Spend the first 30 days with a new UK partner on one named customer, one person on the partner's side who wins when your first deal closes, and one deliberately easy first deal. By day 30 you should be able to say in writing which of the partner's customers would buy this year, who on their side is pushing, and what it would take to repeat the first deal. Signing more partners can wait until you can.
By John Bates, founder of AXQ
Most partner agreements are signed with a lot of energy and very little plan. Both sides leave the call pleased. The logo goes on the partner page. Then nothing happens for three months, and by the time anyone asks why, the partner has moved on to a vendor who made life easier.
If you are a US software company signing your first UK partner, the first 30 days decide most of what follows. Here is how I would spend them.
Week by week
Four weeks, four jobs.
Agree on one customer, not a territory
The usual first meeting talks about the whole market. Financial services, public sector, mid-market, "the UK". It sounds ambitious and commits nobody to anything.
A better first meeting ends with one name. One existing customer of the partner who has the problem your product solves, and who the partner's account manager would be comfortable calling this month. If the partner cannot name one, you have learned something important early and cheaply.
Find out who wins on their side
Partners are not a single decision maker. There is the person who signed the agreement, the account manager who owns the customer, the engineer who will do the work, and often a practice lead who decides what gets attention.
Ask plainly: when our first deal closes, who on your side is better off? If the answer is "the company", keep asking. Somebody has to want this for reasons of their own, whether that is a target, a certification, a practice they are trying to grow, or simply a customer they want to keep happy. That person is your real partner.
Make the first deal easy
The first deal through a new partner should be the easiest one you will ever do. That means a clear first offer the partner can describe in a sentence, a named person on your side who answers the phone, and a way to price and quote that does not need a dozen emails.
It also means doing more of the work than feels fair. Join the customer call. Write the follow-up note for them. Help with the proposal. The goal of the first deal is not margin. It is proof, for the partner's own team, that working with you is worth the effort.
Write down what you learned
By the end of the month you should be able to answer three questions in writing:
- Which of the partner's customers would buy from you this year, by name?
- Who on their side is pushing, and what do they need from you to keep pushing?
- What would it take to repeat the first deal with a second customer?
If those answers are vague, that is fine at day 30. If they are still vague at day 90, the partnership is probably a logo, not a channel.
What usually goes wrong
Three patterns come up again and again.
Signing too many partners at once
Five partners with half your attention each will do less than one partner with all of it. Start with one or two, and add more once you know what a good first deal looks like.
Treating enablement as a slide deck
Partner teams learn by selling, not by sitting through a portal. Ten minutes on a live customer call beats a two hour training session.
Waiting for the partner to bring the pipeline
In the first months, the vendor usually has to bring the first opportunity to the partner, not the other way round. Once the partner has seen a deal close, they start bringing their own.
The short version
One customer. One person who wins. One easy deal.
Then write down why it worked. That is unglamorous, and it is how most partner routes that actually produce pipeline get started. A London office or a signed agreement gets you into the market. The first 30 days with the right partner decide whether anyone buys.
John Bates, AXQ