Chip Royce, Flywheel Advisors
Would you hire a “finance enthusiast” to be your CFO? Or a “legal hobbyist” to serve as your general counsel?
Of course not. They would laugh you out of the boardroom. You know the CFO or General Counsel roles each require a specific, expert skill set.
So why is the person in charge of your partnership program just someone who is ‘good with people’?
This is the single biggest reason why partnership programs fail.
Eager for a new growth channel, CEOs make a critical mistake. They think the hardest part is finding partners. So, the CEO assigns the task of ‘figuring out partnerships’ to an enthusiastic amateur, often a sales rep or marketer who has shown some initiative.
When the program inevitably stalls, the CEO concludes that partnerships don’t work for their business.
But that diagnosis is wrong. The problem isn’t a shortage of good partners. The real shortage is in the skills and experience needed to build and run a partnership program. Stop treating the role like an internship. It’s a C-level function that demands a general manager’s skill set. Staff it with anyone less, and you’re setting the program up to fail.
How to Structure a Partnership Program for Success
Structuring a successful partnership program begins and ends with defining the leader’s role correctly. You don’t need a relationship manager; you need a business owner—an expert General Manager who can run a complex business unit.
I saw a promising SaaS scale-up make this exact mistake. They had a fantastic product and a huge addressable market. The CEO tapped his top enterprise sales rep, a great talker who knew everyone, to build a channel. The rep signed up dozens of partners in six months. On paper, it looked like a massive success.
A year later, the channel’s revenue was virtually nonexistent. Partners were baffled, the sales team saw the channel as competition, and integrations were chaotic. The star sales rep, burned out and frustrated, quit.
They didn’t need a relationship builder. They needed a General Manager.
Head of Partnerships: 7 Roles in One
When you hire a Head of Partnerships, you’re not just filling one role. You’re hiring for seven.
The Recruiter: Amateurs think recruitment is a numbers game—it’s all about collecting logos and signing agreements. But successful leaders start by defining a precise Ideal Partner Profile. They search for candidates that actually fit, and then vet them rigorously. They only move forward with partners who bring the right access, capabilities, and commitment to drive mutual growth.
The Marketer: A partnership doesn’t promote itself. The Partnerships GM needs marketing experience to create co-marketing programs that generate demand. This means running everything from joint webinars and case studies to integrated campaigns that build pipeline for both sides. Without marketing, the partnership exists in a vacuum.
The Sales Leader: The Partnerships GM must build and run a complete channel sales process. That means creating clear rules of engagement, training the direct sales team to co-sell, and equipping partners to represent the product effectively. They are responsible for measuring ROI and treating the channel like a sales territory with a quota.
The Negotiator: Poorly structured deals can kill a partnership. The Partnership GM needs the business sense and legal know-how to craft term sheets and contracts that are both attractive and profitable. They must navigate everything from IP rights to revenue sharing, protecting the company’s interests while creating a win-win for the partner.
The Project Manager: Every significant partnership is a complex project, especially with technology integrations. The Partnerships GM must corral resources from product, engineering, and marketing to get initiatives delivered on time and on budget. If they can’t manage projects well, integrations will stall, and co-marketing efforts will fail to launch.
The Diplomat: This role requires serious political skill. Externally, the Partnership GM must manage relationships to ensure executive alignment. Internally, they need a strong ability to influence others, aligning stakeholders, smoothing over conflicts, and constantly championing the program’s value to the company.
The P&L Owner: This is the most critical and most overlooked skill. A partnership program is a business, and the Partnership GM owns its P&L. They are responsible for revenue and costs. They must be able to forecast accurately, manage a budget, and deliver a return on investment. If your head of partnerships can’t tell you the program’s contribution margin, you don’t have a business owner.
Don’t Staff An Amateur in the Partner GM Role
The results of staffing this role with an enthusiast are predictable: wasted time, damaged relationships, and a failed program.
The ultimate cost is even greater. The organization sours on the entire concept, assumes ‘partnerships don’t work,’ and abandons a powerful engine for growth.
Don’t let your channel strategy be an afterthought. Employ a professional approach and a leader who is a peer to your other executives.
Treating partnerships as a profession isn’t a suggestion. Employing professionals is the only path to building a sustainable, revenue-generating growth engine. This isn’t a side project. It’s a business unit. It’s time to hire a real General Manager to run it.
Are you a B2B CEO tired of seeing your partnership program fall short?
My Partnership Flywheel framework can instill the professional discipline needed to get it back on track.
If you’re ready to build a real partnership engine, let’s talk.
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