Pt.1 What I wish someone told me when I started my career in Partnerships

Over the past 6 years, I've built one of the most successful Partnership organizations in Europe with 20 people currently working directly or indirectly with Partnerships at Teamtailor.

With that said, I also want to be transparent that despite our "success" and the polished view from the outside we are still battling our own demons. We still have a very long way to go and we certainly don't have everything figured out yet. But we have come a long way, and getting here was not easy.

I was fortunate to be at a company that had the patience to allow me to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Because they believed the end results would be worth it.

Over the years I've been able to follow the emergence of partnerships across many organizations and the SaaS industry as a whole. More people starting their careers in partnerships and I know from my own experience of being tossed into the partnerships world from another role how challenging I found that time. All of the research, whitepapers, and guides seemed to reflect a different world than the one I was in and I set off to try to essentially force a square peg into a round hole.

I've truly loved the years I've spent in Partnerships, it's an incredible job so I want to be able to give back to the people who are now starting out. Essentially share things I know now that I wish I knew then.

I won't be able to share everything in one post, so this will be the first part of "What I wish someone told me when I first started my career in Partnerships"

1. Figure out the why’s

For partnerships to be truly successful they need to be mutually beneficial. The partnerships need to be aligned with your partner's goals and your goals. Partnerships that are one-sided or heavily weighed towards one party will rarely succeed.

Before you start doing anything else you need to figure out how you fit into your partner's ecosystem and understand the benefits you add to their business and why they want to partner with you. 

(I can guarantee that in most scenarios it’s not the revenue share or commission.)

Revenue is often a side benefit of the real WHY. I will not be able to share every example in the book but these are two that we identified early.

• For some it’s an unlock play, being partnered with us allowed them to unlock a new category of customers.

• For some, it’s an enablement play. By partnering with us, it made it easier to sell whatever they’re selling or they use us as a lever to sell more

For some, it’s none of the above. You need to spend time to figure out why different types of companies want to work with you and how you make their business better.

It’s only once you know this that you’re able to design a program that allows you to reach your goals.

You need to have your goals clearly defined as well. What is the outcome you want from your partnerships program?

If your goal is solely to get referrals from partners and that doesn't align with their WHY, those partners might not be a good fit for you at that moment.

You don't need to have the same WHY as your partners. But you need to make sure that your goal is aligned with their WHY.

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four