Partnerships are no longer a “nice-to-have” in your go-to-market strategy. It’s a proven revenue driver. Companies investing in partnerships and adopting ecosystem-led growth (ELG) are 24% more likely to meet or exceed their revenue targets (The Future of Revenue Report). While partnerships have become a powerful go-to-market channel, getting them right isn’t easy. The challenge isn’t just launching a program. It’s ensuring your program delivers measurable impact.
To uncover proven partnership best practices, we asked three key questions to the individuals featured on Pavilion’s 2025 list of 50 Partnership Executives to Watch:
- When launching a new partnership program, what are the foundational steps you take to set it up for success, and how do you determine early metrics to gauge its performance?
- How do you align your partnership strategy with your sales and marketing teams—especially regarding revenue attribution and shared KPIs—to ensure a unified go-to-market approach?
- What innovative methods or tools have you employed to identify and prioritize potential channel partners, especially those that aren’t immediately obvious in your industry?
While their approaches vary, the most successful programs all share common principles. The best partnerships start with a customer-first mindset, ensuring every collaboration adds value where it matters most. Programs that thrive are built with clear goals, strong enablement, and structured incentives that motivate both partners and internal teams.
Alignment with sales and marketing is critical to partnership success. Misaligned GTM teams face 70% longer sales cycles (The Future of Revenue Report). Effective leaders proactively engage sales and marketing stakeholders, establish shared KPIs upfront, and implement transparent revenue attribution models. For example, top-performing companies frequently conduct cross-departmental alignment workshops to reinforce collaboration.
Leading partnership teams rely on advanced analytics and ecosystem mapping, utilizing tools like Crossbeam, intent data, and Total Addressable Market (TAM) analysis. This enables them to identify and prioritize strategic partnerships that drive significant revenue growth and offer a competitive advantage.
Partnerships aren't merely an auxiliary strategy. They're foundational to an effective go-to-market approach. The leaders featured in this blog have built partnership programs that drive significant revenue, expand market reach, and establish lasting competitive advantages. By applying these proven principles, you'll position your partnership initiatives for sustainable growth and measurable impact.
Building a Strong Foundation: How to Launch a Successful Partnership Program
When launching a new partnership program, effective leaders prioritize clarity on customer value, partner fit, internal alignment, and measurable success.
1. Customer-First Approach
The best partnership programs start by understanding the customer journey. Leaders identify where partners add value, aligning closely with customer needs, behaviors, and technologies. Partnerships solving genuine customer pain points drive quicker engagement and revenue.
As Frances Kilgour of Drivewyze explains, this customer-first approach is foundational:
“When launching our program or reevaluating the existing program, we start with the customer. Knowing the customer value chain helps identify opportunities where a partner enhances the experience."
2. Defining the Ideal Partner Profile (IPP)
Successful teams create an Ideal Partner Profile to target companies that complement their offering, share a target audience, and provide mutual benefit. Leaders leverage frameworks and data-driven methods like TAM analyses and industry research to prioritize partners.
Rachel Tyers of Okendo highlights the value of starting with real signals:
"One of the first things I look at is who the inbound partners we’ve had are, or what kind of partners are natively or organically referring business to us."
3. Structuring the Program for Success
A robust partnership program relies on structured onboarding, training resources, clear expectations, and co-marketing opportunities. Without this foundation, even great partners struggle to produce meaningful outcomes.
Antonio Caridad of Tricentis breaks it down clearly:
“There are four main pillars that you always have to take into consideration. Those are programs, systems, metrics, and enablement."
4. Early Metrics for Performance
While revenue is the ultimate goal, early indicators of success include:
- Partner activation rates
- Lead flow and deal velocity
- Engagement in joint marketing, co-selling, and training
Tracking these metrics allows continuous refinement and scalability.
Alex Richards of Glassbox explains why a balanced approach to metrics matters:
“Every partnership program should track key business metrics like pipeline contribution, influenced and sourced revenue, and deal velocity. But beyond traditional revenue-based metrics, we also need to ensure that partners see tangible ROI—whether that’s in the form of larger deal sizes, shorter sales cycles, or increased customer retention.”
5. Securing Internal Buy-In
A partnership program can’t succeed in isolation. Partnership programs require alignment with internal teams, especially sales and marketing. Securing executive buy-in ensures sustainable investment, and clear revenue models prevent internal conflicts.
Kyle Schroeder of Movable Ink shares how this looks in practice for them:
"We’ve aligned our organization from top to bottom around our partner ecosystem. Whether it’s sales, marketing, customer success, or product, we take a partner-first strategy, thinking about how partners can accelerate our core business objectives."
For an additional resource, check out this episode of The Revenue Leadership Podcast, "Strategic Planning and Executive Alignment with Eric Gilpin, CRO at G2."
Aligning Partnerships with Sales and Marketing for a Unified Go-to-Market Strategy
The most successful partnership programs don’t operate in a vacuum. They are fully integrated into the broader go-to-market strategy, ensuring that partnerships, sales, and marketing work together toward shared revenue goals.
Misaligned teams face 50% higher customer acquisition costs and 36% longer sales cycles (The Future of Revenue Report).
1. Creating a Shared Vision
Sales, marketing, and partnerships all have different priorities, but the most effective organizations ensure these teams are aligned under a unified revenue strategy. Clearly defined roles should be established and contribute directly to pipeline growth, accelerated revenue, and enhanced customer retention.
When alignment is missing from the broader company strategy, collaboration breaks down quickly. Antonio Caridad of Tricentis puts it this way:
"The reality is that if your overall company strategy is not aligned and does not ensure that teams collaborate with each other, there’s no alignment—so you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle."
For an additional resource, check out Jenny Podewils’ episode of Topline Spotlight. Jenny, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Leapsome, dives into aligning teams in a dynamic environment.
2. Setting Clear Revenue Attribution Models
One of the biggest challenges in aligning partnerships with sales and marketing is revenue attribution. Many organizations struggle with conflicting incentives, unclear ownership, or competing over credit for deals. The best leaders avoid these issues by implementing structured attribution models that track sourced, influenced, and transacted revenue in a way that benefits all teams.
Alex Richards of Glassbox shares how they’ve approached this:
"To ensure alignment, we’ve built a structured revenue attribution model inside Salesforce that tracks sourced, influenced, and transacted deals across all partner types. This ensures that partnership-driven revenue is clearly defined and recognized at the executive level.
Beyond revenue attribution, we integrate partners into key GTM motions like account selection, ABM (account-based marketing), co-selling initiatives, and content strategies to ensure they work alongside sales rather than compete with direct sellers."
3. Incentivizing Sales to Work with Partners
A major roadblock to alignment is when sales teams don’t see the value in working with partners. 59.26% of respondents to The Future of Revenue Report shared that they’re using a top-down approach, with the partnership team working side by side with sales leadership (i.e., the CRO/VP Sales or equivalent worked with the partnership team to enable the revenue organization) vs a bottom-up approach with reps. Leaders also ensure that salespeople are properly incentivized, avoiding models that reduce commissions when a partner is involved.
Ultimately, alignment efforts stall if the team doesn’t feel motivated to work with partners. Gauri Chawla of Stibo Systems puts it plainly:
"One thing that I would definitely promote is to make sure that your sales reps really understand the value of working with partners. How do you reward your salespeople? Do you give commission to partners and carve it out from your reps' commission? Don’t do that. Figure out another way to reward your reps so that they want to work with partners.”
For an additional resource, check out this report on tailored coaching to bridge the sales performance gap from Ascent Cloud and Pavilion.
4. Using Data to Strengthen Collaboration
The most effective partnership leaders track and share key performance metrics that prove the impact of partnerships. Metrics like pipeline contribution, deal velocity, and customer lifetime value help demonstrate how partnerships support sales and marketing efforts. Organizations that build these insights into their CRM and reporting structures make it easier for all teams to see the value of partnerships.
Daniel Sandlet of Typeform highlights how key metrics can reveal deeper issues:
“If activation rates are low, it could indicate that our onboarding process isn’t effective. If revenue generation is slow, it might mean we need to refine our partner selection criteria or provide better enablement resources.”
Beyond the Foundations
Identifying and prioritizing the right channel partners is crucial for a successful partnership program. As previously discussed, start by understanding your customers, developing an Ideal Partner Profile (IPP), and leveraging data-driven tools for partner identification.
Beyond these foundational strategies, look beyond traditional resellers. Many organizations focus exclusively on resellers or conventional tech integrations, overlooking valuable partnerships with agencies, consultants, system integrators, and service providers. These non-traditional partners often wield substantial influence over purchasing decisions and can significantly enhance long-term customer success.
As Alex Richards of Glassbox noted, this broader ecosystem view is essential for identifying truly impactful partners:
"Instead of focusing solely on traditional resellers, we map the broader ecosystem to uncover consultants, agencies, system integrators, and service providers who influence enterprise buying decisions. Many of these partners don’t just resell software; they drive digital transformation, making them strategic allies for market expansion."
Rob Rebholz of Superglue adds to this perspective, emphasizing the importance of aligning partnerships with how customers derive value:
"For example, in some industries, traditional reseller programs don’t work well, but services-based partnerships can be incredibly valuable. We look for opportunities where partners can drive revenue by helping customers get more value out of our solution."
Takeaways:
- Lead with customer value: Partnership programs must be designed around real customer problems, accelerate revenue, and deepen engagement.
- Invest in foundations: Clear goals, structured enablement, and compelling incentives turn partnerships from promising opportunities into tangible results.
- Align, don’t silo: Integrate partnerships closely with sales and marketing. Companies using a top-down alignment approach are nearly 60% more effective in driving adoption.
- Attribute clearly, succeed jointly: Precise revenue attribution removes internal friction and motivates cross-team collaboration.
- Prioritize partners with data: Strategic partner selection powered by intent data, TAM analysis, and ecosystem tools like Crossbeam accelerates growth and ensures lasting success.
Thank you
This blog was made possible by Pavilion’s 50 Partnership Executives to Watch. Special thanks to these contributors for sharing their insights:
- Alex Richards, VP of Partnerships at Glassbox
- Antonio Caridad, Head of Global Partner Operations at Tricentis
- Daniel Sandler, Head of Partnerships at Typeform
- Frances Kilgour, VP of Business Development and Channel Management at Drivewyze by Fleetworthy
- Gauri Chawla, SVP of Global Alliances at Stibo Systems
- Graham Collins, Head of Partnerships at QuotaPath
- Kyle Schroeder, VP of Global Partnerships at Movable Ink
- Matthew Doong, Head of Referral Partner Sales at Betterment
- Natan Edelsburg, Chief Partnerships Officer at Muck Rack
- Rachel Tyers, SVP of Marketing and Partnerships at Okendo
- Rob Rebholz, CEO & Co-Founder at Superglue
Pavilion's 2025 Partnership Executives to Watch
Partnerships are no longer a supporting function—they are a driving force behind business growth.
Yet, partnership leaders often face complex challenges, from scaling programs efficiently to measuring ROI and securing internal buy-in.
Despite these obstacles—and often lacking representation in strategic decision-making conversations—these leaders are building thriving ecosystems, driving organizational change, and reshaping the future of business.
