Partner Managers

The role of a Partner Manager is underrated in many organizations. There is a tendency to treat Partner teams as an 'overlay' team and hence give second priority compared to the rest of the organization. However, in reality Partner Managers have one of the toughest jobs in the enterprise and requires strategic thinking, sales development skills, prioritization, people skills as well as sales development skills. Partner managers are expected to serve as General Managers of the territory they serve and provide a varied set of services to all of their stakeholders; including their partners, the sales teams they work with, the customers as well as the broader organization.

The role of a Partner manager is more sophisticated than most people tend to believe and doesn't necessarily fit a job description as the requirements and the day to day tasks can vary widely. Traditionally there has been a concept of a "Alliance Manager" and a "Partner Sales Manager" with the Alliance manager being responsible for sales enablement, account planning and other business development related activities and the "Partner Sales Manager" is responsible for helping drive leads, pipeline management and working with the field sales team. In today's era of geo based sales; the role is merging into a role of "Channel Enabler" with the person responsible for both business development, enablement activities as well as helping manage the pipeline with partners.

From a enterprise perspective; the partner managers are expected to help partners generate new leads, get partners to invest in the enterprise, get partners to commit to a sales number on a quarterly basis as well as be the trusted advisor or advocate of the enterprise to the end customer.

From a partner perspective; the partner managers are expected to help drive additional margins/rebates for the partners, help them enable in 'solution selling', differentiate the partner built solutions in the market, drive enablement as well as be an advocate of the partner within the enterprise.

This is where an effective partner program comes into picture. An effective partner program helps set some of the foundational rules for the partners and make the partner managers role a bit easier as well as set expectations to the partners in terms of what they can expect from the organization as well as what the organization expects from them. There are several areas of 'programmatic scaling' that a good partner program helps drive for the business - for example; taking the pain of enablement away from partner managers and driving a programmatic effort around it; helping drive deal registrations for the partners in a unified simple manner and providing the partner managers with the right scorecards and dashboard that will help manage their partner in a more effective manner.

Partner Managers are no longer an 'overlay' function; but a key critical part of the organization with the skillsets of a General Manager.

In today's 'Ecosystem' world; it is almost impossible for any organization to be successful without leveraging the partners strength. 'Scale' is synonyms with an effective partner strategy and partner Managers are at the heart of executing this strategy while the Partner program forms the foundational element for that strategy.