Your 2024 partner go-to-market guide – System Integrator cliffs notes edition 

Now is the time to reflect on your business and set resolutions for the year to come. In this blog we focus specifically on your system integrator (SI) business. Your journey through 2023 and plans for 2024. 

Your 2024 partner GTM guide

No one wants to live in the past. But when it comes to your business, a retro is critical so you know how to best move forward. 

1. Identify where your partner led and influenced deals came from – document it (ideally in Salesforce/ your CRM) and create a plan for each of those partners.
2. Identify partner patterns – is there an industry, use case or specific problem SIs are coming to you for. How do you double down there?
3. Where has drop off happened? Were there certain partners you were heavily engaged with that dropped off this year? Dig in and understand why.
4. Review your content – When was the last time your content was updated? Do you have updated training and enablement materials? What about marketing materials? 
5. Did you receive feedback on challenges your partners ran into? How can you improve next year? 
6. Identify where your team leaned in – Which of your sales teams leaned in with partners and where do you need to re-engage on the value of partnering with SIs? 
7. How did partner led and influenced deals perform?  Can you share numbers on increase in ACV, decrease in sales cycles, upsells, etc? Document and share for continued buy in across the organization. 
8. Understand your customers SI footprint – Do you know if your new customers from 2023 are working with SIs? Are you tracking partner involvement in your CRM (Salesforce, Hubspot, Dynamics, etc)? Start now so in 2024 you can base success on data. Check out Invisory’s Partner Success Tracker if you haven’t already for an easy way to start tracking today. 
9. Understand where referrals are coming from – if you’re not asking your customers today how they heard about you, you might be surprised to learn that an SI is working behind the scenes on your behalf. Imagine if you actually put effort into those relationships! 

Once you’ve done the deep dive on 2023  it’s time to think about how you improve and increase revenue with SIs in 2024: 

Resolutions to think through

1. If you’re still basing partnership success on feelings (it feels like we’re getting somewhere with this partner, it feels like things are moving forward), it’s time to move to facts. We wrote a whole blog on that so dig in here.
2. Once you’ve identified where successful 2023 partners leaned in (use case, industry, problem you solve) find look-alike partners. 
3. Identify 5 or so new partners that focus on the areas you saw success in 2023.  No need to boil the ocean.  Use the success stories from 2023 to bring them on board and start the education process with a small number and scale as you go. 
4. Identify new ways you can engage with your current and prospective SI partners. Are there new pieces of content that would help enable them? Can you start a regular newsletter or webinar cadence just for partners to keep them up to date and involved? 
5. Conduct a retro interview with your current partners. Set up a 30 minute call and ask some probing questions like: 
   • I’d love to know what a successful ISV partnership looks like to you?
   • Who is doing it well / or how are they doing it well? 
   • Are there assets that we could provide you that would help? 
   • How could we be better partners to you? 
   • What sort of cadence or engagement makes the most sense for us in 2024? Would you be open to weekly or bi-monthly calls to align on accounts? 
   • Have you received any feedback from customers or your team that you think could help us as we think about our product roadmap? Areas customers complain or lean in on? 
6. Keep tabs on what your customers and 2024 wins are doing with SIs. Even if an SI wasn’t involved with your deal, start tracking where they are aligned so you can bring them in and succeed together on future deals. 

Any good partnership takes work and requires communication. Your SI partnership is no different.

If you lean in, ask questions and use facts and data to guide, you are bound to see results that improve your business’s bottom line and strengthen your company’s view on partnerships. In times of uncertainty, data wins out and can equate to more budget, headcount and a little more of a safety net. 

Still not sure where to start? Connect with our team and we’d be happy to provide more guidance. You can also read more about CRM cloud marketplaces to help you get started.