Getting Buy-In
Partnership KPIs For Marketing, Sales, Customer Success + More
by
Olivia Ramirez
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Partnerships are an all-hands-on-deck, long-term strategy for growth — Implement partnership-related KPIs across your entire org to drive results faster.

by
Olivia Ramirez
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By Olivia Ramirez

June 25, 2021

Feelin’ kinda like you’re a record on repeat?

Hey, could you do me a favor and pair up with this other sales rep for co-selling?

Hey, could you help me out with a webinar we’re co-delivering with a partner? 

Hey, I know you’re busy, but do you have some time over the next few weeks to develop the next certification course with me? 

We’ve seen the business impact of partnerships again and again; Partnerships accelerate deals, increase annual recurring revenue (ARR), and play a critical role in acquisitions. So, why tiptoe around asking your internal teams for the support you need to make it all happen? 

Partnerships should never be an afterthought, and your colleagues shouldn’t need to turn “Do Not Disturb” on whenever you message them on Slack. 😅 But working in SaaS means things move fast, so you’ve got to set clear expectations and goals for your team to drive growth through partnerships early on. Here’s how: 

Adopt partnerships-related key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs) for all of your internal teams. Setting clear expectations and goals on an individual and team level for your entire org will motivate everyone to contribute to the success of your partner program. Soon, your teammates will be the ones Slacking you about the next co-selling or co-marketing motion, partner enablement collateral, or integration go-to-market they’re being held accountable for. 

“A partner program is embedded across every function,” says Jared Fuller, Senior Director of Global Partnerships at revenue acceleration platform Drift. “Part of what you have to do in building a great partner program is build relationships and work processes — How do customer success managers best leverage partners for customer retention, gross, customer health? How do sellers best work with partners for winning deals, competitive win-rates?”

“Every other person should have partnership-related KPIs as well” says Emir Lindo, Founder & CEO at partner ecosystem consultancy Big Friends Consulting Partners. “If the partner team is responsible for 30% of sales to, through, and with partners, we would need somebody to create a piece of content or somebody from the enablement team to build a small program so we can train services companies on our platform.”

Browse through our KPIs and OKRs for each team below to surface the ones most relevant to your business and existing partnership goals. Then, tell your leadership team exactly what and who you need by your side to drive the results you’re working towards.

What to expect: 

KPIs for the Partnerships Team (Don’t think we forgot about you!)

Chat with your leadership team about implementing KPIs/OKRs around: 

  • The amount of partner-influenced or partner-sourced revenue 
  • The number of deals influenced or sourced by partners 
  • Number of new partnerships 
  • Number of leads generated by partners

The type of KPIs you should focus on for your partnerships team depends on your unique business needs, partnership program types, and your partner program maturity

According to our 2021 State of the Partner Ecosystem Report, partnership professionals at the Explorer level of partner program maturity tend to get measured on the number of new partnerships created and leads generated by partners. Once a partner program hits Supernode status (think: Salesforce with more than 2,000 partners), it’s all about partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue.

To align your internal teams to support your partnerships KPIs and OKRs, Emir Lindo says you should plan your goals at least one to two months before your annual strategic planning meeting — a tactic Lindo learned from Steve Sloan, CEO at Contentful

If you’re aware of the goals you’re going to be held accountable for and can map out what you need to do to get there, you can then determine how all of your internal teams will need to support driving those results. A month later, during your strategic planning meetings with the executive team, you can socialize your goals and projects throughout the leadership team and the rest of the organization. 

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Want to learn more about how partner professionals are tracking their partner programs? The waitlist for Supernode 2023 is now open 👇

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