Through the course of my career I’ve worked for several organizations that had a partner program. In some cases I’ve been a member of a partner team; while in others I’ve led a partner team and set the strategic direction. In both cases, I’ve always been an individual contributor. Whether you’re an individual contributor or leading a team, being a part of a partner strategy can sometimes be a challenging role within an organization.
A Partner Manager (and I user that term generically) is a position of influence. It really has no hierarchal authority internally or externally, yet there is accountability based on the execution of others. Herein lies the challenge.
A Partner Manager can bring opportunities to an Account Executive through a partner ecosystem, but he or she is completely dependent on the Account Executive’s successful execution of the sales engagement. This doesn’t mean that a Partner Manager can’t influence the sale, but at the end of the day he or she is dependent on the Account Executive driving the opportunity through the sales funnel to a win/loss outcome. A good Account Executive will often times assume the role of Partner Manager, and the Partner Manager will assume the role of Coach to the Account Executive. For this reason, it is incumbent of Partner Managers to insert themselves in the sales process and work very closely with the sales team. They need to understand what obstacles an Account Executive may be encountering in the sales process so as to leverage the influence they have with their partners to overcome those obstacles. Although the Partner Manager doesn’t typically “ink” the deal, they should be involved right up to the point the deal gets “inked”. The relationship between the Partner Manager and Account Executive is a close relationship. Both roles are tied to a number; hence, both should be accountable to one another. This can be a challenge with a direct sales organization moving toward a partner strategy where Account Executives have a different reporting structure than the Partner Team. This is where organizations have to fully embrace a partner strategy and integrate it into their sales organization.
There also has to be validation as “you can’t manage what you can’t measure“. I have a separate thought stream dedicated to this topic. To summarize, you must have a means to measure partnerships and individual contributors (both Partner Managers and Account Executives). There is often resistance to this as it requires discipline within your sales organization in maintaining good data in your CRM. Maintaining good data means documenting your actions throughout the sales process. This can come off as cumbersome and perceived as micromanagement on the sales floor, but it’s really about setting proper expectations so that the individual contributors are burning their cycles on the right cycles. If the individual contributors understand those expectations and the why behind them, they can better understand the importance (beyond the fact that their company made a significant investment in a CRM platform) and the relevance to their success.
A measurement some organizations leverage is “Actions Precede Results” (APR). For more information on APR, see my thought stream titled “Actions Precede Results (APR)“. This is a part of data collection and validation, but specific to individual contributors.