Partnerships and co-selling best practices for 2026
The current, revised best practices for partnerships and co-selling — updated for what actually works in the buyer environment of 2026.
Best practices for partnerships and co-selling have shifted. The 2022 playbook does not survive the current buyer environment. This is the update.
Best practice one: fewer accounts, sharper triggers. One great partner is worth ten marketing hires, and generic coverage is now negative signal.
Best practice two: publish sourced and influenced pipeline from partners weekly. If leadership does not see the number, the model quietly drifts.
Best practice three: separate the sending infrastructure from the primary brand. Deliverability is a strategic asset.
Best practice four: name a single owner. Committees produce compromise; owners produce numbers.
Best practice five: pre-write kill criteria. A stated failure threshold is what prevents the sunk-cost trap.
Best practice six: run monthly retrospectives that are honest about what did not work. Partnerships and co-selling improves faster on failure data than on success data.
Frequently asked questions
Partnerships — answered
- What changed in partnerships and co-selling best practices for 2026?
- Buyers are less tolerant of generic coverage; specificity and trigger quality now dominate.
- Which best practice is most under-implemented?
- Pre-written kill criteria. Almost no team has them; every team benefits from them.
- Do best practices change by company size?
- Governance scales with size; core principles remain identical.
- How do I know a best practice is working?
- Sourced and influenced pipeline from partners improves, and improvements survive a month.
Growth Broker editorial
Filed under partnerships