Partner Sales Programs

One of the biggest shifts in Partner hiring is happening fast in the Consulting market. Firms aren’t just hiring Partners from other consultancies or promoting from within anymore. The traditional path, Analyst to Manager to Partner, or the familiar lift-out from a competitor is no longer the predominant source of talent. Clients want something different. Knowledge and frameworks are everywhere now. What carries weight is lived experience and the ability to influence. That’s why we are seeing Consulting firms increasingly sourcing their senior talent from Operating Partners in Private Equity, Senior Leaders from Industry, and Executives with real fluency in AI and Technology. Many of these leaders had some experience as Consultants earlier in their careers, but their real impact, and credibility, comes from sitting in the client’s seat, running a P&L, and delivering change under pressure. This shift is redefining what it even means to be a Consulting Partner. The leaders who thrive won’t just be great advisors; they’ll be operators, technologists, and business builders who can turn disruption into outcomes. The Partner of the future may not have built their career in consulting, and that’s exactly why clients want them.

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." — Sun Tzu, The Art of War Microsoft isn't just competing on features. They're also buying the battlefield. $80B infrastructure spend in FY2025. $120B committed for FY2026. But the real strategy isn't the datacenters. It's funding enterprise migration and implementation making it free. While AWS and Google fight on pricing and benchmarks, Microsoft is removing the cost of switching entirely. The program is called ECIF. End Customer Investment Funds. No public page. No application form. Most enterprises never hear about it. Here's what it covers: → Azure OpenAI pilots: $15K–$25K → Copilot enterprise rollouts: $15K–$30K → GitHub migrations: Fully funded → Platform migrations from AWS/VMware: Up to $100K+ Microsoft pays the partner. Enterprise pays nothing. Sun Tzu wrote: "The wise warrior avoids the battle." Microsoft avoids the feature war by making adoption frictionless. Every free implementation creates years of platform dependency. The results: Azure: 39% growth. AWS: 17% growth. The gap is strategic, not technical. Partner incentives up 50%. Customer funding up 20%. AI-specific payouts up 70%. This is how you win a cloud war. By funding the paths that lead to you. Full breakdown of the funding mechanics, qualification criteria, and how to access it ↓ #EnterpriseTransformation #Github #MicrosoftAzure

Most people only see sales from the front. The pitch The persuasion The pipeline. But behind the scenes, especially in Southeast Asia, sales live inside partnerships. No matter how good a seller is, you can’t win alone. Not in tech. Not in enterprise. Not in SEA. There are always three groups moving together: 🧩 The principal partner (product, brand, enablement) 🧩 The delivery partner (execution, workflows, customer support) 🧩 The humans (personalities, motivations, culture) When these three align, outcomes look easy. When they don’t, deals feel “stuck” even when interest is high. And if I’m honest, dynamics are never perfect. Different priorities. Different timelines. Different definitions of urgency. But the thing that makes partnerships actually work is much simpler: → Respect (for each role) → Openness (to share the real situation) → Accountability (to deliver when it’s your turn) Without these, a partnership becomes a logo exchange. With these, it becomes a real growth engine. --- 👉🏻 I’ve been lucky to experience this close-up. Chloe Teo on the HubSpot side - patient, sharp, and supportive. Surindren Manickam on our side at VLAN Asia - relentless in keeping us visible, credible and on track with "Making Things Right". Vinoth Sekaran a big part of keeping this engine running. And now Daryl Loh stepping in - you can already feel the gears turning again. 👉🏻 Then there’s the cultural layer. Partnerships in the US are contract-first: “Scope, SLA, roles, done.” In Southeast Asia, it’s relationship-first: “Do I trust you? Will you show up when things get messy?” The first is transactional. The second is relational. Both can work but in SEA, relational trust often decides who gets the phone call, who gets looped into deals, and who gets invited into strategy. 👉🏻 Visibility plays a role too. It’s not just about being technically capable - the partner needs to know you exist and trust you enough to put you in front of their customers. Surin has been carrying that torch for years - keeping VLAN visible with principal brands like HubSpot and earning the right to be considered. That’s how deals get distributed. That’s how collaborations scale. 👉🏻 And finally: Clarity. When principals and partners aren’t clear about: → who drives what → how the customer buys → where the friction actually is the customer experiences confusion, not confidence. When there’s clarity, deals move. When there’s no clarity, they “remain in consideration” forever. --- People romanticize sales as a lone ranger job. The truth? A lone ranger can close some deals. But partnerships close markets. 2026 will reward the companies who partner well, not just pitch well. Thank you Hubspot partner team for an exciting 2025 ♥️ ✌🏻

This is the most underrated problem I've seen when trying to build or expand partnership GTM: Leadership is initially fully behind a new partnership, excited about its potential, but that enthusiasm never makes its way down to the sales teams who are expected to execute. Without alignment, even the best partnership can stall before it has a chance to succeed. Why does this happen? Sales teams are often focused on their core products, and if a partnership doesn’t clearly benefit them or fit into their day-to-day operations, it becomes an afterthought. To turn things around, you need to make sure your partnership incentives, compensation, and training are in lockstep with the teams that will be selling your product. Here’s how to align incentives and drive results: 1. Ensure your incentives are compelling enough for frontline teams. It’s not enough to excite leadership—sales teams need a clear, tangible reason to sell your product. - Introduce a financial incentive or bonus structure that’s competitive with what reps earn on their core products. This could be a one-time bonus for the first sale, or an ongoing commission that rewards consistent effort. -Tie the incentive to their existing sales goals. If your product helps them hit their targets more easily, they’ll naturally prioritize it. 2. Structure partner compensation to motivate co-selling. If your partner compensation doesn’t align with their core goals, they won’t push your product. - Design a compensation plan that aligns with both the partner’s and your business objectives. For instance, if your partner’s core offering is hardware, incentivize bundling your software as part of the sale to create a win-win situation. - Offer performance-based incentives that reward partners for hitting key milestones—whether that’s a certain number of units sold, a specific revenue target, or even customer engagement metrics. Keep it simple and measurable. 3. Provide consistent training and engagement so your product isn’t just another checkbox. Sales teams won’t advocate for your product if they don’t fully understand its value or how to sell it. - Develop ongoing, bite-sized training sessions that fit into their schedules. Instead of overwhelming them with lengthy sessions, focus on 15-minute, high-impact trainings that teach them how to identify the right opportunities. -Pair training with real-time support. Join sales calls, offer one-pagers, and provide direct assistance during key customer engagements. When they feel supported, they’re more likely to feel confident pushing your product. This kind of alignment can make the difference between a stalled partnership and a thriving one. When sales teams are motivated, equipped, and incentivized to sell your product, the partnership stops being just another checkbox—it becomes a key driver of growth.

What if your top-performing seller doesn’t even work for you?... Partner-led growth is one of the highest-leverage GTM plays (if you know when and how to use it). Brian Weinberger is the CRO at Sisense and has 30+ years of GTM leadership. He’s built partner motions across every model – from VARs to SIs to global cloud marketplaces. In this episode, he shares the playbook for building a partner ecosystem. Key takeaways:   1️⃣ Don’t start with distribution. Start with delivery. Most founders want partner-led pipeline. But first, ask: who delivers your product best? If it’s complex, lean on experts. Great delivery builds stickiness and drives long-term retention. 2️⃣ Enablement speed is the best predictor of partner success. Enablement is your early signal. How quickly can someone become fluent in your product and category? Invest in onboarding to compress time-to-value for every partner. 3️⃣ Partner ecosystems are not shortcuts, they’re systems. You won’t see ROI in 6 months. But by year 3, compounding kicks in. A mature ecosystem drives pipeline, retention, and expansion (often outperforming internal teams). 4️⃣ Use both direct and partner models Microsoft scaled through partners; Salesforce went direct. Today’s best SaaS companies use both: AEs for speed, partners for scale. Direct is your wedge and partners are your engine. 5️⃣ Sell on your own paper, even if you don’t do the work. Early on, own the contract. Let partners deliver, but keep buying simple for customers. This gives you control while subcontracting trusted experts behind the scenes. 6️⃣ Use partners to extend coverage where you can’t hire. New regions, verticals, or languages? Start with partners. The right one can be your seller, marketer, CSM, and architect - all in one. 7️⃣ The best partners hunt, not wait. Most partner programs wait for inbound or expect the reseller to “bring leads.” Flip the script. Feed your partners a pipeline, offer meaningful margins, and give them a reason to care. Partners who market and close independently are the ones who scale with you. 8️⃣ Use integrations to gain leverage with giants. Want attention from a cloud hyperscaler or dominant ecosystem? Don’t just build an integration, resell their product. Sisense white-labeled Snowflake, creating shared customers and shared incentives. Ecosystem selling builds political capital. 9️⃣ Want loyalty? Invest in in-person. Remote is efficient, but in-person builds bonds. Whether it’s team offsites, co-selling sessions, or just dinners, the cultural glue that holds your partner network together is forged face-to-face. The ROI shows up in loyalty, learning speed, and long-term deal flow. -- 🎧 Tune in and subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen by searching "The GTMnow Podcast." 💡 GTMnow by GTMfund: Build, scale and invest with the best minds in tech.

When someone tells me they need more partner leads, my first question is usually: Where is revenue actually getting stuck? Because “we need partners to send us leads” is often only part of the problem. Sometimes pipeline is slow. Sometimes trials are not converting. Sometimes customers are not seeing value fast enough. Sometimes renewals are at risk. And each of those problems needs a different partner play. If pipeline is slow, the right partner can help create trust earlier. They can validate the problem. Shape the requirements. Give the buyer confidence before your sales team is even in the room. If trials are stalling, the right partner can help customers see value faster. They can support implementation. Bring the use case to life. Help close the gap between: “This looks interesting.” And: “This is working for us.” If renewals are at risk, the right partner can help drive adoption. They can support customer success. Extend the value of your core product. Help the customer justify staying and growing. That is why measuring partnerships purely by leads sent is too limited. Leads matter. But they are only one part of the revenue journey. This was one of the reasons Basem Emera’s point in our recent webinar stood out. The opportunity is often not in building a long list of referral partners. It is in going deeper with partners who sit closer to the customer journey. That is where the leverage is. Because the best partners do not just introduce you to customers. They help customers move forward. This is also where partner marketing needs to grow up. It should not only be about launching campaigns at the top of the funnel. It should help activate the right partners at the moments where revenue needs momentum. Pipeline. Trials. Renewals. Expansion. So the better question is not: “Which partners can send us leads?” It is: “Where are customers getting stuck, and which partners can help move them forward?” That is when partnerships stop being treated like a channel. And start becoming part of the growth system.

Yesterday the Head of Partnerships at a $200M health-tech company asked me how to take their partner program from being a C-suite afterthought to a mission-critical GTM strategy. My answer was simple... Data. Let me explain. Partnerships are fluffy. At least that’s what most Boards, C-suites, and Executives think. Why? Because most partner teams struggle with data. Due to unrealistic revenue targets, timelines and limited resources, partnership leaders are often scrambling from day 1. To catch up, they often skip the most important step: Setting up solid processes, KPIs and the mechanisms to track them. So when an important stakeholder asks them for a QUANTITATIVE justification for their activities they either stare back blankly or slap together some unconvincing back-of-the-napkin math. And forget about realistically forecasting more than a quarter out. This is virtually impossible for most partner teams. How can you become a mission-critical GTM strategy if your leadership can’t clearly understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what value it’s going to drive for the business. This is not the way. Partnership leaders need to start being meticulous about data. We need to take the time to set up good processes and tracking mechanisms. You must measure and track everything! - Partner lifecycle - Sourced deal funnels - Influenced deal funnels - Partner marketing outcomes - Integration adoption - Partner ROI - Revenue by partner - Revenue by partner manager - And a dozen other things The value of this should not be underestimated. Only by measuring and tracking will you be able to understand what’s working and what’s not. When you take the time to do this right, you’ll be able to prove to your C-suite the impact your partnerships strategy has driven for the business and what impact it *will* drive looking forward. You’ll be able to show the leaders of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success how you’ve made them and their teams more successful. You’ll be able to forecast, budget, and scale a predictable partner program. As partnerships leaders we understand the value of partnerships in our blood. But up until now, we’ve lacked the operational rigor to prove it out. Let’s become data-driven operators and make partnerships an undeniable, mission-critical GTM strategy. Not just an afterthought.

This Omdia poll tells a story every partner leader should sit with for a moment. Partners aren’t asking for more swag. They’re asking for access, relevance, and proximity to decisions. When 40% say the most valuable non-monetary incentive is exclusive access to resources and enablement, that’s not a training problem — that’s a time-to-value problem. Partners want to be better, faster, and more credible in front of customers. --> Enablement is currency. The next tier is even more revealing. Relationship-building events, recognition, and strategy sessions with leadership all cluster tightly together. Translation: partners want to be seen, heard, and trusted. Not managed. Not processed. Included. What ranks lowest? Personalized merchandise. Swag doesn’t move pipelines. Access does. This mirrors what we see across partner ecosystems more broadly. As buying journeys fragment and deals surround themselves with more influencers, partners are optimizing for signal over stuff. They want insight before it’s public, alignment before the deal is registered, and a seat at the table before the customer decides. In fact, recognition beyond the point-of-sale is the #1 thing they are asking for. If incentives can follow, even better. The takeaway is simple: the best partner programs don’t lead with money or merch. They lead with information, influence, and intimacy. In the next era of partnerships, incentives won’t be transactional. They’ll be strategic.

Raise your hand 🙋🏻♀️ if this has ever happened to you ⤵ You put a piece of content in front of someone for approval. They say, “You should show this to Sally. She’d have thoughts on this.” So you show it to Sally. She not only has thoughts, but she also recommends you share the draft with Doug. Doug also has feedback, some of which aligns with Sally’s and some of which does not. Now you’re two days behind schedule, have conflicting feedback to parse through, and are wondering how you could have avoided this mess. Try this next time 👇 In the planning phase of a project, put a doc together that outlines 3 levels of stakeholders: 1) Your SMEs 🧠 → Apply as much of their feedback as possible — they are as close a proxy to your audience as you can get. 2) Your key approver(s) ✅ → Keep this group small, 1–2 people if possible. → Weigh their feedback knowing that they are not necessarily an SME 𝘣𝘶𝘵 they do control whether or not the project moves forward. 3) Your informed partners 🤝 → Typically, those who will repurpose or promote your content in some way. (e.g. field marketing, comms, growth, etc.) → Make revisions based on their feedback at your discretion. → You may even want to frame the delivery of your draft as, "Here’s an update on how this is progressing. No action needed at this time." Share this doc with all listed stakeholders. Make sure they understand the level of feedback you’re expecting from them, and by when. Then use the doc to track feedback and approvals throughout the life of the project. Preventing your circle of approvers from becoming concentric: 👍 keeps you on track 👍 keeps your content from pleasing your stakeholders more than your audience

The Partnership role is evolving fast. We are moving away from the era of the "Relationship Manager" and entering the era of the "Ecosystem General Manager." It is less about who you know, and more about how you operate. Here is the framework I use to navigate this shift: 1. The Operational Pillar (RevOps) Partnerships need to move from "good vibes" to data-driven attribution. If you can't trace a partner's impact through the CRM with the same rigor as a direct sales rep, it is hard to prove value. Practical Tip: Stop using spreadsheets for tracking. Ensure your CRM has a specific field for "Partner Influence and co-sell" separate from "Partner Source" so you can track assist value, not just sourced revenue. 2. The Financial Pillar (Portfolio Management) We need to treat the partner ecosystem like a VC fund. You have limited capital (time and resources), so you cannot be "fair" to everyone. You have to bet big on the winners and pull back from the others. Practical Tip: Audit your partner list this week. Apply the 80/20 rule. Who are the top 20% driving results? Shift 50% more of your time to them immediately. 3. The Product Pillar (The Mindset) Stop thinking about "recruiting" partners and start thinking about building a product for them. The partner is your user. If your portal or enablement process is clunky, they will churn just like a software user would. Practical Tip: Conduct a "User Interview" with your top 3 partners. Ask them: "What is the hardest part about doing business with us?" Then fix that one thing. 4. The Ecosystem Pillar (The Value Chain) Partners are often pigeonholed as just a sales channel (resellers). But in a modern ecosystem, they are a value multiplier across the entire business - from product innovation to marketing trust to customer success. Practical Tip: Set up a meeting between your best Service Partner and your VP of Customer Success. Find one account where the partner can help reduce churn. I am curious to hear your take on this evolution. Which of these four pillars is the biggest priority for your team right now?