Predicting revenue from partner-led deals

A guide to tracking partner deal progress in your forecast

DEAR STAGE 2: I sell a MM/Enterprise SaaS product and we have a few partners leaning in and more regularly bringing us deals. We're an early company and don't have a dedicated partner team at this point. The challenge we are running into is managing these deals in our forecast. How do you know when partner-led deals will close? Any tips for managing the pipeline? I just don't feel confident including it in our pipeline report to our board when I'm not close to the deal. ~Need an accurate forecast

DEAR NEED AN ACCURATE FORECAST: I’m going to assume that in this case, you aren’t co-selling and, instead, you have a partner running the full sales cycle (i.e. your sales team may not have direct contact with the prospect, or the partner is "leading"). This can be a huge win for your business — at the same time, it can definitely present challenges when it comes to calling the monthly number with a high degree of confidence. 

Who better to help us tackle this question then Will Taylor, the Head of Partnerships over at PartnerHacker. We put our heads together and are ready to share some advice on how to get a clear view of what’s coming down the pipe when it comes to partner-led deals. When Will saw this question, he immediately said:

I couldn’t agree more. You should always assume that you are not your partner’s #1 priority. They are running their own business and likely working on multiple projects, with many customers. With the best of intentions, they don’t wake up thinking “I should share an update with [your company] today.”

A partner can provide immense intel on the organization, but YOU need to know what to ask for. These questions should focus on how you fit into the prospect's strategic initiatives, help the partner think through the right enablement/resources/questions to ask the prospect, and show the partner how this deal benefits their own business. Will outlines a framework for inspecting pipeline:

Forecasting these deals: 

• Partner-led deals should be treated like any other deal in your pipeline and with just as much scrutiny. Meaning... if you don't have the proper qualification information, you should 1) aim to find it, and 2) not progress it in your pipeline or commit a deal.

• Until you have some of the proper qualification information, you will need to assume 1) a lower probability of close in your forecast and 2) a longer close time because a partner is likely managing multiple priorities and initiatives, that may include other tech solutions. You could be tech #1, or you could be tech #3.

Questions to ask your partner:

Knowing when partner-led deals will close is complex — you can't just assume your average sales cycle. The questions below allow a seller to uncover deeper contextual info to help the partner navigate the buyer’s journey while simultaneously giving you a greater level of control over the process by unearthing important information.

• Who (or what role) is the main PoC? (compared to the typical buyer)

• Do we have access to a decision maker? (showcasing who that typically is)

• How does this fit into the larger prospect landscape? What priority is it? What initiatives is it attached to? Are they buying other tech first (What is the "tech buying stream" like)?

Questions to ask yourself:

These are questions you should consider when managing timeline expectations. You may decide to discuss them with your partner, but we recommend prioritizing based on what is most impactful to your sales cycle:

• Do they have budget identified?

• Where does this fall in the priority list?

• What is the procurement process like at the prospect org?

• Do they need to buy other technology first?

• Who do we have access to? Just the user? The decision maker?

• The prospect company's initiatives and where the problem we solve impacts this - is it strategic? Part of something larger (that the partner may be involved in)?

Putting it into practice:

• Build a system to capture the actual info you have that informs your sales cycle. For example, if you use MEDDIC, make sure you apply the same level of review to partner deals and leverage this methodology in partner conversations. 

• Set a cadence for updates with your partner. You need to find the balance between asynchronous and meetings to optimize your time commitment, but you do need to ask directly for the qualification and discovery information. If the partner doesn't have the level of detailed information, ask them how they can get it and/or what they need from you in order to get that information.

• Follow-up with the partner on a regular basis asking for the information and/or what actions they are doing to gather that information. Think of your partners as the newest sales reps in your organization — how do you help that new AE come up to speed and align to your sales methodology? Go through your typical prospecting/qualifying questions with them — what information might be missing based on being at X stage in the process?

• Ask them directly where this falls in priority for conversations with the prospect — is this the last thing they talk about, or the first one?

Thanks to PartnerHacker for joining us on this one — we hope this advice helps you get a handle on your pipeline. 

Until next week!