How ready Example Software Co. is for partnerships

Can you actually support a partner and absorb the extra work? Consider training, onboarding, a contact who answers questions, engineering or legal time, and who handles the customer when something breaks.

Before taking on partners, decide who supports them and who owns the customer when something breaks. Start small: basic onboarding materials, one named contact, and a written answer on customer support. Then take on only as many partners as that can carry.

Can you track revenue that partners source or influence?

You can pull partner revenue by hand, but it isn't reliable. Make the partner fields required in your CRM, agree what counts as sourced and influenced, and report on it on a set schedule.

Are your sales and customer-facing teams willing to work alongside partners?

Find out why sales sees partners as competition; it's usually compensation or credit. Fix the incentive first, for example by paying on partner-influenced deals, then train the team on shared accounts. Partnerships rarely survive a sales team working against them.

When leadership makes a partnership decision (approving a partner, setting a boundary, changing priorities), how does it reach the rest of the company?

Choose one standard way to share partnership decisions, and use it before announcing any partnership. A short written update to affected teams works well. People who learn about a partner from a customer stop trusting the program.

When you sign a new partner, do you know how it affects your existing ones?

You think about the effect on existing partners, but informally. Turn it into a short checklist (channel conflict, territory, exclusivity) used before every signature, and decide who tells affected partners. This should be part of your governance process.