About Carlos Barberena and Alliances Manifesto
My Alliances Manifesto
Alliances can equal Hypergrowth but typically fail
In my 25 plus years of growing alliances, I have seen millions spent in alliances that don’t produce any real revenue but produce beatiful marketing material and even great press releases. The fact is only about 10-20% of partnerships drive the majority of joint revenue. The rest (80-90%) are just “paper partnerships” that never operationalize. Here are some shocking statistics:
> 50% of alliances/partnerships fail to meet objectives (State of Alliance Management, 2024, BDO)
Most alliances are managed in a decentralized form. ASAP reports a 41.7% alliance success rate when centralized vs 16.7%.
Due to historical failures in other partner areas, technology companies expect the most revenue growth from ecosystem, ISV, and reseller partnerships. However, not even these partnerships
GSI’s share of total IT opportunity is down around 9%, and it typically takes 12-24 months to get a revenue producing GSI alliance.
In the last year, 70% of partners ended or “ghosted” at least one vendor. Among smaller partners, only 17% say Hyperscaler marketplaces are a primary route.
The great majority of MDF efforts are wasted. Around 60% of MDF remains unclaimed each quarter.
Only 11% of partners reach incentive thresholds regularly.
The numbers above reflect a failure by the industry to maximize partner ROI. The truth is that instead of focusing on inexpensive, sales driven strategies that can be partly funded by external MDF, the tech industry continues to focus on complexity in their routes to market. Partner leaders need to be ready and dedicated to transformation, partnership expansion, team development, and revenue and profitability growth. Partnership strategy needs to evolve from broad longtailed approaches to rapid monetization (low hanging fruit), and development of solutions across mutiple parties (triangulations).
Multi-lateral (triangulated) partnerships (ISV+GSI, ISV+Hyperscaler, etc) are hardest to implement and manage initially but have great chance of success.
Well funded partnerships are no guarantee of success. As a matter of fact, according to State of Partnership Leaders 2024, most companies generate 10%+ of revenue with 5 people or less. 46% of their respondents drive >25% of revenue with 5 people or less.
Partnerships that emphasize sales KPIs vs Alliance Development KPIs have greater success. Even though 80% of companies state that Revenue Growth is the reason for existence, many focus on alliance development KPIs vs revenue KPIs.
Even though Alliances headcouns have grown 2X in the past 5 years, revenues from Alliances have not.
But enough with the negatives. We are here to help you change that.
If you are an alliances leader looking to grow in a specific area, we have sections that address each route to market and how to make it succesful.
If you are a revenue leader (CRO, Sales VP, etc) looking to improve how your organization focuses on, I will discuss strategies that help you find the right talent to drive those initiatives.
Carlos barberena
Have led sales regions, partner teams, and monetized over $1.25B in partner sales
About
Carlos Barberena
Here are some links relating to me, my interests and my work.
My LinkedInMy Current CompanyAlignScopeAbout me
I’m currently VP of Sales, Alliances, and Strategy and B4C Technologies, Inc. Since early in my sales career, I understood that alliances were a great accelerator to success. I was able to open up sales regions and lead companies in revenue generation were ofter because of great partners. I have been blessed thru my career to have great mentors and great opportunities, and my success in alliances has been due to those fantastic individuals.
In 2001 I was promoted to Director of Channels at a midsize company, where I cut my teeth in alliances. Then I was brought in to help my mentor turn a company around, where we focused on using alliances to turn the company around. The CEO of that company introduced me to the CEO of my next employer, and I made the move to alliances pretty much full time. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure to learn from some of the best leaders in the world, and was able to experiment with different business models thru partners that enabled us to generate over $1.4B total.
My passion in alliances is because they are the easiest and most cost effective way to generate hypergrowth in sales. There is nothing that comes close.