Before you renew the partnership, test it.

The five questions, and what each one disproves

Everybody gets along. There have been plenty of meetings, maybe a joint slide deck. The question is whether anyone can point to the account where the two companies are actually trying to win something together.

SOURCED: Have they brought you anything? A partner who has never handed you an opportunity you did not already have is a partner you are working for. One sourced deal is worth a year of joint webinars.

ACCOUNTS: Is there a named account, right now? Not a target list. A customer, a requirement, two sellers who know each other's names. If nobody can name one, the partnership exists on a slide.

OWNER: Does someone on their side get paid when you win? Partnerships run on comp plans, not goodwill. If nobody at the partner carries a number that includes you, your deals are a favor, and favors do not scale.

PLAN: Is there a plan with dates? A deck says what the partnership could be. A plan says three accounts, two dates, and who owns each one. If it does not fit on a page, it is a deck.

PULL: Would they call you first? Stop calling for two weeks and see what happens. A real partner notices. The rest of them were waiting for you to do the work.

Four kinds of partner

Real. Deals are moving with both names on them. Feed it.

All talk. Lots of activity, no deals. Everybody is busy and nothing closes. Most partnerships live here, and most of them never leave.

Neighbors. You get along. That is all that is happening.

Logo swap. They are on your slide, you are on theirs, and that is the partnership. Stop spending time on it and say so.

Hi, I'm Mark.

I've spent a lot of years helping customers buy complicated technology. For six of them I led partner sales teams at AWS. Before that F5, Red Hat, and a couple of storage companies you've probably forgotten. Before all of that, 20 years as a Marine.

Along the way I've been the seller defending the deal, the partner trying to help, the manager asking annoying questions, and the guy one level up explaining why the forecast moved again.

QuotaBird is where I put the things I've found useful. Most of the tools are free. Most take a few minutes. None of them require you to adopt a new sales religion. Use whatever helps.

A few things I see a lot

Rarely just one of them. Usually a couple at the same time, quietly making each other worse.

The forecast call has become the job. Your manager wants a status on everything by noon, the CRM wants a next step on every line, and the customer is the last person you talk to each day.

The pipeline looks better than it really is. Plenty of opportunities in the CRM, but once you ask about budget, timing and who actually wants the thing, the number gets smaller fast.

The partner likes you, but nothing is happening. Plenty of meetings, maybe a joint deck. Nobody can point to the accounts where the two companies are actually trying to win something together.

The team is busy, but there isn't much rhythm. The forecast call happens. The one-on-ones happen. Nobody is sure what the team should do differently this week to make next quarter better.

The number from above doesn't match what you see below. Leadership has a growth number. Your team has a pipeline. You're the one who has to explain why they disagree without sounding like you've already given up.

A team can be behind plan for a lot of reasons. One seller needs help getting in front of customers. Another is doing fine and wants you to stay out of the way. Someone else thinks the year is already gone. Sometimes the rep is fine and the territory, the comp plan or the pipeline they inherited isn't. The useful part is figuring out which one you're dealing with before you fix the wrong one. That's what the tools here do, one deal, one rep, one territory at a time. It's also most of what I do.

Need another set of eyes?

Sometimes a calculator isn't enough. If you're stuck on a deal, an account, a partner, a territory, a QBR or a federal problem, I'm happy to look at it with you. Here's exactly how it works:

1. Pick a time. Name, email and one line about what's going on. No deck required.
2. I read your line before we talk, so we start in the middle instead of at the beginning.
3. Twenty minutes, free. Then you decide whether there's anything more. No pitch, and no sales follow-ups.

If I don't think I can help, I'll tell you.

If it's something that takes more than a conversation, we can figure that out too. I also build fedhoo, a federal market research tool.

Questions