Over the last month I’ve had the privilege of talking with over 70 Partner leaders and asking them 2 questions: “What’s the biggest opportunity in partnerships?” And, “What’s the biggest challenge in partnerships?”
We all have our stories of the challenges we experience as partner professionals—our anecdotes, histories, blunders, mistakes. And, hopefully, we also have some successes along the way. The partnership that brought in that whale of a deal, expanded the company into a new market, the conversation that eventually led to an acquisition and evolved the entire company. We meet incredible people when we’re in partnerships, and the rush is exhilarating.
And yet, partnerships are so hard. What makes most companies really struggle to execute on making partnerships successful?
Bob Moore, CEO of Crossbeam, said that 94% of companies aren’t doing partnerships well. Ouch.
A recent study by Hubspot, Partnership Leaders, and Pavilion revealed that companies are seeing maybe 10% of their leads come from partners. Not the best ROI.
We can do better. Partnerships can do better.
So I asked you, others, and your colleagues, what is the biggest challenge we experience in our role as partner leaders? The number one challenge?
“Finding common goals and building collaborative relationships.”
It wasn’t technology, it wasn’t types of partnerships, it had nothing to do with even the ever challenging conversation with executives.
Partnerships struggle due to a lack of finding common goals and building collaborative relationships.
- Lack of finding common goals.
Sometimes we build a partnership because we think we should. It’s the small startup creating an integration and announcing a partnership with the large, publicly traded company for PR. It’s the two leaders in their respective spaces writing a press release together. It’s a software company signing on with the largest distributor or reseller. We think, “If we build it, they will come.” If we just make a partnership, it will be successful.
Yet, so many of us—so many of you, already know this just doesn’t work.
The first question we should ask a prospective partner is about their goals. Why are we wanting to partner together? Why does this matter to your business? Why does this matter to my business? If it’s not going to tie directly to a high-level strategic goal for the company, then this probably isn’t the right time for this partnership. If one company’s goal is to have marketing awareness and the other wants close/won deals, you could have a problem. If there’s no clear path to monetization of the partnership, then why are you going to put the effort into trying?
You need to communicate early with your potential partnerships the goals you’re trying to achieve.
Maybe you don’t focus on the national reseller, because they don’t have a goal around your industry segment, or product type. Instead, you work with a regional reseller who’s an expert in your field and has prospects that match your ideal customer profile. Sure, the big name is more fun to say, but the best return might be somewhere else.
So start out early with the question: What are your goals with this partnership? When don’t ask this question, we find out later that our companies don’t align and we’ve caused ourselves a lot of headache trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
- Building collaborative relationships.
When we’re working on a common goal, when we’re going towards the same destination, then we can collaborate. If we’re going in two different directions, we both don’t end up going together. If we don’t go together, then there’s no need to collaborate.
I wonder if this is the story that we need to rewrite as Partner Leaders.
Right now the narrative of partnership is this—partnerships dilute our product, they decrease profit by taking margin, they take more time. When this is the story of our teams, there’s no opportunity to collaborate internally or externally. I heard one partner leader tell me that even mentioning partnership makes Sales and Marketing teams go deaf. There’s some story that’s being told under the surface that is withholding the true reward and opportunity in partnerships.
When we are heading in the same direction both with our teams and our partner teams, we can collaborate towards solving the same problem. Too many times the conversation on Zoom calls and in meetings is, who gets credit for this deal? When are you going to send us more leads? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
We need to move beyond the industrial mindset that so plagues our companies and diminishes our effectiveness and growth. There’s still a lot of opportunity to provide multi-attribution tracking for organizations to know how a customer came into the company. Is it too much to ask to think above credit for payment, but understanding that every department plays a part in inviting a customer into using the product?
The reality is, a customer learns about our products through Marketing efforts, talks to SDRs, AEs, and SEs, purchases and attends a webinar hosted by our channel partner, is reminded by another technology integration and then eventually purchases wherever it’s easiest for them. We all play a part in bringing the deal across the line.
So let’s come together, share our greatest ideas and help our customers win. As Zig Ziglar said, “You can get what you want, when you help others get what they want.” Your customer has a problem that will be solved by your product, once you’ve communicated that clearly to the prospect and they’ve purchased—you win, and they win.
Want to help your Partner Program go to the next level?
It’s simple, do these two things: 1) Find common goals and 2) Build collaborative relationships.
Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash
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