The definitive operating manual for the AI era of partnerships. Build a CRM-native partner motion that forecasts like sales, scales like product, and survives every market shift.
Forged from operating experience at
The uncomfortable truth
Most partner programs fail for one of four reasons. Operators know how to name them — and how to fix them.
You support sales, enable partners, manage relationships — but you don't carry a quota. So you sit at the activity table, not the revenue table. The activity table gets cut first.
Partner activity lives in a PRM your CRO can't see. If your VP of Sales can't open Salesforce and watch your ecosystem move deals, your tech stack is sophisticated noise.
You run one operating rhythm, sales runs another. You collide at QBRs full of metrics nobody trusts. Operators embed into pipeline reviews — and bring partners with them.
“We influenced a lot.” That word has done more damage to partnerships than any budget cut. Influence is unmeasurable by design — and it's where careers go to disappear.
Inside the book
Click any chapter to see the core thesis. This is the table of contents your CRO wishes existed.
Why the comfortable fiction of relationship-led partnerships is being replaced by operator-led systems.
Pull quote
“If you do not own a number, you do not have a seat at the revenue table. You have a seat at the activity table — and the activity table gets cut first.”
Foreword by
“The uncomfortable truth is that the role of partner manager as we've known it is already obsolete. The comfortable fiction is that relationship skills alone will continue to justify headcount. This book shatters that fiction — not with cynicism, but with a clear-eyed path forward. The Partnership Engineer is not a threat to partnership professionals. It is their evolution.”
Interactive
8 honest questions. 60 seconds. No email required.
01.Do you carry an owned, forecasted partner revenue number?
02.Is partner attribution (sourced / co-sell / influenced) live inside your CRM?
03.Do you attend weekly sales pipeline reviews and bring partner unlocks?
04.Can you name the top 5 partners producing pipeline this quarter — without opening a spreadsheet?
05.Have you killed a partner relationship in the last 12 months for not producing?
06.Do you measure co-sell deals by cycle time and win rate — not by activity?
07.Is your partner forecast in the same format your CRO uses for direct sales?
08.Have you replaced at least one program with an orchestrated, CRM-native motion?
0 / 8 answered
Build the business case
Move the sliders. The math the book teaches you to walk into the boardroom with.
Projected partner impact
Partner-influenced revenue
$810,000
Annual revenue uplift
$243,000
Avg. days shaved per deal
7 days
Based on the win-rate and cycle-time uplifts documented in Chapter 6 (Partner Attribution) and Chapter 7 (The Partnership Forecast).
What operators are saying
Partnerships are no longer a separate motion, they're embedded in how products go to market and how revenue scales. This is a practical, operator-first guide for building partnership programs that actually drive measurable impact.
Chelsea Thorton
VP Client Growth, ZayZoon
I've scaled partner organizations from zero to eight figures in sourced pipeline. The hardest part was never finding the right partners — it was building the operating discipline to make them produce. Rob and Chris have cracked that problem. This is required reading for anyone serious about building a partnerships function that can defend its seat at the table.
Eric Roach
VP Global MSP, NinjaOne
This is one of the few partnerships books that actually understands how the function works inside a modern GTM organization. I've spent twenty years building technology to help companies run better partner programs. What I've learned is that the technology is never the constraint — the operating discipline is. Rob and Chris have written the book that addresses the real problem.
Sugata Sanyal
CEO, Zinfi Technologies
The Partnership Operators Manual for the AI Era by Chris Lavoie PhD and Rob Moyer is packed with actionable insights. A must read for anyone in partnerships in 2026. Chapter 4: 'Co-selling is the Skill of the Decade' is worth the purchase alone. Great resource.
Dan Smith
Sr. Partner Manager, Make
This is the most useful, cogent POV I've seen on how AI is changing the practice of partnerships. The Partnership Operator's Manual for the AI Era is the most clear-eyed thing I've read about what this moment actually requires.
Sam Gong
SVP Marketing, Workspan
The authors
Founder, Bluethread.io
Former operator at Microsoft, SYNNEX, and Gong. Rob has lived both sides of the partnerships equation — scaling a business past a billion dollars and building a ground-up partner org from day one. He brings a P&L-first lens to channels and alliances: measurable, forecastable, operationally rigorous.
Founder, Partnership Mastermind
Founder of the leading accelerator for SaaS partnership leaders. Former partnerships operator at Gorgias, AfterShip, and Arrive. Host of the Partnership Mastermind Podcast. PhD in organic chemistry — the analytical lens that shapes his operator-first philosophy.
FAQ
Get the book
232 pages of frameworks, worksheets, and operating systems. Get the premium paperback for $24.99 or start reading instantly on Kindle for $9.99 — both ship worldwide via Amazon.
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Available now · Worldwide
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