Be the partner they call first

For a growing tech company, partners are one of the fastest ways to reach new customers. They open doors you can't open alone, lend you credibility you haven't had time to earn, and sometimes bring budget and opportunities you didn't know existed.

I've built on partners in almost every role I've had. At RunMyProcess, the channel partner program took us from 10 partners to more than 50 worldwide. At Jabmo and Cosmo Tech, technology partners like Microsoft, Salesforce and SAP helped a small company get taken seriously by large buyers. At Packard Bell and Avid, co-marketing with Intel stretched our budgets much further than they would have gone alone.

Here's what I've learned about making partnerships actually work.

What partners bring you

Reach. A partner already has the customers, the relationships and the local presence. Working through them, you get in front of buyers who would take years to reach directly.

Credibility. For a startup, being a partner of a company like Microsoft or SAP tells enterprise buyers you're a safe choice. That matters most when you're small and they've never heard of you.

Budget and opportunities. Large partners often have co-marketing funds, joint events and campaigns looking for content. The companies that use them well get far more visibility than their own budget could buy.

Choose partners who want a shared win

Not every big name is a good partner. Some companies sign agreements and move on. Others have partnership in their DNA.

Microsoft is a good example of the second kind. They understand the idea of a shared win, and you can feel it in how they work with partners: joint programs, real support, people who want the partnership to succeed on both sides.

That's what to look for. A partner whose customers match yours, and who sees your success as part of theirs.

Go deep with a few, rather than wide with many

At Cosmo Tech, we had a partner manager who looked after only a few partners. That was deliberate. It meant we could work with each of them across sales, marketing and go-to-market: joint accounts, shared campaigns, events, and a real relationship between the teams.

A short list of partners you work with closely will almost always bring in more than a long list you barely know.

Be quick, nimble and easy to reach

This is the part that surprises people. Partners often have budget that needs spending before a deadline, or an opportunity that appears at the last minute: a slot at an event, a customer meeting next week, a campaign that needs a case study by Friday.

When that happens, they call the partner they know will respond fast and say yes. If you're quick to react and easy to work with, they come back to you again and again. If it takes you two weeks to answer, the opportunity goes to someone else.

For a small company, this is a real advantage. You can move faster than the big players, so use it.

Promote their technology, not just yours

Partnerships work both ways. When you promote your partner's technology alongside your own, in your content, your events and your sales conversations, you help them sell. That builds goodwill, and it makes your joint story stronger for customers too.

It's one of the simplest ways to become a partner they want to invest in.

The relationship is the strategy

AI is changing a lot of marketing, and it helps with partnerships too: research, co-marketing content, reporting. But partnerships still run on relationships. Trust between people who know they can count on each other is what turns a logo on a slide into a channel that brings in business.

Pick partners who want a shared win, work closely with a few, respond fast, and help them succeed. They'll return the favor.