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When I started building our partner channel, our CEO sat me down:

"You're going to have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your princess."

He wasn't wrong.

For the first three months, my only metric was meetings booked. I was having conversations with anyone who seemed like they could be a partner.

One day, I had lunch with an exec from a mid-size accounting firm in Atlanta. We were perfectly aligned on problems, go-to-market strategy, ideal customers etc. I was jazzed. We both left feeling like there was serious potential.

A few days later, when I tried connecting with someone in their CFO practice, I hit a wall. Competing priorities. No one to own the project. All momentum died.

That's when I realized it was time to get more focused.

So I developed our Ideal Partner Profile (IPP):

1. Executive sponsor at VP+ level

2. Day-to-day champions identified

3. Ability to invest (financially and operationally)

4. Practice that complements our solution

5. Critical customer mass (10-100+ relevant clients)

Going forward, if a potential partner didn’t hit all 5 of these, I put them on the back-burner. It worked - over the next 12 months we generated $500k+ in ARR.

Here are the plays I ran to build our 3 biggest partnerships:

1. The Firm Already Serving Your Customers

Most software solutions have a complementary service offering (or vice versa). These make good target partners.

My first step: I downloaded our customer list and looked for users with different domain names than the main account.

As a software company, this was a good indicator that a service-based business was also supporting our customers.

One accounting firm kept popping up. They had 4-5 of our customers on their roster. But every client was paying full price with zero formal support.

I offered preferred pricing for their clients. Plus training for their team to add a new service line.

The lightbulb moment? When they realized they could scale their existing relationships while adding recurring revenue.

Within 60 days, they dedicated 2-3 FTEs to the partnership.

2. The Investor Seeking Portfolio Consistency

If you're selling to venture-backed companies, look for investment firms with multiple portfolio companies using your solution/service.

One PE firm had 9(!) portfolio companies using our software. Most were happy. Almost none had gotten "preferred" pricing.

I pitched preferred pricing plus portfolio-wide standardization.

"Your companies get better rates, and you get consistent processes across all your investments."

Most investors want both. This delivered.

3. The Service Provider in Your Network

Look at your network for people who've moved into advisory or consulting roles. They often work with service providers who could benefit from your solution.

A former VP I sold was advising an outsourced accounting firm serving early-stage tech companies. Perfect fit for our software.

I leveraged the warm intro and built a "better together" narrative around the revenue opportunity.

Their clients needed better financial insights. Our software could help them deliver that as a premium service vs basic bookkeeping.

The Lesson:

The best partnerships aren't built – they're discovered.

Instead of convincing people to work with you, find people who are already accidentally working with you and make it intentional.

Until next Thursday,

TSG

P.S. I reply to all emails.