3 Reassuring Takeaways from My EMEA Event Tour
Recently, I had the pleasure of going ‘on tour’ in Europe to help Impartner host three Partnership Leaders Meetup events. PartnerPath is the Impartner Partner-of-the-Year for 2024 (what a mouthful) and I jumped at the chance to meet partnering enthusiasts on my side of the pond. The ‘tour’ was more networking and finger food than guitars and trashed hotel rooms, but still a very cool experience.
These events gather partnering professionals in great locations across Europe to share their stories, learn from one another, and most importantly – connect. Chatting and forming connections is something we partner people do effortlessly, so it was great to be given the opportunity. After 4000 miles of travel on trains, planes and automobiles and hundreds of conversations, I returned home with three reassuring thoughts about the partnering community.
1. Partnering is a way of life.
Attendees travelled out of a desire to learn from each other and connect with partnering colleagues and experts. These partnering professionals consider ‘better together’ the right method for every aspect of their career and business, not just their party-line for developing partnerships for their organisation. Some folks made new connections whilst others used the event as an opportunity to put a face to the video image of online connections (turns out some people are tall!) or network for possible career moves. Even the partnering consultants in the room were there to catch up with their community and it was a great opportunity to trade stories and discuss the market whispers.
2. Partnering is ageless.
Attendees defied generational divides. Sure, there were those who prefer Abba to Dua Lipa, but as I referenced Daft Punk in my hosting of the workshop, I realised there is no one reference point any longer. The partnering professional world now has the benefit of multiple generations in it and (finally) far more diversity than it had 20 years ago. The language being used is evolving as we see a shift from those who talk ‘channel’ to those who talk ‘partnering’ and mean the same thing. This increase in diversity broadens the experiences being brought to the table and better represents the partner base we hope to engage. However, I was left unsure if we should be comforted or frustrated that despite music, semantics and other generational divides the challenges in channel/partnering remained the same across multiple conversations and European cities. (Can we ever truly solve comp neutrality?)
3. The Partner Professional community is growing.
London drew the biggest crowd of the events I co-hosted. With over 250 registrations, it represented one of the largest Partnership Leaders Meetups ever. I thought back to the early 2000’s when friends would joke that I was like Chandler from Friends and nobody understood what a ‘Channel Manager/Director’ was. They would call me up when their laptop broke – only to be bitterly disappointed that I was useless to them. The reality now is that partnering is everywhere and the community driving the movement is too. We are in a time of great growth as a partnering community which brings with it both positives and more challenging aspects. There is an endless list of event invitations to consider, each promising to enrich you with knowledge in a room full of fellow partnering geeks (are we finally cool?). Identifying which events to attend, finding the right circles to invest your time (and money) in, and connecting with peers to understand their experiences, is ever more challenging.
Despite how tired I was upon returning home, I was invigorated by my conversations and grateful for a chance to mix it up with the partner community IRL. I had the opportunity not only to evangelise the importance of a good partner experience at the workshops we co-hosted, but also to gather the thoughts of the hive mind on some key digital experience questions. You can be part of the audience! Access the questions that inspired thought and collaboration at the event in our PDX (partner digital experience) quiz. It’s a great tool for anyone needing a gut-check on how their partner automation tools are supporting (or sabotaging) a good partner experience.
Want to talk about partner experience over a virtual coffee with Amy? She would love to hear your partner automation stories, opportunities, and challenges ahead.
Amy Roberts is the EMEA principal and PRM lead at PartnerPath. She is based in York, UK.
