Asher Mathew’s Post

Clearly, this struck a chord! I wrote this post to spotlight what I’ve been hearing from partnership leaders and to highlight the real challenges CEOs and Founders face — they don’t know what they don’t know and/or they are not fully committed, either way it’s a problem. Our hypothesis at Partnership Leaders is this: we need to bridge the gap and strengthen relationships between partnership leaders and business leaders — with CEOs at the top of that list. The engagement here confirms we’re on the right track. Partnership Leaders are Business Leaders. That’s why the theme for Catalyst 2025 is Building the Future of Business. Join us in Seattle, and bring your business leader colleagues. Let’s connect, learn, and build something great together. www.joincatalyst.com

THIS POST RIGHT HERE! Asher, you are literally preaching the gospel truth. Thank you telling the facts. 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼💯💯💯💯💯💯 Asher Mathew, you should also add: 1) Agile process mapping across the organization, with a waterfall timeline across responsibile parties. EVERYONE is accountable to do what, when, and where in order for partnerships to succeed and drive revenue. 2) Budget. A real P&L, to support brand marketing to, with, and through partners to drive demand and then, qualify those leads. 3) RevOps Support: Need staff to manage marketplaces, and deal registration conversions, and the Quote to Cash process! I will never fall for the okie-doke again. Ever.

Just sub in VP partnerships for VP of anything and this post works accross GTM. What people really mean when they want to hire a VP to create a function from the ground up is that they’re hoping to find one individual who can literally do it all, create the process, prove the model, and create a path for future investment based on a hardened ROI. Although these people do exist, they are unicorns, and there’s a 99% chance the person hired can talk like a unicorn, but is absolutely not a unicorn. And even if they are, the business, having not been created on a foundation of “partner-first”, will still take much longer to transitioned into a culture of partnership and hence ‘results’. So, what’s the answer here? Easy. Congratulations CEO, you are the VP of partnerships until you can create a culture, a team, and a flywheel that works and warrants Independant leadership.

Asher Mathew I think I might have spoken to that person too! BTW, there's a parallel trend I've noticed over the past quarter, which is that people are getting hired to design, structure and lead new partner programs who have NO direct experience. Not saying they're not intelligent or good people, but they don't know the lingo, don't have any idea of their IPP, don't have any idea of the typical partner-lead transaction size, don't have the commission structures defined.

This is why we are builders….

Asher Mathew - I would also add in the following question into future conversations: Me: Are you envisioning this partnership leader cultivating and driving successful partnerships that result in seamless interconnected workflows between your platform and a partner's platform? Is your product and engineering onboard for this new strategy?

Don't forget the budget outside of headcount 😅

Add - do you have an indirect strategy AND direct strategy? If so - with clear lines of GTM and business rules to avoid channel conflict? CEO - no we will figure that out as we go (and will take the quick direct 'win' often). Erm - RUN! Or - the VP Partnerships ends up as the sole indirect sales guy on month 1 and gets slammed for numbers in the first Q, and can't build a team until the numbers are there - so spends year 1 as sole contributor (on a high $$).

Been there….

💯 Asher Mathew Somehow, like an uncontrolled contagion, everyone in partnerships recognises this. Yet it remains unsolved. We need to ask ourselves why? We need to ask, where is it working? We need to ask, how to change our behaviour? Everyone understands linear, direct product sales. Partnerships brings another dimension. Cloud, possibly two extra dimensions. Is it too much? It seems so. It becomes an organisational question. One based around a sound understanding of market (not GTM) strategy. Yet very few companies do this to embed partnerships as part of their market strategy. And very many fail. Keep up the great posts!