Building Momentum and Coalition for Business Growth in 2024: A Guide for Partner Marketers
As we near the close of 2023 and stand on the precipice of 2024, the echoing sentiment is universal – “Where did the year go?” Whether you’re deep in your 2024 planning or just commencing the journey, this guide emphasises the vital importance of partner marketers and sales working in tandem. Drawing inspiration from discussions within the Coterie Community, we introduce an innovative model to guide your planning endeavours.
Thanks to: Colleen Fogerty, Fernando Rynne, Pamela Attieh-Durrant, Claire Runswick.
The Challenge: Aligning Partner Marketing with Sales
Alignment between sales and marketing, particularly within partner ecosystems, is the linchpin of growth, scalability, and efficiency. Yet, synchronizing partner marketing with sales presents its unique set of challenges. Discrepancies arise when marketing envisions one trajectory, and sales another. Resource constraints, misaligned metrics, differing incentive structures, and timing discordance further accentuate the rift. The essence? Achieving harmony and coherence is paramount.
The Challenge: Aligning Partner Marketing with Sales
Wear Multiple Hats: Move beyond your partner marketing role. Delve into the concerns of sales, finance, and product teams. Cultivating an understanding of the broader organizational ecosystem is indispensable.
Engage and Collaborate: Nurture consistent dialogue with the sales team, culminating in a unified force. Regular governance meetings can facilitate this cohesion.
Define Clear Milestones: Set tangible milestones with stipulated deadlines to ensure momentum. Even artificially constructed, these milestones galvanize both marketing and sales towards a unified goal.
Joint Business Planning: Engage in collaborative business planning and align pipelines.
Vision Alignment: Visualize collective success. Speak a shared language and participate in collaborative forums.
Internal Brand Promotion: Magnify the impact of partner marketing through various avenues like campaigns, events, and success narratives. Illuminate its value for sales and other stakeholders.
Coalition Building: Champion collaboration not only with sales but also with finance and product teams.
The Challenge: Aligning Partner Marketing with Sales
For a holistic 2024 strategy, the outer shell should comprise fundamental components to sustain the partnership:
Initiate with a business plan.
Follow with a marketing strategy.
Introduce quarterly business assessments to ensure adherence.
Conclude with performance management.
Internally, the plan’s composition should be:
A predominant 70% dedicated to routine marketing activities.
A substantial 20% allocated to time-tested strategies from past successes.
A reserved 10% for pure innovation – strategies with uncertain outcomes that could potentially be integrated into the 20% in the future
