Show Notes
Partnerships is a lot messier than it looks - and that messiness is actually the opportunity. At a Partnership Leaders breakfast during Dreamforce, Greg Portnoy, Founder and CEO of Euler, made a clear case: partnerships are objectively the most efficient go-to-market channel, yet the function is starved of the software and measurement tooling other GTM teams take for granted. If you’ve worked in partnerships, you know the pattern: data scattered across emails, spreadsheets, Slack threads, and legacy PRMs; manual deal intake processes; mediocre enablement that asks partners to do the impossible - learn your product, learn how to pitch it, and keep selling it as their priorities shift. Greg put it plainly: “There’s data and workflows and touch points and activity all over the place. How do you, if you’re not measuring all of that … bring that information together in some sort of a way that’s actionable and reliable?” Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
That question points to the three practical levers every head of partnerships should be focused on right now: * Measurement and ROI storytelling. You can’t ask for budget without an ROI story. Greg argues that when partnerships are measured properly they can show outsized returns - a rationale boards and C-level execs understand. Euler’s early market results reinforce this: partner-sourced revenue growth, partner portfolio expansion, and meaningful time savings per partner manager. Those numbers shift the conversation from “maybe” to “invest here.” * Remove friction where the work happens. People live in Slack, not in separate portals. Greg described Deal Flow AI - an integration that lets teams register partner referrals directly from email or Slack without forcing partners to fill forms. The idea is elegantly simple: meet people where they work, eliminate manual handoffs, and capture the structured data you need downstream. That single change alone raises deal velocity and keeps pipeline honest. * Use AI to make partners productive, not to add another tool. This is the part that excited Greg most. Partnerships haven’t seen the same tooling investment as sales and marketing, so they’re sitting on low-hanging fruit for AI. If your partner portal isn’t just a document repository but an AI agent that knows your enablement, agreements, commissions, and pipeline, it can answer questions, coach partners at the point of need, and dramatically reduce the enablement burden on you and your partners. In Greg’s words, that AI becomes “your partnership LLM” - it’s the difference between telling partners to take a training and giving them an answer when they need it. What does this all add up to? For practitioners, it’s a shift from chasing vanity metrics to engineering predictable outcomes. For leaders, it’s a path to budget and headcount: demonstrate deliverable ROI and the company will invest. For partners and reps, it’s less friction, faster deals, and easier enablement. Three practical moves to start this week: * Audit where partner signals originate (email, Slack, meetings) and instrument the easiest capture points first. * Define two measurable partner outcomes you want this quarter - for example, partner-sourced pipeline and time saved per partner manager - and instrument them. * Pilot an enablement/answering agent for one vertical or partner cohort; measure time to answer and follow-on win rates. Partnerships are maturing from hype to craft. The best teams are no longer guessing what “good” looks like - they’re building repeatable frameworks for partner selection, enablement, and measurement. Greg’s message at Dreamforce was straightforward and energizing: stop treating partnerships like a black box. Instrument it, reduce friction where people actually work, and let AI drive the heavy lifting so people can focus on strategic relationship and outcomes. The result is predictable
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Samrah Khan on partner specialization, faster customer outcomes, and Google Cloud’s evolving ecosystem strategy The system integrator business is undergoing a fundamental transformation. For years, the traditional model was relatively straightforward. Technology vendors sold platforms, customers selected implementation partners, and SIs delivered projects that could stretch across multiple years. AI is changing that equation. Customers want more than technology implementation. They’re looking for partners who can help define their AI strategies, identify business opportunities, develop specialized solutions, and deliver measurable results in months rather than years. In my latest Inside Partnering conversation, I welcomed back Samrah Khan, Director of Google Cloud SI/GSI Ecosystem North America, to explore how these changes are reshaping the partner ecosystem. Samrah leads Google’s SI/GSI partner relationships at a particularly interesting moment. Google Cloud’s business experienced an amazing 82% year-over-year growth in Q2! But the more interesting story isn’t the growth itself. It’s how the expectations of customers, technology providers, and partners are changing. Here are six insights from our conversation. 1. Customers Want a Unified AI Strategy, Not Another Technology Implementation One of Samrah’s clearest observations is that enterprise customers are approaching AI very differently from previous technology transitions. They’re no longer simply shopping for infrastructure or selecting a systems integrator after choosing a platform. Instead, they expect technology providers and partners to work together from the beginning, bringing a comprehensive perspective on business transformation. “Customers are looking at both the partners as well as the hyperscalers or technology providers to come in and look at the whole enterprise from A to Z.” Thanks for reading Inside Partnering! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
For partner leaders, one of the hardest questions isn’t identifying your best-performing partners. Most organizations already know who they are. The harder question is: Who should you invest in next? That question sits at the center of my conversation with Kenneth Fox, CTO and founder of ChannelScaler. Kenneth has spent his career in channels and partnerships, and his perspective combines the technology side of partner management with the practical realities of running partner programs. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
At Sage FUTURE in San Francisco, I sat down with Dan Miller, EVP of Financials and ERP at Sage, to talk about how Sage is thinking about AI, ecosystem partnerships, and the future of ERP platforms. One of the clearest themes from the conversation was this: finance leaders are not resisting AI. They simply want transparency, accountability, and confidence in the outputs. For partner leaders, ISVs, and ecosystem builders, that creates a very different opportunity than the generic “AI transformation” messaging dominating the market right now. Dan framed it around trust. “What finance and operations professionals really want is confidence in the tools that they’re deploying are doing exactly what they are expected to do.” That requirement shapes how Sage is building both its AI capabilities and its broader partner ecosystem. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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At Sage FUTURES in San Francisco, Gretchen O’Hara delivered a clear message to partners: the market is shifting fast - and the opportunity is massive. But despite the noise around AI, one thing hasn’t changed. Partners are still at the center of how businesses win. “The channel is one of the most important things because our partners are the ones that have the deepest industry expertise and are closest to customers that can really solve their unique, unique business challenges.” AI may accelerate execution, but it doesn’t replace the need for domain expertise, customer proximity, and trusted advisory. In fact, it amplifies it. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.