This is a guest post by Lisa Thoman Lawson.  She has been in SaaS technology channels for 15+ years, and consults for high growth, venture backed SaaS businesses on their partnership and channel strategies. Prior to consulting, Lisa was the Director of Partnerships at Optimizely and Thismoment and spent 4 years at Microsoft and more. Email her at  lisa@ltlpartnerconsulting.com . As we enter month 5 of living with the uncertainty of Coronavirus, little to nothing has felt like it’s getting back to business as usual.  For SaaS leaders, the impact on go-to-market plans is no exception.  Leaders are going back to the drawing board to redo their strategy, tactics, and internal org charts to adapt. Companies are adjusting budgets and operating plans, and sales teams are learning new ways to sell.  If your company, like many others, is looking to lower CAC, improve margins, diversify risk, and reach their target buyers in new ways right now, it may be time to do...

  These have been unprecedented times for everybody. It seems the entire world is unsure what to do next. We, like everybody else, are affected by COVID-19. We have had to make many adjustments in our life, our work, in our business dealings. So the first thing I want to say to everyone is to stay safe and stay sane. We will all get through this together. Last week was a busy week for us—the busiest we've seen in the life of our young company. COVID-19 is exposing a lot of vulnerability in business models, and showcasing to company leaders that their go-to-market efforts are not balanced. Direct sales models of SaaS companies are being affected, and now a lot of leaders will not hit their goals for Q1 and Q2. That's today's reality.   One of the common themes we are hearing is a reaction to the changes in circumstances: "Conferences are canceling; travel is restricted, we can't get to the customers, our leads are drying up. Can you help us?" People are looking...

  Throughout my career in partnerships, I have had the good fortune to witness some great partner programs, some real works of art! But for every well-executed plan, I have seen dozens of mediocre, poorly run programs, and many that have just outright failed. This bothers me. Running partnerships is hard work, but seriously, why is the profession I have chosen to be involved in so full of train wrecks? The subject has caused me to sit back and think of why some programs succeed and why some fail. When I ask CEOs and CROs why their partner program failed, they point to many factors, both internally and externally. Common items that I hear: we don't have a partner culture, we had the wrong partners, sales never adopted the model, we tried it for six months and made no progress and on and on and on... However, when I step back, partnership programs fail from one of two directions. They either have too little or too much experience leading it. Let me explain.   A majority of ...