The First 100 Days

Welcome to our Partner Marketing Insights Series, in which we take a closer look at all things Partner Marketing and get the perspectives from the most important representatives within the industry: Partner Marketers themselves.

In this special edition, we’ve asked industry leaders to share their insights on navigating the critical first 100 days in a new Partner Marketing role—focusing on priorities, planning, and quick wins.

We’ve had the pleasure of speaking with two experts who have recently experienced new roles:

Strategic Focus

What were your top three priorities during your first 100 days in your new role?

Anna Lawler:

• Listen and learn. Start to build a picture of best practices, opportunities, gaps and challenges
• Get to know the team and key stakeholders
• Establish the framework for a GTM plan, including goals, metrics and considering quick wins

Toni Boudreaux:

• Know the organisation: product, people, resources
• Define the ideal partner profile (IPP) and develop a robust communication strategy
• Create and implement a data-driven strategy

How did you determine these priorities?

Anna: Before you can think about how you can add value and deliver impact to the business, you need to understand what’s already in place, what’s working and what’s not. I focused on listening and learning, while starting to build relationships to create a foundation.

Toni: These priorities are determined by pre-existing gaps that were identified upon hiring for my role. However, I think understanding why these were priorities in my new role was helped tremendously by listening to and meeting other individuals in the organisation.

How did you approach developing a strategy for partner marketing in your new role?

Anna:

• Aligning the strategy to support the key business priorities is critical. I’ve spent time assessing the maturity of our partner marketing program, and with my team, looking for more opportunities to engage key partner audiences, solicit feedback, and build for a demand-at-scale approach.
• Aligning to the Partner business, I’ve built a strategy that addresses the full partner eco-system, considering partner types, prioritisation, and maturity of relationships.
• The plan is nothing without the team who need to deliver it. It’s been important to spend time with every team member, thinking about how we’ll leverage channels for internal communication, cadence for virtual and in-person meetings, facilitate collaboration opportunities and development.
• Investing time to determine appropriate goals and the metrics that matter has also been key. Some of the metrics are brand new and we’ve built from scratch, aligning to industry standards and best practices. The metrics are critical to demonstrate how we’re making improvements, and delivering on outcomes that support the strategy and business goals.

Toni: I would familiarise myself with the organisation and how we do business, build a strategy based on the data I uncover, and learn the product. This is based on conversations I have with key stakeholders (internally/externally), evaluating pre-existing resources and talking with existing partners to understand wins and their challenges.

Did you utilise any specific frameworks or methodologies in your strategic planning process?

Anna: An initial SWOT analysis served me well in the first 2-months. I used this as an iterative slide to collect and document my thoughts as I met with more of my team, key stakeholders, and partners. Gradually this helped form the basis of my plan.

Using templates from prior roles, I also find a plan-on-a-page to be valuable. As the name suggests, this is a 1 slide overview that connects goals, to metrics, to tactics, and shows planned investment per goal. It’s a great (concise) tool to validate that you’re staying focused on what you set out to achieve.

Toni: One of our company’s key priorities is agile marketing, and what I value most about this approach is the transparency it fosters across all marketing teams. This transparency goes both ways—I have full visibility into what other teams are working on, and they can see my progress as well. This openness not only accelerates rapport-building but also enables us to gather valuable feedback and direction, ensuring that our strategies are aligned and more effective.

Resource Management

How did you assess the existing resources and capabilities of your team? What criteria did you use to determine if your team had the right structure and resources?

Anna: In meeting with the team, you start to get a sense of their experience, capabilities, their achievements, and aspirations. It’s also great to hear feedback on team members from colleagues and Partners too.

Assessing the plan you need to deliver, you can determine if there are head count or skills gaps that would be key success factors. Early on in my tenure it became clear that one area of my team was very under-resourced, and we’ve been able to address that by securing some new head count. If new head count wasn’t an option, we would have had to revisit some of the priorities and deliverables and adjust accordingly. 

Toni: I take stock of their previous experience (some have more sales than marketing background), technological expertise, relationships in the industry and across the organisation by meeting 1:1 with them, their understanding of the product, how long they have been at the company, etc.

I start with the existing data; from there I want to understand our KPIs, and how often are we missing/hitting them? How frequently are we getting in touch with our partners? I would also liaise with the organisation’s other functions that partner marketing touches (sales, ops, etc.) to evaluate whether we have the right structure and resources in place. Whenever possible, I review feedback collected from partners through one-on-one interactions or surveys to understand how to address these gaps. 

Program and Performance Assessment

How did you evaluate the effectiveness of existing partner marketing programs?

Anna: In speaking with the team and key stakeholders I got a great idea of their assessment of current programs, and this provided invaluable context for the results too. The team had ideas on how and where we could improve programs, they highlighted best practices and elements that we would want to maintain, as well as programs that we could eliminate or reduce. A lot of great programs existed already, and it was important to make sure they continue to factor into our plans.

Toni: I took a deep dive into all available data. For instance, I compare the revenue generated or influenced by partners with that sourced directly through our sales channels. Behavioural data is also crucial—I’m particularly interested in our partners’ engagement. Are they actively logging into the partner portal, engaging with our communications, and participating in our enablement events?

I would also seek qualitative feedback from key stakeholders across the business, including Channel Account Managers (CAMs), Partner Account Managers (PAMs), Partner Ops, and Partner Enablement teams. Their insights are invaluable in assessing our partner marketing initiatives’ real-world impact and effectiveness.

What metrics and KPIs did you focus on during your initial assessment?

Anna: I like to leverage demand, engagement, and sentiment. Where we had gaps in being able to measure some of those things, we have added new metrics and developed a scorecard that we’ll use to track our performance.

Toni: I assess partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue, examining the number of opportunities generated by partners and identifying which partner tiers influence the revenue opportunities. I also evaluate the pipeline ROI by comparing marketing dollars invested to the pipeline generated. I determine the pipeline quality by the number of opportunities closed and the time it took to close those deals.

Additionally, I monitor ROI from co-marketing campaigns, partner portal engagement, partner email open rates, the number of partners reaching specific revenue milestones, the volume of partner certifications earned, and the number of deal registrations.

Can you share an example of a quick-win initiative you implemented within your first 100 days?

Anna: We ran our global Partner Sales Kick Off (virtual events covering all regions). This was an opportunity to set up some of the key metrics I like to measure that didn’t already exist.  We used the events as an opportunity to get a baseline for new metrics focused on partner engagement and sentiment. We can now set corresponding targets for the remainder of the year, and demonstrate how we’re making strides in these areas, as a result of our programs.

Toni: One of our challenges is ensuring that CAMs and PAMs have sufficient visibility into our communication initiatives. They wanted a clearer understanding of the communications we sent to partners. To address this, I created a comprehensive communication calendar detailing all partner-facing communications and shared it with our CAMs and PAMs across the organisation. I also extended this visibility to the enablement teams and other marketing departments, providing them with insights into the broader marketing initiatives we’re working on.

This quick-win solution not only improves transparency but also fosters trust across the organisation—something that is crucial in a partner marketing role that interacts with so many different teams.

Key Learnings & Advice

What were the most important lessons you learned in your first 100 days, and what advice would you give to someone starting a partner marketing role?

Anna:

• In a new role, you’re joining with lots of energy and enthusiasm, you’ll quickly identify areas you’d like to work on, process you want to set up, programs you want to develop.
• Prioritisation is key, think about a phased approach to introducing new initiatives, and running at the pace of the business.
• Building for the future and for scale are often key considerations. You can stand up initiatives quickly but spending time to stand them up in the right way, will pay dividends later on.

Toni: Give yourself grace—mistakes are inevitable. Having grown up in a perfectionist environment, I often feel the urge to be overly critical of my own errors. But I constantly remind myself that these mistakes are integral to the learning process. Remember, your company hired you because they believe in your potential to succeed. Stay open-minded and flexible in your approach, and take the time to understand why things are the way they are within the company; there’s usually a reason behind it.

On a related note, if you’re considering multiple job offers before starting a new partner marketing role, don’t let money be your only guide (though it’s always a plus). Choose a position where your future manager is genuinely invested in your career growth. Your mental health will thank you for it.

Disclaimer: The views represented above are solely those of the individuals contributing to this article and may not reflect the organisations they represent.