The Shared Win: Aligning Professional Services and Partnerships

Our Challenge: In 2022, my professional services team was stretched thin. Our services were offered at no cost – a model that made sense early on, but created growing pressure as demand scaled. Airtable had just begun to build its Partner program, and I’d seen at other SaaS companies what happens when Services and Partners compete for the same deals: confused customers, internal tension, and wasted time. I knew we needed a unified strategy, one that Nelson (our newly minted Head of Partnerships!) and I could champion together, with executive support behind us.

Applying The Shared Win Framework: I used the Shared Win formula to build a narrative to align Nelson and our executive team:

State My Goal: Create a clear, inspiring vision for how Services and Partners would work together, with defined roles, shared success metrics, and scalable impact. We focused on the idea of "ONE TEAM" to best serve of customers, regardless if it was partner or the services team.

Understand Their Motivations:

-Our Executive Team prioritized GTM efficiency and scalability, while being mindful of partner quality and the need to maintain a seamless sales process

-Nelson wanted to prove the value of the partner channel, but had limited resources. By lending him Services capacity to enable, evaluate and certify partners, I could:

📈 Help build more capacity and capability in services delivery to better serve our customers

🤝 Create a partner ecosystem we could learn from (it’s a two way street!)

🛑 Identify Obstacles: Continuing to deliver services for free would undercut our growing partner ecosystem and I knew this needed to change.

🙌 Craft the Shared Win: Here’s how I framed it: “We’re building a GTM engine where Services and Partners amplify each other to grow revenue, boost quality, and scale with confidence.”

③ Three Key Points to Get Buy-In:

1. Partner certification through Services allows us to maintain a high quality bar as we scale

2. Moving from free to paid services recovers cost and avoids undercutting Partners

3. Segmenting by customer size – Services for Enterprise, Partners for Mid-Market and SMB – reduces Sales confusion, creates clear swim lanes and de-risks large deals where we needed to stay close to the customer

The Outcome: Our narrative energized our executive team and laid the foundation for a rewarding partnership with Nelson, who went on to scale Airtable’s partner program into an award winning program at Catalyst.

Getting buy-in was one thing; leading the change was another.

But that’s a story for another day (and yes, Curious Consulting helps with that too!)

If you need more help on leadership consulting, feel free to reach out to [email protected] to learn more. She's an awesome one to work with and I'm grateful she shared her perspective of what it's like to work with partnerships teams today.

Cheers,

Nelson

Whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you on partnerships:

1. The Ultimate Partnerships Kit - My flagship product featuring 45 templates (889 slides and 2 video trainings) on how to build a partner strategy that drives sourced revenue and net retention. I share 20 years of my experience from Box, Airtable, Optimizely, Miro, Toptal, VMware and Cisco that have helped me go from zero to $200m+ ARR. It's my life's work packaged in a kit to help you crush it in partnerships.  Join 6,000+ other partner leaders who have used my templates.

2. The Partner Strategy Deck Template - I've easily spent 80+ hours building partner strategy decks for a single company.  I don't want you to have to go through that pain. This 80 slide template is critical to saving you a lot of time, helping you get clarity on your partner strategy, getting executive alignment for resource allocation and will help you improve time to revenue.  It's the same template I've been refining over the last 20 years and has been absolutely critical to helping me go from zero to $150m+ ARR.  There's a reason this is the #1 best selling template!  As a bonus, it now includes a video walk through too!  Get it here.

3. Reseller Strategy Deck - A framework to outline key objectives, identify target markets, GTM, program requirements and define the roles and responsibilities of resellers. This is the same strategy deck I've personally used to drive $250M+ in revenue.

4. $200M PartnerOS Program - Learn the exact system I used to go from zero to $200M+ with partnerships at B2B tech companies like Box, Miro, Airtable, Optimizely and Toptal through (5) 1:1 coaching sessions with me.  Learn more here.

5. The Partner Sales Training Template - Have a training coming up where you're showcasing a partner in front of the sales team?  This deck is perfect for that. Over the last 20 years I've run 1,826 partner trainings across companies like Box, Miro, Airtable, Optimizely, Toptal, VMware and Cisco that led to $200M+ in SaaS partner revenue. Leverage my pre-built template of 35 slides and save yourself hours of prep work.  This deck will help you crush it with your sales teams and lead to co-selling opportunities when executed well.  Get it here.

6. Partner Recruitment Template -Recruit strategic partners faster to drive revenue. Join 900+ users who have used this template to accelerate partnerships. Leverage this template that I've personally used to recruit 1,479 partners over the last 20 years at companies like Miro, Airtable, Box, Toptal, Optimizely, VMware and Cisco. This includes Global Consulting Firms, Regional SIs, ISVs, Resellers, Referral Partners, Affiliates, Agencies and Solution Partners. Get it here.

7. The Partner Program template - I've personally reviewed 65 partner programs including companies like Box, Zoom, Docusign, Microsoft, Dell, Klaviyo, Hubspot, Atlassian, Miro, Airtable, Optimizely, Toptal, VMware, Cisco and many more and have put together this template to save you hours of ideation and iteration on potential partner programs. Leverage my pre-built template and save yourself 20+ hours of work and build a best in class partner program. Get it here.

8. Sales Strategy Deck - Leverage this 150 slide deck to build a sales strategy from zero to one.  As a leader at 5 unicorns + decacorns, I've worked closely with CROs and other sales leaders on sales strategies to help drive $2B+ in revenue. This deck took 100+ hours to put together. Check it out here.

9. Partnerships Dream Job Course: This 1 hour, self paced online course is perfect if you're looking to land a new job in partnerships and need help standing out from the crowd of resumes. It covers how to write an effective resume, how to revamp your LinkedIn profile, cover letters, email templates, interview prep and salary negotiation. I've personally coached 350+ clients and have helped them land interviews or jobs at companies like Amazon, Cisco, Dropbox, Patreon, Amplitude, Google, Stripe, Salesforce, Apple and more. Get it here.