B2B Channel Marketing Committee: Aligning Your Direct & Channel GTM Engines; Identifying Your Ideal Partner Profile

While most B2B marketing and sales organizations have refined their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to a science, the majority lack a comparable foundation for their partner ecosystem. This gap creates a fundamental misalignment between direct and indirect revenue engines, leaving companies unable to systematically identify, prioritize, and activate the right partners while their direct sales teams operate without visibility into the ecosystem's potential.

The solution starts with building a foundational Ideal Partner Profile (IPP)—but an IPP is fundamentally different from an ICP. In this session, you'll discover the critical data points and market intelligence that comprise an effective IPP. These insights require specialized partner intelligence that can't be found in traditional databases or CRM systems.

More importantly, we'll address how a well-defined IPP becomes the bridge between your direct sales and marketing teams and your indirect channel teams. When direct sales doesn't understand which partners can reach the ICPs, and when channel teams operate without clarity on your target ICPs, you're creating competing priorities instead of a unified revenue strategy. A robust IPP establishes shared intelligence, common language, and collaborative goal-setting—ensuring both direct and indirect teams are pulling in the same direction with a stake in each other's success.

Attendees will leave with:

• A framework for building an Ideal Partner Profile (IPP) and understanding how it differs from your ICP
• Data-driven approaches to partner intelligence and ecosystem market research
• Strategies for creating alignment between direct sales/marketing and channel teams around common targets
• Practical ways to leverage partner ecosystem intelligence to inform broader GTM strategy

Agenda:

11:00 - 11:20 am: OPENING REMARKS AND ATTENDEE INTRODUCTIONS

Host & Moderator:

Debbie Schildkraut
VP, B2B Marketing Practice
ANA

11:20 - 11:50 am: WHY DO YOU NEED AN IDEAL PARTNER PROFILE (IPP) AS MUCH AS AN IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE (ICP)?
Most B2B organizations have perfected their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), yet many still lack an equivalent foundation for their partner ecosystem, creating misalignment between direct and indirect revenue engines. Establishing an Ideal Partner Profile (IPP) fills this gap, offering the specialized partner intelligence that traditional databases and CRM systems simply can’t provide. A strong IPP becomes the connective tissue between direct sales, marketing, and channel teams—ensuring shared priorities, unified targets, and a common revenue strategy. In this session, attendees will learn how to build an effective IPP, align teams around shared intelligence, and leverage ecosystem insights to strengthen their broader go-to-market approach.

Speaker:


Dina Moskowitz
CEO and Founder
PartnerOptimizer, Inc.

11:50 - 12:20 pm: INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC IPP ACTIVATION

How do you take your “ideal” partners and activate them in the market? Deven will walk through how to evangelize the specific industry plays, assets, and value narratives that make your brand indispensable in your partners' GTM, and how to turn that joint activity into a measurable, repeatable pipeline. This is about moving from identifying the right partners to operationalizing them as true industry multipliers.

Moderator:

Deven Ravel
Global Partner GTM Leader, Financial Services
ServiceNow

12:20 - 12:50 pm: MARKETING’S ROLE IN PARTNER ACTIVATION
Your IPP tells you who to work with; this session tells you how to turn that strategy into shared revenue. For marketing practitioners, bridging the gap between direct and indirect channels requires a focused framework and the right tech stack. In this deep dive, we'll shift from theory to execution, outlining the key steps for activating your IPP-aligned partners. Attendees will learn how to create a joint value proposition, build scalable co-marketing kits, and apply account mapping to drive pipeline.

Speaker:


Laura Gibbs 
Manager of Partner Marketing
Thryv

12:50 - 1:00 pm: TOP TAKEAWAYS AND CLOSING REMARKS
Whether you're a CMO optimizing your full go-to-market motion or a marketing executive responsible for channel strategy, this session provides the foundation to transform your partner ecosystem from an unpredictable variable into an aligned, scalable revenue driver working in concert with your direct sales efforts.