Before launching any partner activity, define target customers, tactics, and follow-up processes with partners and internal teams. This pre-alignment is the key to achieving and proving ROI, moving beyond just tracking spend after the fact.
The partner marketing role requires a rare blend of skills. A successful professional must develop strategic business plans with partners while also managing granular details like booking venues and uploading leads. This dual capability is a critical hiring filter for this often-undervalued position.
To break down silos between sales, channel, and field marketing, partner marketers act as a central hub. This is achieved by operationalizing transparency, establishing a formal communication cadence that replaces informal check-ins, and conducting blame-free reviews focused on future actions.
The ROI of partner enablement is critical but notoriously difficult to quantify. To create a tangible link to revenue, connect enablement activities like training sessions to specific, trackable outcomes like SPIFs or other direct incentives that drive a desired action and can be measured.
A successful hyperscaler partnership requires more than just technical integrations. SentinelOne's growth with AWS was accelerated by aligning on a core technology (AI) and, critically, by leveraging Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPOs) to drive scale and growth through their existing channel ecosystem.