Time to take the partner pill 💊

Sourced revenue won’t come from a department. It will come from all departments partnering up.

As partner pros, we need to help our marketers, sellers, and success peeps do the job they are already doing, but help them use the partner lever.

Help your team do partnerships. Don’t do partnerships for them. Make them great at it.

All partner people need to lean into marketing and sales teams to help them do partnering better!

Don’t give your partners anxiety

A bad partner onboarding strategy is kind of like putting your partners in a real-life anxiety dream. 😳

You know the one: you’re running late for a very important event (maybe even without pants) and hitting every obstacle possible along the way.

You know you need to be somewhere but you don’t know how to get there. You’re frantic and frustrated.

Don’t do this to your partners. 🙅‍♀️

Our job as partnership pros is to make dreams come to life for our partners, not nightmares.

In her recent Greatest Minds in Partnerships interview with Kiflo PRM, 📈Juhi Saha - Microsoft and SaaS Partner Expert explained some key steps to include in your onboarding strategy:

👉 Remove the friction: Make the process as seamless as possible, and ensure that the materials are holistic and comprehensive.

👉 Keep it self-serve: Your program is not your partner’s top priority, their business is. Ensure that your onboarding pipeline isn’t so demanding that it pulls their focus from their own operations.

👉 Provide great resources: Content is king when it comes to onboarding. Providing thorough and diverse resources for learning will help partners become (and stay) activated.

👉 Keep it transparent: Transparency is critical during the partner onboarding process because it sets the stage for scaleable activities that will increase efficiency for years to come. Partners should always know what is coming next, period.

Thanks for contributing to this section of the PhD, Shawnie Hamer.

Who’s in your partner sphere?

The first-ever partner matching app, The Partner Sphere, helps you find your next partner in the ecosystem. It’s community sourced and free.

Swipe right to partner up?

Happenings

• Firneo - How to Kick-Ass in Your First Partnerships Role - Today, 12 – 1 PM ET – Learn practical, tactical insights to conquer your new role so you can start putting wins on the board immediately. Register here.

• PartnerXperience Partnerships Meetup Berlin - Today - This event is for Partnership Professionals, who would like to connect, learn, and exchange best practices on how to build successful partnerships with other peers. Register here.

• InFUUSE – The Future of Business: Unleashing the Ecosystem Blueprint to Redefine Growth – Thursday, March 30th, 5 PM EST – Join Jared Fuller and an incredible panel of futurists, disruptors, innovators, and dreamers for an electrifying virtual round table to discuss the future of business. Learn why Nearbound is the GTM blueprint. Register here.

• Kiflo Roundtable: Partner Onboarding – Thursday, March 30th, 11 AM CDT – Join Juhi Saha, CEO of Partner1, Jennifer Snyder, Senior Director of Channel Partnerships at Customer.io, and Shawnie Hamer, Head of Marketing & Partner Marketing at Kiflo, as they tackle partner onboarding. Register here.

• Generating & MOVING Pipeline with Partners – Thursday, March 30th, 2 PM ET – Cory Synder (from Sendoso) is meeting up with Justin Zimmerman to share how he uses tools like Crossbeam, Reveal, Slack, as well as KPIs he’s built to push pipeline & keep aligned with leadership. Register here.