way.

What types of partners do my company need?

A common reason why a companies' partnerships do not produce ROI could be not having the right type of partner program in place, or the wrong program fit for the types of partners that you need.

To shed some light on this confusion, we can categorize partners broadly as being strategic partnerships, channel partnerships, or tech partnerships.

• Strategic Partnerships are non-competitive businesses that complement one another (i.e., a brand design company with a digital marketing agency or a big tech company who’s platform you rely on)
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• Channel Partners could be a company partnering with a manufacturer to distribute their products or services (i.e. a local winery partnered with a local grocery store) or regional reseller who implements backup software for accounting firms.
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• Tech Partnerships: Tech partnerships are relationships between two tech companies that are mutually beneficial where technologies compliment one another, for example apps in the Box App Store

What is the right structure for the program?

While I’ve never seen a perfect program, there are many ways you could structure your program, and the right one depends on your company’s goals and the needs for the program. Here are a few examples of the traits of companies with successful Partnerships organizations for inspiration:

What should be in the Partnership Team's tech stack?

Even if your strategy might vary, technology could help save you a few headaches along the way. There are various technologies to build your Partnerships Tech Stack, but here are three key assets that every Partnerships team should have in their arsenal:

• Account mapping tool: Use an account mapping platform that works with your CRM but also the CRM of your partners. You can use a free and secure one like Reveal to get started.
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• PRM: You also may want a Partner Relationship Manager (PRM). With a PRM, you can simplify your onboarding process with your partners, ensure that all "better together" content is available in one place, and pay affiliate commissions.
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• Collaboration: I setup a Box folder will all of my Prospective and Current Partners, and this is where we keep all of GTM marketing materials, videos, contracts, meeting notes and proposals. This information is also linked into my CRM, and communication apps like Slack or Teams.

What are the right metrics to measure success?

The metrics that Partnerships Managers use will indicate where their department belongs in the organization.

Often the KPIs of partnerships are the same if not very similar to that of the sales team. For example:

• Tracking conversion rates from EQLs, or ecosystem qualified leads
• Tracking partner-sourced and partner-influenced deals
• Upsell / cross-sell rates and sales velocity

(See our course here to find out more about how to measure partnership ROI)

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