Eric Gerstein

The partnerships profession is a journey. Successes are built over time. A few of my friends in the professional refer to planting seeds to reap rewards. It can take 6 months to multiple years from the recruiting of a partner to winning the first deal together. But once it comes, wins come in bunches. Manage up to the executive team by explaining the process, show timelines potential blockers, and the steps it takes to achieve goals. You’ll need to continue this through your career. Partnerships is about building to win.

Develop a scorecard and review it during cadence meetings and QBRs. KPIs such as lead flow, lead conversion, win/lose rates should be consistently monitored. If trending downward try to identify the root causes and jointly identify corrective actions. QBRs are a good time to invite cross-functional teams (i.e. sales, marketing, support, implementation, etc) and exec sponsors on both sides. Use the time to review SWOT analysis, scorecards, customer satisfaction, etc. One tip is make sure the prep is jointly worked on and that one side is not having to carry the load of presentation and KPIs tracking, else it’s a red flag for the overall partnership.

To be successful and effective, partnerships need to have balance of sorts. To gain commitment, there’s got to be gives and gets on both sides. For example, in a tech alliance your partner may need to invest in building a product integration using their development resources - this could be taking away resources from their core product development. To gain commitment for them to develop the integration, you may need to provide GTM support, agreement to MDF or account mapping. Imbalanced partnerships are rarely successful so map out the gives and gets, and then both sides can agree and make a commitment.

Understanding the domain you are playing in can make for more productive partner engagements. Whether it’s HR tech, security, IT, martech, AI, so on, look for opportunities to upskill your knowledge and experience. Look for learning opportunities, speaking to industry experts, or joining industry associations, events. Become a SME not only in partnerships but the domain you are working in.

Partnerships is all about relationships. It’s critical to success that a partner leader possesses EI to handle the good and bad times, especially the challenging times. Using empathy and openness to challenging conversations are very important skills. - Ask about conflicts the candidate had to overcome in the past with challenging partners - Test for humbleness

First proactively monitor tech trends and emerging players in your space. As a partner professional it’s your obligation to stay ahead of the curve and inform product strategy. Being aware of competitive trends will not only help your company but also your ability to execute with partners. Some things you can do to keep up: - Follow thought leaders on LinkedIn - Setup Google alerts that match key terms related to your space - Read technology news like Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc - when you attend industry events, visit expo booths, see demos, attend sessions - talk to your partner what they are seeing