Go-to-market strategy
Walk me through how you’d create a partner or ecosystem GTM strategy for a platform product.
Decide what partners are for before recruiting any. Reach, a broader product, and delivery capacity each point to different partner types.
Write the business case for each type in their terms, meaning what they earn or save, and build a minimum program around it. Start with a handful of partners and measure joint deals and time to first deal before adding tiers, portals, or more recruits.
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Start with what partners are supposed to do
Ecosystems look great on a slide. Many partner programs launch with a portal, a logo wall, and no deals. The answer that scores well explains why a partner would spend time on you at all.
So begin with the constraint partners would remove. Maybe buyers can’t find you, the product doesn’t connect to the tools customers already use, or you can’t deliver installs and services fast enough. Each constraint points to a different kind of partner.
Partner types and what each one wants
| Partner type | What they want | What they give you |
|---|---|---|
| Integration partners | More value for their own users, sometimes revenue share | A broader product |
| Installers, agencies, and consultants | Billable work and a steady flow of leads | Delivery capacity and local trust |
| Resellers and distributors | Margin on a product that sells easily | Reach into buyers you can’t get to |
| Large channels such as utilities or banks | A benefit for their customers that helps their own goals | Reach at scale |
Installers and utilities for a smart thermostat
“The first thing I’d ask is what’s slowing us down. In a smart thermostat company, for example, homeowners might love the product while a third of buyers need a professional install, and utilities in some regions offer rebates for efficient thermostats. That points to two partner types. Installers give us delivery capacity, and utilities give us reach. I’d write each one’s case. An installer wants paid jobs and leads, so we send them installation requests from our app and give them a better wholesale price. A utility wants to hit its energy-savings targets, so we give them anonymized savings data and a co-branded rebate page. I’d start with one utility and twenty installers in that utility’s area, so the two partner types reinforce each other. No partner portal and no tiers yet, only a named partner manager and a shared weekly report. The numbers I’d watch are time from an install request to a finished install, and rebate-driven sales in that region against a similar region without the program. If installs take longer than a week, installers aren’t putting us first, and the incentive needs work before we recruit more.”
The minimum program for the first partners
- A named contact on your side who answers within a day.
- Onboarding short enough that a partner can sell or build in the first month.
- A simple way to pass leads in both directions and record who sourced them.
- One co-marketing option the partner would use, such as a joint customer story.
- A shared metric and a review after one quarter.
Skip tiers, certification, and a big portal until you have enough partners to tell apart. They add admin long before they change behavior.
Trade-offs in an ecosystem plan
- Reach against control. Partners shape the customer experience, including the bad parts.
- Channel conflict. Partners and your own sales team can chase the same customer. Write the rule for who gets credit before the first deal.
- Exclusivity. An exclusive partner commits harder and limits your options.
- Revenue share. It buys motivation and costs margin on every deal.
The Exceptional answer on the rubric sees the compounding. Each integration makes the product harder to replace, and each successful partner makes the next one easier to recruit.
Why partner answers often produce nothing
“I’d identify potential partners, sign agreements, build a partner portal with co-marketing kits, and run joint webinars, then track the number of partners onboarded each quarter.”
This is how many real programs start. It measures partners signed, which is an activity, and it never says why any partner would invest time. Start from the purpose, write each partner’s business case, and measure joint deals.
Follow-ups on a partner strategy
| They could ask | What they are checking | How to answer it |
|---|---|---|
| A partner competes with you in one area. | Working with rivals | Scope the partnership to where you both win and be explicit about the rest |
| What do partners get that they can’t get elsewhere? | Differentiation | A specific source of demand or data only you have |
| How do you split credit for a deal? | Channel conflict | A written rule, agreed before the first joint deal |
| Who owns partner relationships? | Operating model | A named partner manager, with PMM owning the program’s story |
More questions in this category
Frequently asked questions
- What if I have never run a partner program?
- Show how you would find out what motivates partners, such as interviewing five of them before designing anything. Reasoning from their incentives is what the question scores.
- When do partner tiers start to make sense?
- Once you have enough partners that treating them the same wastes effort. Early on, tiers add admin and change very little.
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