Partner Management

A guide to the Partner Manager's core responsibilities

7 min read

Mar 13, 2024 10:35:10 AM

Are you just starting out as a Partner Manager? Are you looking to become one? Regardless, even for experienced professionals, it is sometimes easy to forget how a role can be different in each company. Let’s look at the broad spectrum of responsibilities of a Partner Manager within an organization and figure out all the areas you might be in charge of.

Let me start by sharing a story from a different career. My friend is a seasoned eCommerce manager with 10+ years of experience in the field working for large international stores. One day, he quit his job and joined a much smaller organization to become the Head of eCommerce. In one of the first days, he was collecting all the necessary information and asked for a contact to the person responsible for logistics.

“What do you mean?” - asked his new boss.

“Well, who is in charge of shipping the products from our store?”

“Well… that would be you.”

This wasn’t a junior with no idea what he was doing. He was a professional who was just used to working with a larger team, each with their area of expertise. Happily, because of his experience, he managed to quickly take over shipping and managed it until he hired the right person for the job.

I am giving this example to illustrate how even people with many years of experience can have different expectations and views on what are their key responsibilities. The same can happen in partnerships. This is especially true since every partnership is unique.

In this article, I will describe the general areas you might be in charge of as a Partner Manager, but please note - it will be different in every company. Think of it as an “à la carte” menu. All options are available, but you will only focus on some of them. Which ones - I cannot say, as each situation will be different, but I should be able to share with you most areas which you might be responsible for.

General responsibilities

If you look at the job of a Partner Manager, they typically cover all the stages of a partnership. Meaning - whichever areas will be available to the partners, the same will be true of the Partner Manager. On a general level, you can say that each partner goes through the same stages:

Partner selection / Onboarding / Enablement / Offboarding

Apart from this, the Partner Manager also has a few responsibilities as a representative of the company:

Strategy / Monitoring / Management

In the next paragraphs, we will uncover each one, to see what tasks lie beneath.

Before we do that, it would be worth mentioning what general areas should a Partner Manager be strong in. Again - this might not be a complete list, but I find it fits in most cases:

Great communication - in both written and spoken word. Sending precise messages to the right people is a key element of success;
Sales experience - a Partner Manager often has to get new companies to become partners. Not only finding them but also convincing them to join. This is similar to what a Sales Manager does, only in a different area;
Good organization - a person in this position will likely handle 50 if not 100 different companies. Knowing what you promised to whom and when to deliver it, is critical;
Marketing know-how - in larger organizations, there can be a specialized Partner Marketing Manager or the marketing team can work directly with the partner. In smaller organizations, it is often the Channel Manager who is in charge of these processes. Even if they are finally done by other hands, he/she makes it happen in the early stages;
Multilingual - very rarely does a Partner Manager work only with partners who speak one language. Typically partnerships cover many different markets. Not only that - partners might have different team members who sometimes need to interact with you. English is a must. A second language is more than welcome. A third one is a gift;
Business acumen - in a very common scenario, more is said between the lines than the actual words would suggest. Picking up these small pieces of information can be quite valuable. Because of this, you can figure out changes to the strategic approach of your partners. You can connect the dots and figure out major changes before they happen. Sometimes, if you listen well enough, you can anticipate certain actions and act on them before they happen. This takes practice and years of experience, so I would consider this a nice-to-have, but something that would separate the good from the best.
Conflict resolution - one of the first tasks I had to tackle in my previous employment was a conflict between two software houses. One split from the other, took part of the team and started building something directly competitive. Both ended up becoming our partners, but we had to make sure we have very clear rules for working together. I am giving you this example to show you the situations you can expect. You will likely be working with multiple partners from the same competitive space. “Why are they getting this?”, “Why did they already receive 2 leads, while we have been partners first?”, “Why are you promoting a case-study of a project we originally built and they just maintain?” - you need to be prepared for these kinds of questions.

Specific areas

Let’s look at the specific areas you could be focusing on.

Partner selection

One of the goals of a Partner Manager can be to grow the partner network. This means identifying which companies can be a good fit, finding the right contacts, networking with them, and presenting the value of the partnership. This, in itself, is a complex process that requires many different skills.

During this phase, typically a contract is being signed. Rarely is this done without any changes. A good Partner Manager will be able to assess the risk and give a recommendation to the person signing it on behalf of the company.

Onboarding

Even if partners already joined your network, it doesn’t mean they will provide you with any business value. You first need to invest your time and train them, explain the partnership principles, goals, expectations, and benefits of using your tool/services. Not only can this process consist of multiple related steps performed by different teams (you are the one who still need to make sure it happens), but also a large part of the onboarding can be done directly by the Partner Manager. Because of this, you need to feel good when presenting something publicly. Sometimes in a 1-1 setup, sometimes one-to-many. You will also represents the brand, so the way you conduct your meetings will directly reflect on the company.

Enablement

Once the partners are onboarded, your job is to make sure they become good partners. You should help them plan and achieve their goals, provide them with useful materials, trainings, and guidance. Meet with them, discuss how you can help and generally - help them become better partners. At this stage, you need to make sure you keep your word / promises to the partners (which can be tricky when you are handling 50+ contacts). Good organizational skills are very useful here.

Remember that depending on the size of your team, it might be your job to plan (and possibly even deliver) marketing activities. This covers both figuring out what is a good co-marketing action, but also how to measure it, when will it be profitable, etc.

Offboarding

Fortunately, this is not a large part of the job, but partner priorities change and sometimes you need to say goodbye. Making sure they are financially in the clear (no outstanding invoices, paid-out MDFs without deliverables, etc.) is important. During the offboarding process, it is also valuable to figure out what went wrong. Typically, you will know if the partnership was just not providing value, if their priorities / strategy changed or simply they have too much on their plate. This should allow you to reflect on how to improve the partnership for other partners.

Strategy

If you are working with a larger team, especially if there is a Head of Partnerships or a similar role, this might not be your task. But even in such situations, team leaders often create the strategy with their employees or at least consult it. And there is much to do. You need to figure out what your goals are for the next year/years. How are you going to measure results? Who are you going to go after? What specific areas do you want to improve and how to achieve this? Finally, a good strategy also says something about what the role of your team is. Is your job to just grow the network? Provide leads? Add additional exposure? Gain market insights? All of the above?

A strategy is not a document you create and forget. A part of your job is to frequently look back at it, correct any deviations or agree on alternative paths, if it makes sense.

Monitoring

As a Partner Manager, you should keep an eye on a lot of different metrics. From ROI, partner revenue to onboarding completion rates. Not only that, but you also get to define these metrics, figure out how to track them and possibly even present the results to key stakeholders. You are the partner proxy within your organization. Any question about any of the partners, their value for your company, ROI on their marketing incentives is going to be aimed your way. The good news is that you can (and should) use all that data to make informed decisions about changes in your partner program.

Management

Lastly, a very general one. Management. Management of partners, leads, commissions. Managing processes, tasks, timelines. Changing partner types, tiers, and payouts. Possibly even managing people within your team - all of this is also a part of the job and you have to make sure it gets delivered while all the other plates mentioned before are spinning.

As you see, the role is quite complex, but because of this complexity, it can be quite rewarding as every day brings something fresh to work on. Write down all of your tasks. Prioritize. Take a deep breath. Let’s go!