Getting Traction in Partnerships Part 4: The Issues Component

I recently heard that people in partnerships complain too much. 

And I couldn’t agree more, because we’re constantly having to defend our jobs internally and externally, lobby for budget and time and mindshare within organizational strategic goals, fight off competitors in our partner ecosystem, and constantly fight the every distractible sales teams who we work with or employ.

Oh wait, I’m sorry, was I complaining again?

As a partner manager, I easily fell into the trap of the “woe is me” and the self-pity due to the challenges we experience. Since starting CoPort, I’ve learned that problems and issues are everywhere. If you’re in Marketing, Sales, Product, Support, Legal, or in any other department of the business, there’s always something to complain about and there’s always some problem to solve.

That’s business. 

The difference between the successful business, or in our case—partnerships, is “having the discipline to face and solve your organization’’s issues as they arise.” Notice Gino Wickman doesn’t say IF issues arise, but as they arise.

Problems will come. Issues do arise. The opportunity for you and I to grow our partnership programs and help our companies succeed is in how we deal with the issues. 

So what can we do to solve the issues we deal with everyday? And why should we keep reading content about dealing with the issues. It’s easy to think that if something is hard, it must be wrong. As if everything worth doing is downhill. But any successful leader would remind you, and me, as John Maxwell shares constantly, “Anything worth doing is uphill.” If you’re going downhill, well, brace yourself, you’ll hit the bottom soon enough.

Gino Wickman says this, “Your ability to succeed is in direct proportion to your ability to solve your problems. The better you are at solving problems, the more successful you become.”

So let’s address some problems we might see in our companies and our partnerships. I’ll provide some examples of my own challenges and what I did to overcome them. It might be helpful for you, it might not. Your problems might be different than mine, but the principles should help provide the guide rails in your own journey in partnerships.

Problem #1: Internal buy-in

Anyone who’s ever been in partnerships knows the opportunity we have in helping our internal teams, whether executive or not, catch the vision and be bought in to the work of partnerships. I constantly experienced this in my first role of partnerships. As many of us are, there was no partner marketing arm for my partnerships, and the marketing team was a constant challenge to getting support. I just figured because it was a new route to market that the marketing team would gladly lend their support and time to me. But that wasn’t the case. When I first joined the team I learned that if I was to get any marketing support, I’d have to win them over. I couldn’t just assume they liked when I asked for support. I had to go to them and offer support first.

Solution #1: Learn their goals and initiatives. 

To overcome problem one, I learned to start by asking what their goals and initiatives were and show how partnerships could help them achieve their goal. If partnerships didn’t have a clear way of proving value to them, then I was pigeon-holed in the backlog. But when partnerships became a way for marketing to hit their metrics, their tune changed from “Why partners?” To “How can we use a partner for this goal?” It didn’t start out that way, though. It started with me learning what they were doing day in and day out, then see which partners would help them achieve their goals. We were able to help with website traffic, case studies, webinars, lead generation, event sponsorships, event co-sponsoring, mini-events. Partners became a lever for marketing versus an interruption in their workflow.

Problem #2: Competing Priorities

You work at your company to help your company grow. The challenge with partners is that you also exist to help your partner succeed. If your partner company doesn’t succeed, then there is no partnership. So we live between two worlds, paid by your company based on the success of another. What do we do? We often go to our internal sales team and “win” them over to specific partners and bringing them into deals. But they have competing priorities, too. So what do we do?

Solution #2: Integrate partners into the priorities that already exist.

I admit, this reads well, but practices hard. How do we integrate our partners into our existing priorities? It starts with why we partner with who we partner. Too many of us open our partner program to anyone who can fill out a form and add our logo to their website. But partnerships is so much more than just in name only. Both sides have to actually add value to the customer journey. So similar to internal buy-in, this time learn what the priorities are for your sales team or your company, and then bring partners in that actually align to your company’s priorities. Then you’ll give you, your partner, and your company the best chance at success.

Problem #3: Unengaged partners.

As in problem #2, your partners’ teams work for your partner. Not you. So how in the world are you supposed to motivate someone who you don’t actually impact their paycheck? The reality is, very little quotas include a partnership quota. So how in the world do we make other people care about our own product when their job depends on them selling their own?

Solution #3: Connect your solution to their problem.

My first partnership opportunity was with a company who was not compensated at all by our product. There was no tie-in to their quota, little alone any mechanism for spiffs, commissions, anything. And actually, when I started building relationships with the sales team, our contract wasn’t signed for another 12 months. Everything was against us actually making the partnership successful, at least according to the majority of partnership programs. But we won anyways. We won because we were able to help solve their problem for their customer. When they sold their customer on our solution with theirs, we made their customer NPS, adoption, and time to value sky rocket. Their problem was deploying devices, we helped make that easy. And after enough wins, we were brought into their strategic deals and helped them win, yes, without even getting paid by our solution.

There’s a myriad of issues we might come across in our partnership journey. If there weren’t problems, there wouldn’t be a business. It’s a catch-22, for sure. 

So can I encourage you to you pick one problem to solve at a time? There’s a lot in front of you, but if you focus on too many problems you’ll be buried by the weight of it all. Start with one. Solve the problem and then move on to the next. Eventually you’ll see the impact of getting through the issues, and coincidentally, begin to get traction for your partnerships and your business.

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Building partnerships is like building a business. Every time we meet with a potential partner, we follow very similar steps as entrepreneurs who desire to give their business the best chance of success. 

As CoPort is growing, we’re learning so much about how to grow a company—steps, processes, people to meet, etc., and there is a common thread among so many—giving us the best chance possible to succeed. There’s no promise, no guarantee, but there is opportunity to make something truly special.

And every new business partnership does the same. There’s something new and exciting at the prospect of working with another company—whether an MSP, a reseller, VAR, tech partnership, you name it. It’s an exciting opportunity to build something new that no one has ever seen before. 

At the same time, there’s some key frameworks that can help us succeed and give us the best chance at helping our companies grow through partnerships. 

So, for the next 6 weeks, we’re going to mine the gold in Gino Wickman’s book, “Traction” to help us build partnerships. We’re going through the process ourselves at CoPort, making sure we give ourselves the best chance at success. 

Once partner leaders begin to see partnerships as an entrepreneurial journey, then we can get our footing to get going and keep going. It’s a long process to build a strong and sustainable partnership program. The good news is, there’s some handholds along the way. I don’t think Gino Wickman intended for his content to be applied to partnerships, but that’s what makes it amazing, it does!

Thank you for joining our series, we’re so grateful and honored we get to come alongside you in your personal and professional growth story.

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Photo by Alexey Taktarov on Unsplash