Partnerships That Actually Produce

Designing, launching, managing, and fixing partner programs.

Wherever you are in your thinking about partnerships and a partner program — scoping, designing, signing, launching, fixing — the questions are typically the same:

Are partnerships worth doing right now, or are they a distraction from selling?
How do we find partners that’ll actually move the needle toward our objectives?
We’re signing our first partner — what must happen before the announcement?
Who owns the partnership post-contract, and what does driving it look like?
How do we know the partnership is working before revenue starts flowing?
How do we fix a partnership that isn’t working the way we thought it would?

Without addressing those questions, it usually plays out the same way….

The agreement gets signed.
There’s an announcement.
Not much happens.

Before long, leadership asks, “What has this investment actually produced?”

Or the problem was upstream. A year spent building a program the company wasn’t ready for. Partners signed who were never going to generate results. A program designed for resellers when the business actually needed product integrations.

The longer valuable resources drift down the wrong path, the more expensive the fix.

So, the work that decides whether a partnership or partner program produces starts before you’ve picked a partner and runs through to long after the announcement.

That’s the work I do.

T E S T I M O N I A L
“I asked Chad to come aboard to build and manage every aspect of our partnerships effort, including defining a brand new role for our company. In launching the partner program, Chad handled everything, from defining affiliate and reseller partner types and associated revenue models to signing, onboarding, and managing our initial referral and reseller partners.”
— Maciej Zawadziński, Founder & CEO, Piwik PRO

Two basic categories of partner programs

That last failure, the wrong program for the business, is the most common one I see. Channel programs — resellers, referral partners, VARs and managed service providers — are built to drive revenue through someone else’s sales force. Product partnerships, integrations, marketplace listings, and joint solutions are built to drive indirect revenue by making your product more valuable for the end-user.

Different partnerships fail differently, so they should be measured differently.

A reseller wants margin. An integration partner wants to be featured and handed qualified co-sell opportunities. A reseller’s team needs enablement deep enough to sell and support the product; a referral partner needs only enough to recognize a good-fit prospect. Training the wrong depth for the partner type is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes I see.

The discipline underneath is the same, and it’s the same work either way: get clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, design the program for that, and build the mechanics that make people on the other side actually do something.

Numbers

$36M partner portfolio at Google, grown 425%
Google Health’s 150-plus partner ecosystem, helped build and led
$10M ARR channel program at HealthFitness, built from zero
$14M in incremental revenue generated for consulting clients

How I help

1. Scope who, what, and when

Not every company needs a partner program yet, and the ones that build too early burn credibility with the partners they most want later. I’ll look at your product, your sales motion, and your customer base and tell you whether to build one now. And if so, which motion comes first: referral, co-sell, marketplace, or reseller.

2. Set the table

What the program looks like, which partner types fit the objective, what the role that runs it owns and doesn’t, what the first two quarters produce, and how you’ll know it’s working. Best done before you’ve signed anyone, or while the first agreements are still being negotiated. Then help you find and evaluate the person who runs it.

3. Launch your initial partners

The first ninety days are decided by the preceding 4-5 weeks. Qualification rules a rep can apply in two minutes, enablement pitched at the right depth for the partner type, lead routing, deal registration, the escalation path, and an operating cadence that starts in week one rather than after the first problem. Most of it has to exist by the announcement, not after it.

4. Measure what is and isn’t working

Revenue is a lagging indicator, and in most programs it arrives too late to steer by. The leading indicators are knowable much earlier: how many of the partner’s people have brought you a real opportunity, how long it takes one of them to go from trained to engaged, how many of the accounts you’re targeting have actually been touched, and whether someone who skipped the training can still describe what you do. I’ll build the scorecard and the reporting rhythm around it.

5. Bridge the gap

You’ve signed a partner and the person who’ll run it hasn’t started. I’ll run it, or work alongside the people carrying it now, until the hire is in seat. Part-time, capped hours, defined end.

6. Fix what’s stalled

A partnership that looked right on paper and isn’t producing. Usually it’s one of four things: the economics never reached the people who had to act, the enablement asked too much or too little, nobody owned it internally, or the partner was never the right fit. Finding out which one takes a few weeks.

T E S T I M O N I A L
“Chad led a strategic transformation and redevelopment of the Google Health partner ecosystem, restoring focus to an ecosystem that had stagnated for some time. He was our go-to person for building new relationships from scratch and for tactfully managing difficult situations with no-longer-strategic partners.”
— Aaron Brown, Director of Product Management, Google

How we’d work together

Intro call: Fifteen minutes, trading ideas to see if talking further makes sense.
Consultation: Forty-five minutes, free. ASAP. You tell me what’s in front of you, and I’ll tell you whether I can help.
Proposal: Within 48 hours of our first conversation. Scope, timeline, deliverables, fee. Two pages, no deck. If we need another brief meeting to discuss, that’s fine.
Decision: Go or don’t go. If we’re a fit, we start right away. If we’re not, I’ll say so and point you toward the resources that can help you.
Execution: I’ll hit the timeline you need.

I can move as quickly as you want.

When I’m useful

Companies thinking about partnerships, building them, or trying to get the ones they have to produce. Startups through enterprises.

Every engagement starts with a defined scope and a clear outcome. Some are three weeks. Some run until the full-time hire is in seat.

T E S T I M O N I A L
“Through his dedication and ability to build a very strong rapport with our company and our team, Chad consistently demonstrated his determination to make our partnership succeed. There are many ‘relationship builders’ out there but Chad far surpasses them all.”
— Michelle Estridge, Partner Manager, Verizon

My Background

I have 20+ years building technology partner ecosystems. I helped build and led Google Health’s 150-plus partner ecosystem and founded Google for Nonprofits. I was chief of staff to the VP running Intel’s global partner ecosystem. I built channel programs from zero at HealthFitness, a wellness provider serving 140 Fortune 500 employers, and for software companies as a fractional VP of Partnerships. Most recently I managed strategic partnerships at a regional Blue Cross Blue Shield plan.

Outside of work, I founded and run The Giving Trees, a 501(c)(3) that’s delivered free Christmas trees to more than 5,000 families in need across 34 states and 11 countries.

I live in Portland, Oregon with my wife and two children.

Full background: linkedin.com/in/chadbarker

How I think about partnerships

Nine Ingredients of a Reseller Program That Drives Revenue
What separates reseller programs that produce revenue from the ones that quietly stall, drawn from programs I’ve built and run.
Metcalfe’s Law, Network Effects & Strategic Partner Ecosystems
Why the strength of each partnership matters more than the number of logos on the page.
Healthcare AI & The Partnership Moat
Why the defensible position in healthcare AI is where you’re embedded in the workflow, not the model underneath it.