Greg Portnoy

Use these questions to evaluate potential partnership opportunities: - What is their impact on our customers? - Do they work with our Ideal Customer (ICP)? - Do they work with our target stakeholders? - Do they have sufficiently strong relationships to make influential recommendations? - Are they willing AND able to make those recommendations? - Do they value what you bring to the partnership? - Do they have a track record of doing this with other partners?

Revenue success in partnerships is a lagging indicator. Make sure to clearly communicate how you’re adding value from Day 1 and keep the team informed on when to expect that revenue. Additionally, provide consistent updates on strategy, activity, traction, challenges, and anything else to support the work you're doing. Either you manage the narrative or someone else will. Never make them wonder “What’s going on over there in Partnerships?”

Partnerships is very often an afterthought for your peers, C-suite, and board. You need to set expectations and communicate impact early (and often) to get alignment and buy-in from these folks. You must set expectations on timeline, budget, outcomes, everything. It ALWAYS takes longer than you expect and much longer than you want. Setting the right expectations early is critical to buy enough runway for success.

The best way to share partnerships insights is through real experiences and tangible numbers. Be open and authentic. What you did, how you did it, and what the measurable outcome was. Share genuine successes and failures with as much detail as possible so that people can draw similarities to their own needs and questions.

This is the most important aspect of this. Anyone can hand partners sales and marketing collateral, but understanding what motivates and drives your partners can mean the difference between engaged and absent partners. When you know this, you can provide your partners with the right content and enablement at the right time in the right way that is relevant to them and helps them be more successful in their own goals.

Set up clear metrics for success and mechanisms by which to track those metrics in a CRM or other partnerships platform. Worst case set it up in spreadsheets, but make the tracking of this core to your team's operations. Being data-driven will be one of the single greatest assets for success of your partnerships team and program. Set goals, track them, review results, and iterate quickly.