In 2022, I led the negotiation of a five-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement between Sage and AWS. The deal ultimately drove a 900% increase in partnership revenue and secured multimillion-dollar co-investments in cloud and AI solutions. But the negotiation itself was only about 20% of what made it work.
Why most alliance agreements underperform
The technology industry is full of strategic partnership announcements that produce a press release, a logo exchange, and very little else. I have seen this pattern at every company I have worked for. The problem is not that the partnerships lack potential. It is that the agreements are structured around intent rather than execution.
When we approached the AWS relationship at Sage, we made a deliberate decision to build the agreement around joint execution milestones, not just revenue targets. Every quarter had specific deliverables: co-sell pipeline targets, joint solution development checkpoints, and shared account plans for named enterprise accounts.
Building the internal muscle
The harder work was internal. An alliance agreement is only as strong as the organization's ability to execute against it. At Sage, that meant building cross-functional alignment between the alliances team, product, sales, and marketing. We created a dedicated alliance operations function that tracked joint pipeline, managed co-investment funds, and reported on shared KPIs.
This is where most companies fall short. They sign the agreement and then hand it to a single alliance manager who has no authority over the resources needed to execute. The alliance becomes a side project rather than a core growth lever.
The 900% result
The revenue growth was dramatic, but it was a lagging indicator. The leading indicators were the ones we tracked weekly: number of joint customer meetings, co-sell pipeline generated, and partner-sourced qualified opportunities. By the time the revenue showed up, we had already built the operational infrastructure to sustain it.
What I would tell any executive entering an alliance negotiation
First, negotiate execution commitments, not just financial terms. Second, build the internal operating model before you sign, not after. Third, assign dedicated resources with real authority. And fourth, measure leading indicators weekly, not just revenue quarterly.
The best alliances are not relationships. They are operating systems.