A partner GTM plan (go-to-market plan) is crucial to systematically drive desired results – both brand and revenue.
You can access a free template I created here. Read on below to see how to use it.
Why A Partner GTM plan?
Most partnerships languish (85% – 90% of them). They start out with the best of intentions but then fade away as daily pressures mount. There are simply too many things to do for everyone – marketing, sales, account managers, and practice/product teams.
So, as much as we want to “just get out there and sell”, without a plan to guide execution towards the north star, reality sets in in as little as a few days.
An actionable partner GTM plan helps us keep things on track. It also enables us to gain co-operation and buy-in from our partners across the table.
In the partnership maturity model, I had outlined 4 key pillars of partner GTM success.
- Sales
- Marketing
- Competency
- Governance
A practical partner GTM plan makes these 4 workstreams simpler to execute, It allows us to check for things that are de-railing the partnership goals achievement and then adjust course as needed.
It acts as an early warning system.
Before You Build The Plan
As you will see, the template has a bias for action.
But whether you use the template or not, there are some best practices to keep in mind.
Start with the right goals and targets. Without these, as soon as things get hectic, you’ll be questioning the value of everything you are doing.
However, in order to get to the goals and targets, a little bit of work is involved to figure out the right value-proposition. Do this before creating the plan. For example, a partnership goal of “win 5 fortune 100 clients” or “raise brand awareness by 30%” needs some kind of rationale for getting there. Likewise, “build an AI solution for wealth management with partner” is a nice action but does it align with our current client base or solve a real problem for clients?
To reach the targets, we need to be able to go in with a game plan that pushes us closer to the goals every week. Read my blog on design thinking for growth to get started with problem definition by following an outside-in process.
Finally, any GTM plan is a people plan. Not just within your company, but at your partner too. So create those relationships based on a strong alignment to the goals. And then maintain them by keeping trust, transparency, and accountability front and center.
Here are some other tactics to make sure your plan will be worth more than the cloud storage it uses:
- Make a single person supported by a named cross-functional team accountable for the plan. I think this should be obvious but just wanted to get it out there. This person should have something at stake for them to treat this seriously.
- Make the status of the partner GTM plan a line item on regular business, sales, and marketing reviews. If you don’t, then you send the signal that it’s not important, and it’s most likely not getting done.
- Finally, regardless of how slow the movement on the plan is, don’t skip the weekly or biweekly reviews of the plan. It’s quite easy to let things slide as workload increases but it’s vital to bubble up the status so long as the priorities haven’t changed (or to change them if needed).
How to Build The Plan
Building the actual plan is quite simple once you have the pre-requisites taken care of. All you have to do is to follow the template and fill out marketing, sales, technical, and governance activities.
Most of these are standard activities such as webinars, sales outreach, point-of-view content, certifications, creation of demo’s, and so on. The sequencing and actual execution is what trips us up in most cases.
However, there are some best practices for this too.
Remember to create periodic gratification.
In the world of loyalty programs, it’s common to give customers options to redeem their points often even as they are working towards something bigger. That keeps then engaged with the program.
Here’s how that translates to a partner plan. Try to build in shorter milestones that give the team a sense of accomplishment and progress. It could be publishing a blog, or posting something on LinkedIn, following up with a friendly customer to validate assumptions, presenting to the partner sales team, and so on. If wins come regularly, the motivation stays up.
Remember to stay focused on the goal. For example, LinkedIn posts are good but if you are reaching the same people with every post, it’s probably ok to scale that back and try something that will reach clients and partners better.
Your target audience includes your partner. For example, if you are posting about the joint value proposition, then the more sales team members you reach the better.
Finally, in marketing, there is a concept of campaign uplift – basically it means that given the same volume how can I drive up the response rates. So if your email campaigns or advertisements are not getting the desired effect, perhaps you need to change the messaging or try other channels. Warm contacts always work better than the cold ones all other things being equal. So revisit your list and optimize it. This goes for sales outreach too.
Who can use the partner GTM template
The partner GTM plan template leans a bit towards channel partners, but is generic enough to be used by product companies to structure their collaboration with their partners.
In either case, it works best if you put in some upfront effort to define the value proposition and problem statement clearly.
It also helps if both partners have a single named contact vested in making the partnership a success and meeting the goals set out. However, sometimes that’s not possible. Especially if you are a consulting firm in the early stages with a well established product or platform company. In those cases, making progress on the formal partner tier criteria will be needed in addition to some more-creative-than-usual blocking & tacking on the field with sales and marketing.
Some Common Gotcha’s
As is often famously quoted, “idea don’t really matter, execution does”.
So here too, if the business case has been validated, the major pitfalls will be in execution.
Creating the value proposition, bringing the team together, reaching out to clients and asking for a meeting, writing the actual content to publish, getting a demo built, etc. is where some of the challenges will arise. Don’t underestimate how how long it can take for each of these.
However, there’s no short cut to these except recognizing our weaknesses, rolling up our sleeves, and getting down to business.
Some best practices are applicable.
Avoid the not-invented here syndrome. For the marketing messaging, we don’t need to come up with ground breaking messaging. Your partner is already going to market with a messaging that has resonated successfully with clients. Build on it, borrow their material, add your twist, and test it out.
Equally true for the solution concepts. Just because a few others are doing something similar does not mean you’ve lost out. If you really want to be different, find an extension of the problem by reviewing the business process. Perhaps data quality upstream could be an add-on, or perhaps a pre-built template, a useful AI based accelerator, or an architecture blueprint.
Be agile. Your solution need not be 100% ready. In fact, unless you have checked with a few actual customers, it may be wiser not to build it. Start with a UX prototype, or a concept on slides. Then incrementally create as things become clearer. Apply the same principle to marketing. Do a blog before you do a webinar and get client feedback by having sales send the blog to friendly clients.
Next Steps
Following and tracking a well defined partner GTM plan is a great way to successfully monetize your partnerships. It provides a structure to execute against, lets you celebrate the incremental wins, and compels you to keep an eye on the prize.
Access the template here. Be sure to define the value proposition beforehand. Like with any strategic endeavor, it requires collaboration between marketing, sales, and practices / products.
If you want help, then please contact me for a discussion.
On this page, I also have a short partner monetization quiz you can take.
Happy executing!