10 Essential Talents for a VP of Partnering

Experienced partner leaders share the skills you should hone.

We had a fantastic summer series with three partnering leaders sharing their background and experience [find the links to watch the recordings at the bottom of this blog or view in the Resource Center]. From these sessions, we learned that VPs wear a lot of hats, and they need the entire organization to support partnering efforts. If you want to be a VP of Partnering, these are 10 talents you need to master:

1. Cross-functional Alignment: You’ll need your executive peers to succeed, so spend time communicating and educating them on the value of partners. Show them how you can be more successful together.
2. Prioritization: There is a lot on your plate as a director of partner programs. You’ll be handling three times as much as a VP. Prioritizing where you spend your time and with whom is key to living any semblance of a “balanced life.”
3. Organization: Along with prioritization is structuring your activities through the days, months, and years to ensure you and the team hit documented goals.
4. Team Leadership: Put the right people in the right places and remove the ‘wrong’ people from the team. They will empty your resources and diminish what the entire team can accomplish. Invest in hiring and empowering an all-star team. (A coach can’t win without good players.)
5. Communication: Say what you’re going to do and do what you say. Be clear and consistent in your communications to your team, to your executive peers and to your partners.
6. Planning: To add the strategic value expected of a VP, understand the opportunities within a geographic or vertical market, partner segment, and partner relationship. Looking to the future, understanding the current market, and creating effective planning for your partner initiatives makes you stand out.
7. Data Analysis: Know what data you have in your PRM and CRM systems. Invest in understanding how the data relates to your goals, plans and priorities. Data and the insights produced from good data is critical to creating a measurable, scalable and predictable partner ecosystem.
8. Profit & Loss Proficiency: Good communications and the skills to build relationships are critical. But remember, finance is the language of business. If you want to be an executive, you need to be able to create and manage a P&L statement.
9. Return on Investment Knowledge: To prove your value and get resources to grow the partnering ecosystem, you must not only understand but also calculate the ROI of your partnering efforts – the program, systems, and team. Always be ready to explain the ROI and be specific.
10. Manage Up: Partnerships are your world. However, they are likely an afterthought to your c-suite. Set expectations and communicate impact to get buy-in. Never miss an opportunity to educate upward the value your partners and your team are bringing to the company.

How do you elevate the impact of your partnering? If you’re stuck on how to make you and/or your team more successful, reach out and we’ll show you.

Watch the webinar replays online:

• Bob Skelley – VP, Channel Sales & Strategy at Arctic Wolf
• Beth Glasstetter – Vice President for PartnerEdge Design & Readiness at SAP
• John Schwan – Head of Partner Sales, North America, at Synopsys

Diane Krakora is CEO of PartnerPath with over two decades of experience defining the best practices and frameworks around how to develop and manage partnerships. She's gathered friends across the partnering industry and enjoys hosting quarterly roundtables with Bob, Beth and John and other partnering executives.