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If you’re ready to start a partnerships program, then you’re also ready to hire or designate a dedicated partnerships manager or partner account manager. Partnerships managers are essential in successfully growing your business and keeping current partners happy and engaged. They’re the go-to between for your company and your channel partners, and in many cases, they are also the ones who will spearhead business development as you explore exciting partnership opportunities.

Channel partnerships are now a must-have component of hybrid sales motions and GTM strategies. Horizontal and vertical as a percentage of total revenue last year. But what do you do if you’re too pressed for time to find the best partnership leader or team?��

You can start by understanding the 10 most in-demand skills for partner managers, so you can recruit the right individuals — or spot some internal all-stars that would be perfect for the role.��

What does a partner manager actually do?

A partner manager has a number of responsibilities including:��

• Identifies new partnership opportunities, including co-sell, co-branding, co-development and affiliate opportunities
• Drives ecosystem growth by engaging with partners as well as relevant internal parties such as sales and marketing
• Develops and executes onboarding and engagement strategies
• Monitors and analyzes partner program data for continuous data-driven improvement and reporting to other teams
• Supports the creation and distribution of partner marketing and partner enablement materials��

Related: What partnerships can learn from marketing leaders.

How do partner managers contribute to strategic alliances and business growth?

Partner managers contribute to strategic alliances and business growth by ensuring the relationship stays alive after the ink on the agreements has dried. Partner managers help them succeed by keeping a partnerships’ mutual gains and objectives front and center, keeping the relationship fresh by working together with partners, creating governance processes, keeping their finger on the pulse of their org’s objectives alongside their partners’ org objectives and more.

10 in-demand skills your partnerships manager should have to supercharge your GTM strategy

Communication and listening skills

As the primary liaison between your company and your partners, your partner manager should have excellent active listening skills and be able to effectively convey what your company brings to the table. Listening to and understanding partners’ needs and GTM opportunities — and how they fit with your company's offerings is key to success and can create long-lasting opportunities.

Being a good communicator means having strong verbal communication skills and using non-verbal and visual communication, written communication and contextual communication. These skills collectively help create a better experience with partners. Also, since partner account managers will frequently liaise with other internal stakeholders (marketing, finance, leadership, etc.) they should be able to apply those sharp communication skills internally, too.

Masterful relationship building and relationship management

Partner account managers do more than help recruit and onboard partners. As the title suggests, they also manage partner relationships. Building trust and reliability goes a long way in ensuring partners feel comfortable working with your company. You want a candidate who can create those positive, long-lasting relationships built on respect, support and appreciation.��

These people skills are becoming incredibly important as AI-driven technology changes lead to abrupt changes in things like strategy, partner compensation and partner communications. As , “Vendors who want lasting loyalty must match innovation with clear intentions. Trust can no longer be assumed. It must be earned, and re-earned, especially with the pace of disruption is fast.”��

Sharp problem solving and decision making skills

Partnerships managers deal with a network of external partners, each with their own sets of priorities. In fact, key responsibilities of this role include:��

• Helping external parties achieve their own goals;
• Enabling external parties to hit their revenue targets;
• Supporting external parties in their efforts to reach new audiences
• Staying focused on and aligned to internal goals and targets while ensuring mutual gains with partners

Conflicts, problems and roadblocks will come up, and the best partnership managers are adept at resolving them.

Identifying and rectifying potential problems is a required skill to keep both sides of a partnership happy and feeling valued. Whether that means working with other departments to find solutions or collaborating with your network partners to find a win-win, the ability to identify problems, come up with solid solutions and make quick but educated decisions is invaluable in this role.

Excellent time and project management

Partner account management is often a one-person job, especially at the start. When the whole program – and network of partners – depends on one person, it becomes essential to manage time well. Being organized, knowing when to follow up or check-in and setting enough time aside to efficiently complete all tasks also go a long way when it comes to hitting deadlines and building trust with partners.

Planning, prioritizing, setting boundaries and knowing when to say no are all great examples of practical time management skills.

See more: Recruit your first 100 revenue-generating partners.

Strategic thinking and innovation

Whether you’re looking to stand out to new potential partnerships or want to entice people to work with you, having an innovative partner account manager who can think strategically and long-term is an asset, especially given the fast-changing pace of the industry. Being able to identify new beneficial initiatives and pursue them can have a significant effect on how quickly you grow in your company’s strategic direction.

The nature of the industry lends itself to strategic innovation. It’s all about new connections, growing ecosystems, diversifying revenue streams and finding new ways to sell products and services. It’s essential that those leading the charge be nimble and strategy-driven.

Foundational sales skills

There is a reason partnerships are often nested under the sales function: to entice a potential partner to buy into the value of your product is essentially sales. While partnership managers don’t have to be salespeople, they should have the salesperson’s ability to speak to the value of the product and joining their partnership program in a convincing way.

Consider asking your potential hires which relationship management framework, funnel or process they use. While there are variations, a candidate’s response will tell you a few important things:

• Whether they have a disciplined, repeatable approach to partner engagement��
• Whether they understand the connections between the sales and partnerships (e.g., upselling) or marketing and partnerships (e.g., co-branded campaigns)��

Cross-functional collaboration

Partner account managers don’t just work with ecosystem partners, they also work with other internal departments to launch effective partnerships and GTM business strategies. They’ll need to work closely with sales, marketing and finance, among others. In that sense, having a collaborative spirit and being willing to work with the team is critical and will lead to better long-term success.

Internal collaboration requires much of the same curiosity needed to work with external parties. They all have different goals and speak different languages. Ask your candidate how they communicate with different internal teams.��

• Do they mention the marketing team’s focus on brand awareness, consistent message and lead qualification and generation?����
• Do they mention the sales team’s focus on enablement materials, qualified leads and co-sell opportunities?��
• Do they mention operations and delivery team’s focus on SLAs and shared capabilities?��

See more: Partner Playbook: Scaling through ecosystem using ������.

The ability to prioritize

Partner account managers seek out and nurture new partnerships, manage ongoing partnerships and report to your company, which means they have a lot on their plates at any time. If they want to take the lead and achieve success in these tasks, managing multiple ongoing projects, meeting numerous daily deadlines, handling distractions and prioritizing and organizing tasks are essential components of practical prioritization skills (and the use of automation to get back time helps, too).

Stumped on how to evaluate whether a candidate knows how to prioritize? Ask them if there’s a specific triaging method, tiering method or prioritization framework they use to maintain several relationships. The most successful partnership managers have a strategy in place for evaluating:��

• Which partners require high-touch, white-glove engagement
• Which partners can have scheduled meetings and automated correspondence
• Which partners can be put on automated email cadences

A partnerships manager with this skillset can also help you evaluate whether to make any technology investments. For instance, using PRM software can help you nurture relationships and grow accounts with data-driven insights and enablement without requiring daily upkeep and manual effort.��

Technical prowess

While ������ makes the UX of partnership management as easy as possible, partner account managers will still need a basic level of technical know-how to set up their management software, upload and distribute educational documents, manage an LMS, set up trigger emails and show partners how to navigate their portals. Partnership managers will also likely use CRM software and other basic programs like Excel, so they should be able to pick up new SaaS tech quickly, plus be able to understand their partners' technology and how it can integrate with their own.

For instance, asked for familiarity with Salesforce, Jobber and ������ while a recent p from legal tech company Clio asked for someone who could continuously refine and scale operational processes and tooling.��

Product knowledge

While partner account managers don’t need to be versed in the minutiae of the product, they should be able to speak to its main value propositions and functions. Ideally, they’re comfortable enough to convey its value to prospects and educate on its main features to partners, but they have the support of a product team to tackle more in-depth queries.��

Creating a career path for new partner managers to become senior partner leaders

If you’re hiring top talent or asking internal talent to make a lateral move, it’s important to demonstrate clear career progression. A few ways you can accomplish this are:��

• Providing clear partner program targets and KPIs for promotion (e.g., new partners added, partner activation, partner engagement, partner efficiency)
• Carving out opportunities for regular presentations to the leadership team to ensure visibility of partner program efforts
• Putting development opportunities in place for your partner manager to occupy a strategic director role)

Partnership manager salaries in 2025

If you're preparing to build a partnerships team, you'll want to make sure you're compensating properly for this in-demand skill set. Currently, partner account manager base pay in the United States average around $86,000 annually and grow depending on their years of experience, according to .

Look at potential candidates’ resumes and adjust according to their experience. That salary can be a base plus commission, bonuses and profit sharing, depending on company preferences.

It might seem like a long wish list, but we’ve seen firsthand how many capable partnerships managers have developed all the skills required to flourish in this exciting role.

This article was originally published in September 2023.