Introduction
On 30 April, we hosted an open Ask Me Anything session with Sonya Jamula (Partner Growth Architect) and Michelle Teo (Partner Marketing Specialist) of Partnerships in Play — two operators with nearly 50 years of combined SaaS partnerships experience.
The audience brought their real challenges. Sonya and Michelle brought unfiltered answers.
Here are the highlights.
Partner Operations
Stop building broad. Start building focused.
One of the most common mistakes Sonya sees in early-stage partner programs is trying to do everything at once — referrals, resellers, integrations, co-sell, agencies, and a partner portal, all at the same time.
The advice: pick the partner motion most likely to move the business, prove it, and then expand. Sounding mature too early usually just creates noise.
Partner activity is not partner impact.
Enablement sessions, certifications, and MDF spend are not inherently bad — but they are not the same as pipeline, revenue, or retention. Sonya's rule: if a partnership doesn't have customer relevance, business commitment, and a clear path to execution, it's a distraction in nicer clothes.
On proving partnership ROI to CFOs and CROs
When it comes to attribution, Sonya recommends separating reporting into three clear tiers: partner sourced (the partner created the opportunity), partner assisted (they helped progress an active deal), and partner influenced (meaningful impact with evidence). The key is to define each tightly — and only report what you can stand behind. Don't ask leadership to trust partner influence as a feeling. Make it inspectable and be conservative enough that the number actually earns credibility.
Scale is not headcount. Scale is process.
Adding people to do more things with more partners is not how you scale. The answer is repeatable, automated processes — and bringing in someone from RevOps who can ingrain those processes into how the rest of the revenue org operates. It's not the most exciting answer, but it's always the right one.
On breaking into enterprise partnerships
Don't lead with "we should partner." That's too vague, and enterprise teams hear it constantly. Instead, lead with a specific reason they should care — which team inside the organization has a reason to act right now, what customer overlap exists, and what business problem you can help them solve. Warm paths through mutual customers, investors, or advisors dramatically improve your odds. Enterprise partner outreach works best when it feels like a relevant business conversation, not a pitch looking for a home.
The three quick fixes Sonya always comes back to
Track everything. If you're not tracking and attributing correctly, you're operating in the gray — and no CFO or CRO will take you seriously. Second, scale means automation, not more people — look at every manual activity in your program and ask where a system or process can replace it. Third, don't chase shiny logos. A big name on a slide feels good for about half an hour. A smaller partner who shares your ICP and is actually committed to working with you will drive more revenue.
Partner Marketing
The best partner enablement is the enablement partners actually use.
Partner enablement isn't one-size-fits-all — it looks completely different depending on whether you're working with a technical integration partner, a reseller, an agency, or a referral partner. Michelle's approach: talk to your partners directly, understand how they make money, and build enablement that helps them do that better. For tech partners, that means self-serve distribution and short time-to-value. For agency or referral partners, that means sales materials, battle cards, and talking points that help their team sell you.
Know your joint ICP — really know it.
Most companies say they know their ICP. But when pushed on what messages those buyers need to hear, which channels they prefer, what content formats they consume, or whether they prefer self-serve or personal relationships — the answers get vague quickly. Michelle's recommendation: once you've identified who you want to go after, speak to them directly. It removes the guesswork and points you exactly where you need to go.
Program activation and sales floor activation are not the same thing.
This was one of the sharpest insights of the session. A program can look healthy — partners onboarded, campaigns launched, MDF spent, certifications done — while the CRM remains flat at quarter close. That gap means the partnership is not connected tightly enough to sales priorities, rep behavior, and pipeline workflows. The fix is rarely more partner marketing. It's getting closer to the sales operating system: target account lists, AE workflows, pipeline reviews, attribution rules, and incentives. Program activation is the input. Sales floor activation is where the CRO starts to believe you.
On early partner behaviors that predict revenue — and red flags that don't.
Three things Michelle consistently sees signal a partnership won't perform, even when it looked promising at signing: the partner simply doesn't have operational capacity beyond their day-to-day, there's too much friction in the working relationship to sustain it, and the partner's strategic priorities have shifted away from where you fit. The biggest red flag of all, though? No one discussed the activation plan before the agreement was signed. If that conversation didn't happen upfront, everything downstream will be harder than it needs to be.
The tactical move most teams overlook.
Rather than creating new campaigns from scratch with every partner, understand their existing marketing roadmap first. Find out what they're already planning for the year, and build on it. It's easier to add value to what's already in motion than to convince a new partner to act on something brand new. Aim for consistent joint activity — one campaign a month is a strong benchmark — and build in check-in points to review results and adjust.
Conclusion
The throughline across both conversations was the same: most partnership programs don't fail because of bad partners. They stall because the foundations — the metrics, the attribution, the activation plans, the processes — were never built clearly enough to hold the weight of scale.
Sonya and Michelle covered a lot of ground in 1 hour. If you missed the session, the recording is available.
And if you want to dig into where your own program is getting stuck, Kiflo's PRM platform is built to give partnership teams the visibility and structure they need to move from reactive to consistent.
