8 KPIs for Measuring Partner Enablement Program Success in 2026

‍

Partner programs often stall not because of bad partners, but because your internal processes are scattered. Onboarding lives in one place, deal registration in another, and communication happens wherever someone remembers to send an email.

The teams that scale partner revenue treat PRM as an operational discipline, not a collection of disconnected tools. Below are 12 partner relationship management best practices that keep partner data clean, partners engaged, and pipeline visible — without adding complexity.

What is partner relationship management?

Partner relationship management (PRM) focuses on building trust, enabling partners through technology, and driving mutual profitability. PRM includes structured onboarding, consistent communication, deal registration workflows, and performance tracking — all designed to improve collaboration between your company and your channel partners.

PRM sits alongside your CRM but serves a different purpose. While CRM tracks your direct relationships with customers, PRM tracks your relationships with the resellers, referral partners, distributors, and implementation partners who sell on your behalf.

What PRM typically covers

• Partner onboarding: Getting new partners trained and ready to sell your product
• Deal and lead registration: Tracking partner-sourced opportunities and protecting them from conflict
• Enablement: Providing sales materials, training, and ongoing support
• Performance tracking: Measuring each partner’s contribution to pipeline and revenue
• Communication: Keeping partners informed, engaged, and aligned with your goals

When onboarding, registration, enablement, tracking, and communication work together, partner programs become measurable and operationally tight — not a side project running on spreadsheets.

Key components of partner relationship management

Before diving into partner relationship management best practices, it helps to name the building blocks of any partner program. The components below form the foundation that PRM software supports at scale.

Each component addresses a specific operational gap. The best practices below show how to implement each one effectively — and how to keep it founder-friendly: simple, measurable, and scalable.

12 partner relationship management best practices to grow your program

1. Build a structured partner onboarding program

Partners who complete onboarding quickly tend to sell faster. Yet many programs leave new partners to figure things out on their own, which leads to slow ramp times and early disengagement.

A structured onboarding program gives every partner the same foundation: a welcome sequence, product training, certification paths, and defined milestones so partners know exactly what “ready to sell” looks like.

Key onboarding elements

• Welcome kit: Program overview, key contacts, and first steps
• Product training: Core features, use cases, and competitive positioning
• Sales certification: Ensures partners can represent your product accurately
• Defined milestones: Clear checkpoints that signal readiness

Self-serve onboarding works better than scheduled calls for most partners. Partners can move at their own pace without waiting on your team’s availability.

2. Provide on-demand training and enablement resources

Onboarding gets partners started. Ongoing enablement keeps them sharp.

Partners juggle multiple vendor relationships. The vendors who make it easy to find answers and stay current usually earn more mindshare. That means battle cards, demo scripts, objection handling, and pricing documentation — all accessible without emailing a partner manager.

Resources that drive engagement

• Battle cards: Competitive comparisons partners can reference mid-conversation
• Demo environments: Sandbox access so partners can show the product themselves
• Pricing and packaging guides: Clear documentation to avoid quoting errors
• Case studies: Customer stories partners can share with prospects

If a partner has to ask for basic information, you’ve added friction that slows deals.

3. Integrate your PRM directly with your CRM

When PRM lives outside the CRM, partner pipeline becomes invisible to sales and RevOps. Forecasting suffers. Attribution breaks. And you end up with two systems that don’t agree on what’s happening.

CRM-first PRM solves this by keeping partner data inside HubSpot or Salesforce, where your revenue team already works.

Benefits of native CRM integration

• Single source of truth: No duplicate records or conflicting data
• Pipeline visibility: Sales and partner teams see the same deals
• Accurate attribution: Partner-sourced revenue is trackable for comp and planning
• Automated workflows: Deal registration triggers can route approvals and alerts inside the CRM

If your PRM creates a separate database, you’re building a visibility gap that grows with every new partner.

4. Implement deal and lead registration workflows

Deal registration is how partners claim an opportunity and receive protection from conflict. Without deal registration, you’re left resolving disputes after the fact, which damages trust and slows deals.

A good registration workflow includes required fields, approval SLAs, protection windows, and clear expiration rules. Partners know what to submit, how long they’re protected, and what happens if a deal stalls.

Workflow elements to define

• Required fields: Company name, contact info, estimated deal size, expected close date
• Approval SLA: How quickly you commit to approving or declining registrations
• Protection window: How long the partner has exclusivity on the deal
• Expiration and extension rules: What happens when protection expires or deals go quiet

When registration is fast and fair, partners participate. When registration is slow or opaque, partners stop submitting — and you lose visibility into partner-sourced pipeline.

5. Create a self-service partner portal

A partner portal gives partners a single destination for resources, deal registration, deal status, and communication with your team. Done well, it reduces the back-and-forth that bogs down partner managers.

The key is reducing friction, not adding it. Partners don’t want to email someone for basic information or log into multiple systems to check on a deal.

Portal capabilities that matter

• Resource library: Training materials, sales collateral, product docs
• Deal registration forms: Submit and track opportunities
• Pipeline visibility: Partners see status updates on their deals
• Announcements: Policy changes, new resources, program updates

A portal that’s hard to access or navigate will be ignored. One that’s fast and useful becomes the default way partners engage with your program.

6. Establish consistent partner communication channels

Partners disengage when they don’t hear from you. And when partners are surprised by policy changes, trust erodes quickly.

Consistent communication means defining what you share, how often, and through which channels. Email, Slack, and portal announcements all work. The key is predictability.

Communication types to establish

• Program announcements: Policy changes, new incentives, product launches
• Pipeline updates: Deal status changes, approval decisions, expiring protections
• Enablement broadcasts: New training, updated collateral, competitive intel
• QBR invitations: Quarterly reviews for strategic partners

Partners manage multiple vendor relationships. The vendors who communicate clearly and consistently tend to stay top of mind.

7. Design incentive programs that motivate partners

Incentives shape behavior. If you want partners to bring new logos, incentivize new business. If you want partners to expand accounts, reward upsells.

The most effective incentive programs are simple to understand and easy to claim. Complexity kills participation.

Align incentives with your program goals. And make sure partners can actually track their progress. Hidden or delayed payouts undermine trust.

8. Track partner performance with real-time analytics

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Partner performance tracking gives you visibility into who’s contributing, who’s stalling, and where to focus your attention.

Dashboards that live in or sync to your CRM make tracking easier. Partner managers don’t want to pull manual reports just to understand what’s happening.

Key metrics to track

• Deal registration volume: How many opportunities partners are submitting
• Pipeline value: Total value of partner-sourced deals in progress
• Conversion rate: Percentage of registered deals that close
• Partner engagement: Portal logins, training completions, resource downloads

Real-time visibility helps you spot problems early and double down on what’s working.

9. Automate routine partner operations

Partner managers often spend too much time on tasks that could be automated: registration approvals, status notifications, expiration reminders, welcome sequences.

Automation reduces manual work and ensures nothing falls through the cracks. It also makes it possible to scale your program without proportionally scaling headcount.

Automation opportunities

• Registration routing: Auto-assign approvals based on deal size or territory
• Status notifications: Alert partners when deals move stages
• Expiration reminders: Warn partners before protection windows close
• Onboarding sequences: Trigger welcome emails and training assignments automatically

The goal isn’t to remove the human element. The goal is to free up partner managers for relationship-building instead of administrative tasks.

10. Prevent channel conflict with clear rules of engagement

Channel conflict happens when partners compete with each other, or with your direct sales team, for the same deal. Channel conflict is one of the fastest ways to damage partner trust.

Prevention starts with clear rules: territory definitions, deal registration policies, and escalation paths. When everyone knows the rules upfront, disputes become rare.

Conflict prevention elements

• Territory and segment rules: Who can sell to which accounts
• First-to-register protection: Registered deals get exclusivity
• Direct vs. partner prioritization: When direct sales can engage partner accounts
• Escalation process: How to resolve disputes when conflicts occur

Practical tip: Publish your rules of engagement in your partner portal so partners can reference them anytime, not just when a dispute arises.

Ambiguity creates conflict. Clarity prevents it.

11. Give partners pipeline visibility without login friction

Partners disengage when they can’t see what’s happening with their deals. But requiring portal logins for every update creates friction that slows engagement.

The solution is off-portal collaboration. Partners can receive updates via email and respond without logging into a separate system. Partner replies sync back to your CRM automatically.

Visibility approaches that reduce friction

• Shared pipeline views: Partners see their deals and current status
• Email notifications: Automatic alerts for stage changes and approvals
• Reply-by-email: Partners respond to updates without portal login
• Property-level controls: Show partners relevant fields without exposing sensitive data

Visibility keeps partners motivated. Friction kills momentum.

12. Continuously evaluate and optimize your partner program

Partner programs require iteration. What works at 20 partners often breaks at 100. Reviewing performance quarterly, gathering partner feedback, and adjusting based on results keeps your program healthy as it scales.

Optimization activities to build into your cadence

• Quarterly business reviews: Deep-dive with strategic partners on performance and roadblocks
• Partner feedback surveys: Understand what’s working and what’s frustrating
• Incentive analysis: Check if incentives are driving desired behavior
• Process audits: Identify bottlenecks in onboarding, registration, and support

The best partner programs treat optimization as ongoing work, not a one-time project.

How PRM software supports partner relationship management best practices

PRM software operationalizes the best practices above. The right platform integrates with your CRM, reduces manual work, and gives partners a professional experience that keeps them engaged.

How software capabilities map to these best practices

• Partner portal: Centralizes onboarding, resources, and deal registration (practices 1, 2, 5)
• Deal registration workflows: Automates submissions, approvals, and protection tracking (practice 4)
• CRM integration: Keeps partner data in Salesforce or HubSpot (practice 3)
• Announcements and notifications: Streamlines communication (practice 6)
• Analytics dashboards: Tracks performance in real time (practice 8)
• Off-portal collaboration: Lets partners engage via email without logins (practice 11)

Introw is built on a CRM-first approach. Partner data stays inside HubSpot or Salesforce, partners can engage without managing another login, and your team gets real-time visibility into partner-sourced pipeline.

Get a demo to see how Introw helps partner teams put partner relationship management best practices into action.

Conclusion: keep PRM simple, measurable, and CRM-first

If you’re building a partner motion as a founder, the biggest unlock is treating PRM like revenue infrastructure. Start with clean data in your CRM, make partner participation easy (self-serve + low-friction collaboration), and automate the operational noise.

Do that, and your partner program stops being “extra pipeline” and becomes a predictable channel you can actually forecast.

‍

Most partner programs don’t fail because of bad strategic partnerships. They fail because partner sales is rarely operated like a real go-to-market motion.

Teams that consistently generate partner-driven pipeline apply the same rigor they use in direct sales — motion-specific stages, mandatory CRM fields, forecast discipline, and clear SLAs. We’ll cover the stages, cadences, governance, and enablement systems high-performing teams use to make partner pipeline forecastable instead of aspirational.

If your partner pipeline feels harder to manage than direct sales, you don’t need a multi-quarter overhaul. You can stand this up in 14 days — and we’ll show you exactly how.

Why Partner Sales Needs Its Own Operating Model

Partner sales is any revenue motion where a third party sources, influences, sells, or delivers your product as part of your go-to-market. But partner sales breaks when different motions are forced through the same process. Co-selling, referrals, and reselling all involve partners, but they create value differently:

• Referral partners introduce a lead, lend credibility, and step back.
• Co-sell partners stay engaged alongside your seller to advance the deal.
• Resellers own the commercial relationship and transact independently through indirect sales.

These motions require different stages, different handoffs, and different expectations about who does what. Running them all through one generic "Partner Opportunity" stage is what causes forecasts to break every quarter.

The most important distinction is whether the partner originated the opportunity or helped move it forward. Sourced means the partner originated the deal. Influenced means they impacted progression or close without originating it. This makes partner revenue measurable while deals are active, not debatable after the quarter closes.

High-performing teams run one opportunity record, one data model, and one source of truth across all motions. This clarity only works when your CRM captures sourcing and attribution in real time. PRM platforms like Introw lock sourced and influenced contribution directly on the opportunity in Salesforce or HubSpot as the deal unfolds. Partners see the deals they're involved in through shared views or a partner portal, with the same visibility your internal team has.

Matching Partner Motions To Your Go-To-Market Strategy

Matching partner motions to your GTM is foundational. It’s how you scale channel partner sales without introducing conflict or forecast noise. Before you design stages, SLAs, or incentives, you need clarity on which partner motions you’re supporting and why. Most SaaS teams should operate only two or three motions well, not five poorly.

‍

Referral

A partner introduces a prospect, lends credibility, and steps back. You own the sales process and compensate the partner with a referral fee or SPIFF.

Best when: Your direct sales team needs warm introductions to get into target accounts or build initial credibility with skeptical buyers.

Reseller/VAR

Value-added resellers purchase your product at a discount and resell it independently, handling pricing, negotiation, and the customer relationship. You enable them with price protection, margin structures, and deal registration. 

Best when: Your customers prefer buying through established local partners, or you're expanding into new markets where channel distribution is the dominant buying model. 

Marketplace

Deals close through cloud marketplaces like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, allowing customers to use committed cloud spend or procurement credits. You'll manage private offers, co-marketing, and marketplace-specific SKUs as part of your channel sales model.

Best when: Your target market uses cloud procurement tied to committed spend, or your sales cycles are slowed by legal and contracting friction that marketplace transactions eliminate.

Services-led (SI / MSP)

Systems integrators build custom solutions around your product, while managed service providers deliver ongoing IT operations. The partner leads delivery, and your product becomes part of their broader solution, giving you expanded market reach.

Best when: Your product sells best bundled with professional services, or the customer base requires implementation and ongoing management that strategic partners deliver better than you can.

Tech/ISV

Another tech company (independent software vendor) integrates with your product, creating joint value propositions that amplify both sales teams' motions. Sales success and customer acquisition depends on field readiness, certification programs, and operationalized co-selling as part of your partner ecosystem.

Best when: Your product sells more effectively alongside complementary technology, or your buyers evaluate solutions as integrated stacks rather than standalone tools.

Stages and Exit Criteria Across Partner Motions

Partner sales exit criteria sit at the intersection of partner accountability and customer progress. They answer two key questions: Has the partner done what they're responsible for at this stage? Can we advance this deal without breaking trust, crediting, or economics?

Exit criteria prevent credit disputes, stalled deals, and pipeline inflation. If a deal can’t meet exit criteria, it doesn’t move — regardless of pressure. Below is a concise view of the five stages for each partner motion and how exit criteria differ where it matters most. 

Referral Motion

Referral exit criteria focus on clean sourcing and fast vendor ownership.

1. Intro Logged: The opportunity is created with the partner marked as sourced and ownership formally accepted by the vendor.
2. Validate: ICP fit, urgency, and the partner’s limited role are confirmed at this sales stage.
3. Prove Value: The vendor advances the deal without requiring ongoing partner involvement.
4. Commercials: Commercial execution proceeds without partner participation.
5. Closed & Credit: The deal is closed and referral credit is finalized.
   
   

Reseller / VAR Motion

Reseller exit criteria protect partner ownership and transaction economics.

1. Deal Registration: The opportunity is registered with price protection and non-interference enforced.
2. Qualification: The reseller confirms real end-customer demand and technical fit.
3. Configure & Quote: Commercial terms reflect approved SKUs, discounts, and margin.
4. Transact: The reseller completes the transaction and fulfillment.
5. Launch & Enable: Delivery and renewal responsibilities are documented.
   
   

Marketplace Motion

Marketplace exit criteria ensure attribution and revenue integrity outside traditional sales flow.

1. Listing Ready: The opportunity aligns to an approved marketplace offer.
2. Private Offer: Discounts and terms are defined within marketplace constraints.
3. Procurement: The transaction is executed through the marketplace system.
4. Close & Disburse: Revenue and partner credit are recorded accurately.
5. Adopt & Expand: Expansion is driven by usage, not renegotiation.

Services-led (SI / MSP) Motion

Services-led exit criteria prioritize delivery readiness over pipeline velocity.

1. Solution Design: Joint success criteria are defined before committing revenue.
2. Proof / Workshop: Delivery assumptions are validated and risks documented.
3. Commercials: Software and services are sold together with milestone alignment.
4. Delivery: The SI or MSP leads execution while the vendor provides ongoing support.
5. Handoff: The account transitions to steady-state ownership and expansion.
   
   

Tech / ISV Motion

Tech partner exit criteria validate influenced impact rather than sourcing.

1. Integration Fit: The opportunity reflects a clear integration-driven use case.
2. Field Readiness: Sellers are enabled to position the joint solution.
3. Pipeline Activation: Partner-driven influence is reflected in active deals.
4. Validation: Joint proof points reinforce deal progression.
5. Commercials & Close: Influence credit is captured and fed back into planning.

The Partner Sales Drumbeat: Cadence, Touchpoints, and SLAs

Partner sales management depends on rhythm. High-performing teams run on predictable cadences that keep deals moving and partners engaged.

Monthly or Quarterly Partner Sales Review (30–45 minutes)

The monthly or quarterly partner sales review is the heartbeat of the program. It should focus on signal, not deal recitation.

Each review should cover:

• Top partner deals by motion, not just by amount
• Whether deals are moving against their defined exit criteria
• Sourced vs influenced pipeline and closed revenue
• Risks around ownership, attribution, or partner engagement

Every decision and next step should be logged directly on the opportunity. If it’s not in Salesforce or HubSpot, it didn’t happen. This keeps sourced vs influenced attribution current, prevents deals from drifting, and ensures forecasts reflect reality rather than intent.

AE and Partner Touchpoints

The review inspects progress, but  AE–partner touchpoints are where work actually happens. Effective AE–partner collaboration runs on a seven-day action cycle. Every sales rep interaction should produce a concrete next step within a week — a scheduled customer meeting, a delivered artifact, or a teed up decision. Weekly alignment validates motion execution (referral vs co-sell vs resale) and identifies blockers that prevent the next action from happening on time.

Core SLAs

SLAs show channel sales partners that their effort is respected and their deals won’t stall in your internal process.

You need, at a minimum:

• Partner referral to opportunity creation within 24 hours
• Deal registration approval or rejection within 48 hours
• Opportunity notes updated weekly
• Partner follow-up sent within 24 hours after meetings

When these SLAs slip, partners disengage quietly. When they’re met consistently, trust compounds.

Making Channel Partner Sales Visible: CRM, Data Model, and Forecasting

Partner sales is invisible until it's in the CRM. If your opportunity records don't capture motion, sourcing, and partner contribution, you're forecasting on anecdotes.

Required CRM Fields

Your CRM needs these fields to make partner sales pipeline forecastable and enable effective partner performance management:

• Partner Motion: Referral, reseller, marketplace, services, or tech
• Partner Type & Partner Org: Who the partner is and what type
• Sourced vs Influenced: Tag whether the partner originated the deal (sourced) or impacted it (influenced), with attribution percentage
• Deal Registration #: Tracks price protection and conflict policy
• Partner Contacts as Contact Roles: Logs who's involved on the partner side so you know who to loop in when a deal stalls
• Stage Notes: What happened, what's next — updated weekly

These fields should be mandatory at stage changes. Missing motion or attribution fields should block progression, and stale notes or expired price protection windows should be flagged automatically. This is easier when your PRM enforces field requirements automatically — Introw does this natively in Salesforce and HubSpot.

Deal Registration Policy

Your deal registration policy should define:

• Conflict rules: First-come-first-served vs partner tier priority
• Price protection window: How long protection lasts 
• Approval criteria: What makes a deal eligible for registration
• Overlap handling: What happens when multiple partners claim the same account

Document this policy, share it with partners, and reference it in disputes.

Governance and Visibility

Because all motions live in the same pipeline, reporting becomes consistent across motions — comparing cycle time, win rates, ACV, and attach rates without manual cleanup. Visibility should also extend to partners through shared pipeline views that expose only approved opportunity, renewal, and onboarding fields. Partners should never be surprised by deal status, ownership, or credit.

Metrics That Matter

Mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS companies report that roughly 35% of new pipeline is now partner-influenced or partner-sourced, making partner-driven deals a primary growth lever rather than a supplementary sales channel. Track these key metrics to show how partner motions contribute differently to revenue growth:

• Partner-sourced ARR and influenced ARR by motion to track revenue generated
• Cycle time by motion (are channel partner deals faster or slower than direct sales?)
• Win-rate deltas versus direct sales to measure sales performance
• Attach rates for services and integrations
• Renewal and expansion rates from partner-assisted accounts to measure customer satisfaction

These dashboards matter because they tell you where partners accelerate revenue — and where they slow it down. This lets you know where to invest in partner acquisition and better partner performance management.

Partner Sales Enablement That Drives Execution

Partner enablement fails when it’s built for storage instead of action. Enable your partners by giving them exactly what they need to move deals forward in the motion they’re operating in.

Types of Enablement That Must Exist

Effective enablement does two things. It gives partners practical assets they can use in live deals, and it gates access so only qualified partners are allowed to sell or deliver. Remember, onboarding new channel sales partners is just as important as onboarding new employees.

Content Partners Can Find & Send

Quality marketing materials support sales opportunities. Partners need plays, case studies, and ROI one-pagers that are truly helpful in sales conversations. Content should be organized by motion, industry, or use case — not buried in generic folders. 

Training & Certification

Partner training works best when it unlocks privilege. Certifications should gate deal registration, partner pricing, delivery eligibility, or marketplace co-sell access. This ensures only qualified channel partners gain access to active deals, protecting both forecast accuracy and customer outcomes.

Micro-Assets by Motion

Generic enablement doesn't work. Build motion-specific micro-assets that match how partners actually work within each motion:

• Referral: Talk track for making warm introductions
• Reseller: Pricing matrix and margin structure
• Marketplace: Private offer explainer and procurement FAQ
• Services-led: SOW checklist and delivery scoping template
• Tech/ISV: Integration "why now" slide and joint demo guide

How To Deliver Enablement

Push new release notes, competitive intel, and win stories where partners already work. This is easier when you can publish updates with one click and distribute them automatically to email, Slack, or the partner portal. Introw's Announcements feature does this natively, tracking engagement across channels so partners see what's new and can act quickly in live deals.

Store searchable content in a partner portal where partners can filter by motion, industry, or use case and share directly with prospects. This eliminates the "can you send me that case study" requests and keeps partners engaged.

Your 14-Day Channel Sales Strategy Rollout

You don’t need months to operationalize a channel partner sales strategy or partner sales motion. Pick two motions and build the infrastructure in two weeks.

Days 1–3: Pick your two primary motions based on where deals already come from or where your ICP naturally buys. Define stages and exit criteria for each motion and add required CRM fields.

Days 4–6: Publish your deal registration policy and form. Stand up shared pipeline views so partners see their deals in real time. Enable announcement workflows for pushing updates to partners via email, Slack, or portal.

Days 7–10: Expect friction in week one — fix process gaps immediately before any bad habits form. Load your top enablement assets by motion. Brief your internal sales team on the new process and what changed. Notify partners that the new system is live and show them where to find what they need. 

Days 11–14: Run your first weekly partner sales review. Measure field hygiene and fix gaps before they compound. Lock the cadence to set your operational rhythm for managing partner relationships — same day, same time, every week.

Conclusion

We’ve given you the operating model. Now you need the infrastructure to run it. Introw gives you deal registration workflows, partner portal access, shared pipeline views, and Salesforce/HubSpot sync — so your partner sales process isn't built on spreadsheets and hope. Request a demo to see how teams operationalize partner sales in weeks, not quarters.

As a team that spends every day talking to partnership professionals, we know one thing for sure: we can’t just talk the talk - we have to walk it, too. That’s why we brought in a true expert to level us up: Martin Scholz, seasoned SaaS partnership leader, strategist, and (bonus!) one of our own partners.

And wow, did he deliver.

Martin took us through a full-day training covering every nook and cranny of partnership management, from the fundamentals to the frameworks you won’t find in your average playbook. Here are the biggest takeaways from our session.

First Reality Check: 80% of Partnerships Fail

Martin opened with this stat: 80% of partnerships fail (source). Why? Because there’s no blueprint. No one-size-fits-all. Every company defines “partnership” differently.

The truth is, partnerships aren't a solo act. They're a team effort

What Successful Partnerships Actually Drive

Done right, partnerships don’t just generate revenue - they unlock scale:

• Shorter sales cycles
• Higher win rates
• Transparent deal flow
• Better-quality leads (hello, PQLs 👋)
• More focus on your core business while partners drive volume

And yes - the Bow Tie model (Winning By Design) made an appearance.

Martin reminded us that many forget the power partners have across the entire customer lifecycle - not just in introducing or closing the deal, but in retention, expansion, and long-term value

Whether you're working with tech partners, service partners, or resellers, their role varies by stage - and your strategy should too.

Revenue is a Result, Not the Goal

A big mindset shift: Stop chasing revenue, start building outcomes.

Too many teams treat revenue as the first metric, but Martin reminded us it’s the result of well-executed partnership strategies. Instead, define shared targets and goals - then align around those.

The Biggest Risk? Too Many Wrong Partners

Here’s your new motto: Disqualify fast.

Don’t let “more” distract you from “better.” A bloated partner list full of misaligned or inactive collaborators is worse than having none at all.

The Secret Weapon: Your MAP (Mutual Action Plan)

Your MAP is your North Star.

It’s a living document, co-created with your partner, that defines what success looks like—milestones, metrics, activities. This is what keeps partnerships focused and accountable from day one.

The Partnership Lifecycle According to Martin

Partner Onboarding = The Honeymoon Phase

First impressions matter. Use this phase to build trust, show value, and get wins on the board.

Tips:

• Deliver an amazing partner experience
• Connect teams & execs (use leadership wisely!)
• Execute on your MAP - don’t just let it sit in a doc
• Prioritize fast wins and momentum
• The first 90-120 days? Absolutely critical.

Partner Enablement = Where the Real Work Starts

Once the honeymoon is over, reality hits - and that’s when enablement really begins.

Key actions:

• Run a no-fluff business review (internal + external)
• Adjust the MAP to reflect reality
• Tier and prioritize your partner list
• Agree on new ways of working (cadence, content, etc.)

And a big one: Reality ≠ one single source per deal.

Most deals are touched by multiple sources (partners, marketing, sales) and yet traditional deal registration often gives credit to just one. It's time to rethink attribution and make space for the real complexity of modern sales motions.

Never forget: partnerships are built between people, not logos.

Best Practices for Partner Collaboration

Here's what Martin recommends:

• Be part of the first 3 intro calls before partners go solo
• Ensure strong overlap in goals and ICP
• Use a PRM tool to streamline the entire partnership workflow:
  • Lead submission & deal registration
  • Transparency around pipeline
  • Goal tracking and performance measurement
  • Communication & updates in real time
  • Sales enablement that’s actually useful

Partner Experience is a Team Effort

Your partner doesn’t experience “the partnership” - they experience your product team, your CS team, your marketing team. Partner experience = everyone’s job.

And Yes - Some Partnerships End

Not every partnership is forever, and that’s OK. Offboarding should be handled with the same care and clarity as onboarding. It’s part of the cycle - not a failure.

Final Thought

Martin left us with this gem:

Work with partners so you can focus on your core business.

That’s the promise of a well-built, well-run partnership ecosystem. Not just revenue. Not just reach. But real business leverage.

Thanks again, Martin, for the masterclass. We’re sharper, smarter, and more aligned than ever, and we can’t wait to put these lessons into practice.