GTM Strategy - Partnerships Focus

Overview

You own GTM strategy for Remote's partnerships function, working on Debbie's RevOps team. Remote works with accounting firms, consultants, implementation partners, and resellers who refer companies needing international HR/payroll solutions—your job is to make that channel efficient and measurable. You figure out how partner deals should be tracked, how to incentivize partners, and how to scale partner-sourced revenue.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Late-stage, well-funded (14,000+ employees)

Size: 14,029 employees globally

Growth: Mature HR tech player in the global employment/payroll space, competing with Deel, Rippling, and others

Market Position: Established player in a competitive market. Partnerships are a meaningful growth lever—accountants, consultants, and PEOs refer clients who need global employment solutions.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• ~30% Partnerships - Referrals from accounting firms, global mobility consultants, PEOs, implementation partners who work with companies expanding internationally
• ~40% Inbound - Marketing-generated leads and free trial sign-ups
• ~30% Outbound - SDR/BDR prospecting

Partner Types:

• Referral Partners: Accountants, consultants who send leads but don't co-sell
• Co-sell Partners: Implementation partners or PEOs who stay involved through the sale
• Resellers: Partners who sell Remote as part of a bundled offering (less common)

SDR/AE Structure: Partner leads get routed to dedicated AEs or shared pool depending on deal size. Partnerships team manages partner relationships; Sales owns closing.

SE Support: Sales Engineers support larger partner-sourced deals.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Deel, Rippling, Oyster, Papaya Global, ADP, legacy PEOs

How They Differentiate: Remote positions on compliance expertise, unified platform, support quality, transparent pricing

Common Objections from Partners: "Why should we refer to you vs Deel?" "What's our cut?" "How fast do you close deals?" "Will you steal our client relationship?"

Win Themes (for Partners): High close rates, fast implementation, good support so partners don't get pulled into issues, fair referral fees, no channel conflict

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Data Analysis (35%) | Process Design (30%) | Partner Enablement (20%) | Meetings (15%)

Key Activities

• Partner attribution tracking: Build systems to track which partners are sending leads, how those leads convert, and how much revenue they drive. Salesforce partner portal setup, deal registration workflows, attribution rules. Lots of manual cleanup.
• Co-sell process design: Define how partner-sourced deals should flow. Who owns the relationship? When does the partner hand off to Remote's AE? Who runs demos? How do you avoid stepping on each other? Write the playbook, get buy-in, implement in Salesforce.
• Partner performance analysis: Pull data on which partners are most productive. Which send high-quality leads vs garbage? Which deal types close fastest? Present insights to Partnerships leadership to inform where to invest.
• Incentive and commission design: Work with Finance and Partnerships to design partner referral fees, co-sell splits, SPIFs. Model out scenarios. Negotiate with partners who want better terms.
• Forecasting partner pipeline: Build models to predict partner-sourced revenue 3-6 months out. Partners are less predictable than direct sales, so your error bars are wider.
• Cross-functional alignment: Run projects like "improve partner lead response time" or "launch new partner tier program." Coordinate Partnerships, Sales, Marketing, Legal. Lots of Slack and Google Docs.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Attribution is messy: A prospect talks to a partner, attends a Remote webinar, downloads a whitepaper, then converts via an SDR outreach. Who gets credit? Partners complain they're not getting credit. Marketing says it was their webinar. You're the referee.
• Partners are unpredictable: A partner promises 10 leads next quarter and sends 2. Another sends 15 low-quality leads that go nowhere. You're trying to forecast revenue from a channel you don't directly control.
• Channel conflict: A partner refers a lead. Your outbound SDR also reaches out to the same company. Who owns it? Partners get mad. Sales gets mad. You write the rules to prevent this, but it still happens.
• Slow partner ramp: Onboarding a new accounting firm partnership takes 6 months before they send their first qualified referral. You're playing a long game.
• Data quality: Partners don't always register deals correctly in the portal. Salesforce data on partner-sourced deals is incomplete. You spend hours cleaning and reconciling.

What Success Looks Like

• Partner-sourced pipeline grows 20-30% year-over-year
• Partner lead conversion rates improve by 5-10% after you fix the co-sell handoff process
• Top 20 partners drive 80% of partner revenue, and you can identify the next tier to invest in
• Attribution disputes decrease because you built clearer rules and systems
• Partnerships leadership uses your dashboards to run QBRs with top partners

Who You're Selling To

You don't sell directly, but you need to understand both sides:

Partners (your internal customers):

• Accounting Firms: Referring clients who need international payroll or entity setup
• Global Mobility Consultants: Referring companies expanding into new countries
• Implementation Partners: Co-selling and staying involved through onboarding

End Buyers (what partners' clients care about):

• HR Leaders, Finance/Ops Leaders, Founders: Buying Remote's platform to hire/pay international teams
• They care about: Compliance, ease of implementation, cost, employee experience, risk mitigation

Requirements

• 3-5 years in RevOps, Partnerships Ops, or GTM Strategy at a B2B SaaS company
• Experience with partner/channel sales motions (co-sell, referral programs, deal registration)
• Strong analytical skills: Salesforce, Excel/Sheets, BI tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.)
• Comfortable with partner attribution, commission modeling, and forecasting indirect revenue
• HR tech or international/global employment experience is a plus
• Able to work AMER or EMEA hours (Remote is global, but this role likely collaborates heavily with those regions)
• Communication skills to align Partnerships, Sales, and Finance on complex process changes