Partner Sales Programs

🌟 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐢𝐠 - 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐢𝐝𝐞! The biggest breakthroughs don’t happen by digging deeper into one area - they happen when ideas, industries, and technologies collide. Think about it: AI combined with IoT has transformed healthcare. Sustainability powered by cloud solutions is opening new markets. The magic lies at the 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 - where fresh opportunities emerge. 🚀 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 1️⃣ 𝐅𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Combining technologies like AI and cloud accelerates growth. 2️⃣ 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡: Partnerships across industries unlock untapped customers. 3️⃣ 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞: Cross-industry collaboration lowers costs and drives new value. At Deloitte, I’ve seen the power of collaboration. By partnering with organizations like #Celonis, #Schaeffler, #HumboldtInnovation, and #GermanEntrepreneurship, we’ve established the European non-profit AI ecosystem, #KIPark. This initiative brings together players from different industries to unlock innovation. For example, we’ve developed an ESG platform, marking a significant step toward sustainable solutions that are robust and business-relevant. 🛠️ 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐀𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 1️⃣ 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲: Who could you partner with to create something new? 2️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐌𝐢𝐱𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬: Pair data scientists with operations or customer-facing teams. 3️⃣ 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐥𝐲: Start small pilots that combine tech and business ideas. 🌍 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐞 The future belongs to businesses that connect the dots others don’t see. Breadth - not just depth - is the key to growth and resilience. 💬 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐧 What’s one unexpected partnership or idea you’ve seen recently that sparked innovation? Let’s exchange ideas. Who knows what new intersections we might uncover together? #Deloitte #AI #Innovation #Leadership #BusinessStrategy #Partnerships 𝐴𝑟𝑡𝐵𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑙. 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑂𝑓𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒. 𝐹𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑡 @𝑔𝑎𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑢𝑡ℎ

One of the biggest shifts in Partner hiring is happening fast in the Consulting market. Firms aren’t just hiring Partners from other consultancies or promoting from within anymore. The traditional path, Analyst to Manager to Partner, or the familiar lift-out from a competitor is no longer the predominant source of talent. Clients want something different. Knowledge and frameworks are everywhere now. What carries weight is lived experience and the ability to influence. That’s why we are seeing Consulting firms increasingly sourcing their senior talent from Operating Partners in Private Equity, Senior Leaders from Industry, and Executives with real fluency in AI and Technology. Many of these leaders had some experience as Consultants earlier in their careers, but their real impact, and credibility, comes from sitting in the client’s seat, running a P&L, and delivering change under pressure. This shift is redefining what it even means to be a Consulting Partner. The leaders who thrive won’t just be great advisors; they’ll be operators, technologists, and business builders who can turn disruption into outcomes. The Partner of the future may not have built their career in consulting, and that’s exactly why clients want them.

(FMCG Blueprint) Selling Snacks in India in not Easy. Why? 1. Impulse Purchase Snacks are the SRK of FMCG products—they sell on charisma. A packet of chips or namkeen is not bought; it’s felt. You’re hungry, you see it, and you grab it. This means snacks need to be everywhere, from kirana stores in Tier-1 cities to a rickety roadside dukaan in Tier-3 towns. Regular FMCG products like detergent can wait; snacks can’t. 2. Shorter Shelf Life Unlike shampoos that sit comfortably on shelves for months, snacks are like Bollywood Friday releases—exciting but perishable. If the distribution isn’t super fast, your beloved wafers could end up stale, and trust me, no Indian will forgive soggy namkeen. 3. Price Sensitivity A Rs. 10 snack packet is a daily budget for many Indians. This means efficient distribution is crucial; otherwise, even a small delay can wipe out your margins like a cyclone in Chennai. Challenges in GT Distribution for Snacks 1. Sheer Breadth of Coverage India has 6.6 million kirana stores! Snacks need to reach every single one. While shampoos can survive in supermarkets, snacks need to thrive in every “Pappu Ki Dukaan” that sits between cities and villages. 2. Temperature Sensitivity Snacks and heat don’t mix well. If chips arrive as crumbs or chocolates melt faster than your patience in Delhi summers, customers will riot (or worse, switch brands). 3. SKU Management Snacks come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—masala chips, salted peanuts, kaju namkeen. Managing multiple SKUs is a headache for distributors, who already have their hands full with biscuit and cola stocks. 4. Distributor Engagement Let’s face it—distributors love big-ticket items with high volumes and low risks, like soaps and oils. Snacks? They’re tricky, risky, and the margins are tighter than Mumbai traffic. Strategic Solutions 1. Micro-Distribution Hubs Borrow a page from the Big Bazaar playbook. Create micro-distribution hubs closer to high-demand clusters, especially Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. Think of it as delivering snacks faster than Domino’s delivers pizza! • Example: Haldiram’s localized hubs have helped them dominate regions like UP and Bihar, ensuring fresh bhujia reaches even the smallest stores. 2. Tech-Enabled Demand Forecasting Use tech like AI-driven stock prediction. Why overstock cheese popcorn in Tamil Nadu if masala-flavored banana chips are the real deal there? Apps like BeatRoute or Bizom can help streamline this. 3. Snack-Specific Distributor Incentives 4. GT-Focused Trade Schemes 5. Last-Mile Connectivity Innovations Snacks need to hitch a ride on whatever moves—cycles, auto-rickshaws, or even those iconic Indian handcarts. Companies like Coca-Cola use small-scale distributors (SSD) to crack last-mile delivery. Why not do the same for snacks?

Nice. Meituan has figured out how to charge for the same ad twice Meituan is China’s local commerce super-app - food delivery, retail, services, travel - serving ~770M annual users and millions of merchants. Its scale puts it ahead of Western rivals in many aspects, and there's a lot to learn from them. For the past year or two, every food delivery marketplace has been talking about the importance of its ad business (here is my earlier post about it https://lnkd.in/dqt7x3Ri). Well, Meituan seems to be taking ads to another level - figuring out how to charge two businesses for the same ad slot and still keep both happy. The challenge How do the ads in the marketplaces work? A customer opens an app and see a promoted slot. This slot can be a product and in that case, two parties want it promoted: - the brand itself that wants its product to be sold, - the store that sells the product and wants people to buy more in its shop. In traditional setups, only one of those businesses gets to pay for the ad, the other loses out. That meant advertisers wasted opportunities and - probably most importantly - Meituan itself left money on the table. Even worse, the value wasn’t clear: sometimes the brand paid but the store captured sales for free, sometimes the other way around. The solution Recently, Meituan rolled out what it calls Joint Marketing - letting a brand and a store co-fund the exact same ad. A bit like Facebook’s Collaborative Ads, but deeper: instead of just sharing data, Meituan rewired its ad system so one slot can fairly split both the cost and the benefit. Even more so, they reengineered their billing so that each party pays for different things: brands pay for views (impressions - and this is what they traditionally prefer), while stores prefer to pay for results (clicks - also the advertiser's preference). Meituan built the system so both models can run in the same ad unit. That way each side pays in the way that makes sense for them - but the ad still appears as one. And the marketplace creates money out of thin air. The results The outcome: ads that are jointly funded perform better. Meituan reports more than 20% higher revenue per ad impression and higher ROI compared to regular ads. At their scale, it is huge. So, more money for Meituan, more efficient spending for stores and brands. Source: Meituan's Tech Blog And here is what DoorDash has recently done in the ADs domain https://lnkd.in/dbkhZgYa

After spending three decades in the aerospace industry, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for different sectors to learn from each other. We no longer can afford to stay stuck in our own bubbles. Take the aerospace industry, for example. They’ve been looking at how car manufacturers automate their factories to improve their own processes. And those racing teams? Their ability to prototype quickly and develop at a breakneck pace is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development. It’s all about breaking down those silos and embracing new ideas from wherever we can find them. When I was leading the Scorpion Jet program, our rapid development – less than two years to develop a new aircraft – caught the attention of a company known for razors and electric shavers. They reached out to us, intrigued by our ability to iterate so quickly, telling me "you developed a new jet faster than we can develop new razors..." They wanted to learn how we managed to streamline our processes. It was quite an unexpected and fascinating experience that underscored the value of looking beyond one’s own industry can lead to significant improvements and efficiencies, even in fields as seemingly unrelated as aerospace and consumer electronics. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s more important than ever for industries to break out of their silos and look to other sectors for fresh ideas and processes. This kind of cross-industry learning not only fosters innovation but also helps stay competitive in a rapidly changing market. For instance, the aerospace industry has been taking cues from car manufacturers to improve factory automation. And the automotive companies are adopting aerospace processes for systems engineering. Meanwhile, both sectors are picking up tips from tech giants like Apple and Google to boost their electronics and software development. And at Siemens, we partner with racing teams. Why? Because their knack for rapid prototyping and fast-paced development is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development cycles. This cross-pollination of ideas is crucial as industries evolve and integrate more advanced technologies. By exploring best practices from other industries, companies can find innovative new ways to improve their processes and products. After all, how can someone think outside the box, if they are only looking in the box? If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out this article by my colleagues Todd Tuthill and Nand Kochhar where they take a closer look at how cross-industry learning are key to developing advanced air mobility solutions. https://lnkd.in/dK3U6pJf

**Maximizing B2B Marketing Success: The Power of Including Channel Partners in Your Strategy** In today’s competitive B2B landscape, a robust marketing strategy is essential. However, one critical element often overlooked is the inclusion of channel partners. Integrating these partners into your marketing plan can significantly amplify your reach, enhance brand credibility, and drive sales growth. Here’s why and how you should include channel partners in your B2B marketing strategy: **1. Amplified Reach and Visibility** Channel partners have established networks and customer bases that you can leverage. By collaborating with them, you can extend your brand’s reach far beyond your direct efforts. Co-branded marketing initiatives, joint webinars, and shared content can introduce your products or services to new, highly relevant audiences. **2. Enhanced Credibility and Trust** Trust is a cornerstone of B2B relationships. Channel partners often have long-standing relationships with their clients, who trust their recommendations. **3. Optimized Resource Utilization** Channel partners can provide additional resources for your marketing efforts. They can contribute to content creation, share insights on customer preferences, and participate in events or campaigns. This not only saves time and costs but also enriches your marketing initiatives with diverse perspectives and expertise. **4. Improved Customer Engagement** Channel partners often have deep insights into their customers’ needs and pain points. Collaborating with them allows you to tailor your marketing messages more effectively, ensuring they resonate with the target audience. **5. Increased Sales and Revenue** Ultimately, the goal of any marketing strategy is to drive sales and revenue. Channel partners can play a pivotal role in this by actively promoting your products or services. Their involvement can accelerate the sales cycle and open up new opportunities, leading to increased revenue growth. **How to Effectively Include Channel Partners in Your Marketing Strategy:** - **Develop a Collaborative Plan:** Work closely with your channel partners to create a joint marketing plan. Align your goals, define roles, and set clear expectations to ensure everyone is on the same page. - **Leverage Joint Marketing Initiatives:** Engage in co-marketing activities such as webinars, whitepapers, and case studies. These initiatives can showcase the combined expertise of both parties and provide valuable content to your audience. - **Provide Marketing Support:** Equip your channel partners with the necessary tools and resources. Offer training, marketing collateral, and access to your marketing platforms to enable them to effectively promote your products. - **Measure and Optimize:** Track the performance of your joint marketing efforts. Analyze the results, gather feedback, and make data-driven adjustments to continuously improve the effectiveness of your strategy.

Your comp plan is paying reps to be selfish. You say you want collaboration, team selling, flawless handoffs, and happy customers. But your comp plan tells a different story: - AEs hoarding accounts to squeeze one more renewal. - CS carrying the churn risk from overpromised deals. - SDRs passing junk just to hit demo goals. - SEs dropped from deals because they slow it down. - Partners ignored because they dilute the split. That’s not bad behavior. That’s just math. Sales comp is a system. And systems do exactly what they’re designed to do. If your comp plan only rewards individual heroics, you’ll never get team plays. If it only pays on closed revenue, you’ll never get qualified pipeline. If it ignores post-sale impact, you’ll never get long-term growth. And the worst part? We try to fix this misalignment with culture, not compensation. Cue the all-hands speeches of “We win together and we're all one team!” Buuuttttt then you flash a leaderboard that pits everyone against each other and wonder why nobody collaborates. Incentives don’t need fixing. They need realignment. Here’s how: 1. Add a handoff bonus to every AE/CS transition. Make reps prove they did a real warm intro, mapped the buying committee, and reviewed renewal risk factors. 2. Pay SDRs on qualified pipeline held to AE acceptance criteria. Not on booked meetings. Not on attendance. On quality accepted pipeline. Anything else is activity theater. 3. Carve out a multi-threading bonus inside opp scoring. Reward reps for early ID of finance, legal, and technical stakeholders. If your reps are flying solo, so is your forecast. 4. Protect SE and Partner involvement with minimum revenue share guarantees. Stop shaving 10% off their payout every time someone gets nervous about the split. Real collaboration costs money. 5. Tie CS comp to expansion readiness, not just retention. Involve CS in the expansion forecast. Bonus them on commercial influence — not just support ticket close time. It's not really fair to blame your reps for doing what they’re paid to do. If you want reps to act like owners, you have to pay them like co-owners. That starts with a comp plan that rewards shared wins, not solo ones. Your GTM engine isn’t one superstar away from greatness. It’s just one well-designed incentive model away from finally working as a team.

Raise your hand 🙋🏻♀️ if this has ever happened to you ⤵ You put a piece of content in front of someone for approval. They say, “You should show this to Sally. She’d have thoughts on this.” So you show it to Sally. She not only has thoughts, but she also recommends you share the draft with Doug. Doug also has feedback, some of which aligns with Sally’s and some of which does not. Now you’re two days behind schedule, have conflicting feedback to parse through, and are wondering how you could have avoided this mess. Try this next time 👇 In the planning phase of a project, put a doc together that outlines 3 levels of stakeholders: 1) Your SMEs 🧠 → Apply as much of their feedback as possible — they are as close a proxy to your audience as you can get. 2) Your key approver(s) ✅ → Keep this group small, 1–2 people if possible. → Weigh their feedback knowing that they are not necessarily an SME 𝘣𝘶𝘵 they do control whether or not the project moves forward. 3) Your informed partners 🤝 → Typically, those who will repurpose or promote your content in some way. (e.g. field marketing, comms, growth, etc.) → Make revisions based on their feedback at your discretion. → You may even want to frame the delivery of your draft as, "Here’s an update on how this is progressing. No action needed at this time." Share this doc with all listed stakeholders. Make sure they understand the level of feedback you’re expecting from them, and by when. Then use the doc to track feedback and approvals throughout the life of the project. Preventing your circle of approvers from becoming concentric: 👍 keeps you on track 👍 keeps your content from pleasing your stakeholders more than your audience

Growth is still on the table. But most GTM plans only build on last year. Category leaders don't think that way. This year CEOs, sales, and BD leaders I coach are making 5 strategic shifts to unlock partnership-driven revenue. Here’s their thinking: 1. Redesign for revenue leverage → Upgrading incentives → Redefining BD as market-making → Focusing sales on revenue conversion 2. Prioritise the right partners → Evaluating mutual benefit, trust and velocity → Using a “Partnership Potential Score” to focus on high-leverage allies 3. Build a co-sell access gateway → Give BDs fast access to top 3 co-selling partners who are ready to create leverage 4. Reflect on historic momentum → Analyse last year’s top 10 deals for partner impact → Identify where they influenced pipeline, speed or retention 5. Operationalise your partnership system → Codify onboarding, first wins, and partner enablement → Equip champions inside and outside your org The difference between 10% growth and market dominance? Moving from ad hoc deals to a scalable system. Remember this: Partnerships aren't a channel. They’re the strategy your competitors haven’t figured out. Yet. Need to capture growth? Send your team to The Partnership Lab. A 12 week group coaching program delivers the strategy, AI-based tools and community to close 6-figure deals with confidence. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/etQTiW6u ♻️ Repost to help a BD leader or founder move to category leader ➕ Follow Phil Hayes-St Clair for more like this

Summer used to be for slowdowns. Now? It’s for pop-ups, collabs, and brand crossovers that move fast and hit hard. This season, we’re watching a sharp acceleration of cross-category summer collaborations, not just to sell, but to signal. A few standouts: ☀️ Dôen x Gap The floaty, nostalgic luxury label partners with a mass American staple and the result? Sold out in a day. A second drop just launched, extending to menswear and baby for the first time. It’s not just cute, it’s smart: aspiration meets access. 🌿 Mytheresa x Flamingo Estate The high-end fashion platform teams up with a sensory wellness brand hosting lush summer pop-ups from The Hamptons to Ibiza. It’s experience-first, commerce-secondand it’s working. Meanwhile, we’re seeing strategic brand activations pop up in: — Saint Tropez — Mykonos — Ibiza — And a wave of niche concept stores coming to NYC and LA So why does this matter (especially to the leadership and hiring space)? Because these crossovers require a whole new type of operator: - Leaders who can blend culture with commerce - Marketers who think like curators, not just campaigners - General Managers who can partner across categories and markets - And storytellers who can stretch a brand without snapping it These aren’t traditional partnerships.They’re summer strategies for relevance, discovery, and emotional elasticity. And as consumer expectations shift toward experience + identity, these moves will only accelerate. As someone who spends her days helping global consumer brands find the right leaders to steward collaborations like these, I always ask: → Is your leadership team built to manage this kind of cultural + commercial fusion? → Do they speak both “heritage” and “hype”? → Can they stretch your brand without snapping it? If not, let’s talk. This isn’t the old school “co-branding” playbook. This is brand building for the experience economy. And it’s changing fast. #FMCG #SummerPopUps #ConsumerGoods #Marketing #BrandStrategy #DÔENxGAP #LeadershipTrends #GlobalRetail