Partner Selection Criteria

Not every company that wants to partner should become a partner. Partner selection requires the same rigor as ICP definition: you need partners whose customer base overlaps with your ICP, whose solution complements rather than competes with yours, and whose sales team is motivated and enabled to introduce your solution. A partnership with a company that has the wrong customer base, a competing feature set, or a disengaged sales team is a partnership that consumes resources and produces nothing.

1. Customer Base Overlap Calculate the overlap between the partner's customer base and your ICP. If the partner sells to mid-market SaaS companies and your ICP is mid-market SaaS companies, the overlap is high. If the partner sells to enterprise manufacturing and your ICP is mid-market SaaS, the overlap is low. High overlap is the non-negotiable starting criterion.
2. Solution Complementarity Map how the partner's solution and your solution fit together in the customer's workflow. The ideal partner solves a problem adjacent to yours — their customer needs your solution to get full value from theirs. A CRM vendor and a sales engagement platform are natural partners. Two CRM vendors are competitors.
3. Sales Team Readiness Evaluate whether the partner's sales team can and will introduce your solution. Do they have the training to position it? Do they have the incentive to recommend it? Do they have existing relationships with the right contacts? A partnership where the partner's sales team is not enabled or incentivized is a logo on a slide deck, not a pipeline source.