Partner Growth Manager

Partner Growth Manager

The role is based in Redwood City, with regular travel to co-op markets, partner events, and stores across the country.

Marketing's job at Rundoo is to create the conditions for more deals to come through, and partnerships is one of our highest-leverage ways to do it. Our buyers already trust their co-ops and manufacturers: Benjamin Moore, AllPro, Emery Jensen, House Hasson, Blish-Mize, Orgill, Florida Hardware, LBM Advantage, and more. Partner referrals convert at a very high rate, and our goal is to shift the majority of new qualified leads (MQLs) to marketing-, partner-, and inbound-sourced, the inverse of where we are today. That engine runs through you.

As Partner Growth Manager, you own the partner and co-op channel end to end: roughly twenty partner relationships across our verticals, the referral program that runs through their reps, and the co-marketing that puts Rundoo in front of their members. Campaigns are the unit of work here, and the Campaigns DB is your operating system: every partner blast, magazine, referral promo, and rate-card placement lives there as a tracked campaign.

This is a hands-on operator role. You will build collateral, run co-op e-blasts and webinars, structure and grow the referral program, and turn a list of partner reps into a system Account Executives actually use. You report to the Head of Marketing, who brings the strategy and domain expertise and orchestrates the partnerships triangle (you on the reps and marketing relationships, the Events & Conferences Specialist on the shows, and leadership at the exec level). You work alongside the Data Science team, who build the enrichment and data behind your partner-rep tooling. You bring the relationships, the collateral, and the discipline to make partner-sourced pipeline predictable.

This is a prove-it-and-grow role. The partner channel already converts well, and the ceiling is high (the working thesis is that partners and conferences together can drive millions in new ARR and eventually support a full team). As you prove the channel out, the scope, the budget, the team under you, and the level grow with it.

What You'll Do

• Own and grow the referral program. Run the quarterly incentive campaigns that keep partner reps sending us stores (a recent referral contest returned $7 for every $1 spent), the standing rewards ($50 per qualified meeting, $500 per sign), a conference-season booth-selfie incentive, and an affiliate / content-referral track that also earns Rundoo backlinks and AEO/SEO visibility.
• Map and own the partner universe. You will build and own relationships with roughly twenty partners across Paint, Hardware, Farm & Feed, Lawn & Garden, and Lumber. For each one, know the rep contacts, the marketing-manager contact, the exec contact, the last touch, the ARR it has generated, and what is still on the table.
• Build relationship with each partner. Rep level (referrals and enablement), marketing-manager level (rate cards, member e-blasts, mailers, magazines, and sponsored placements in their regular member communications), and, with leadership, the exec level.
• Turn partner spend into pipeline. Work with the Head of Marketing and Events Specialist to negotiate per-partner rate cards and marquee packages, and run case studies, referral promos, and special offers through them. The thesis: a serious commitment to a marquee partner should return multiple large deals.
• Enable Account Executives. With the Data Science team, turn partner-rep contact, territory, and coverage data into the maps tool AEs use (who covers which store, who's active, and the introduction path), and coach partner reps on value-based selling and pricing discipline so referrals arrive better-qualified.
• Run per-vertical partner campaigns. Pre-show invites, social announcements, ads, email blasts, and post-show follow-up, unified per partner in the Campaigns DB (a paint-partner campaign this month, a hardware-partner campaign next).
• Own a growing partner-sourced sales pipeline number. Expand the definition of a partner opportunity from your direct referrals to any partner channel-sourced opportunity, and move the north star to partner-sourced pipeline and closed-won ARR.
• Land the credibility moments. Get our CEO and customers onto the trade podcasts run by partners, and use announcements and case studies as a partner-facing credibility moment.

Requirements

We care more about whether you can grow partner-sourced pipeline than about a title history. The ideal candidate builds the collateral, works the relationships, and owns a referral number rather than waiting to be handed a plan.

Core Competencies:

• Partner operator - you build the collateral, run the co-op e-blasts and webinars, and work the relationships yourself
• Owns a partner-sourced number - you measure yourself on partner- and referral-sourced pipeline and ARR, not on partners "engaged"
• Enables the front line - you turn partner data into a tool AEs actually open and use, and you coach reps on how to talk about Rundoo
• Relationship builder across levels - you're comfortable with reps, with a co-op's marketing manager, and with an exec, and you know which conversation to have with whom
• Ship-and-iterate temperament - you'd rather ship a working referral motion for one co-op this month and expand it than design the perfect program for next quarter

Valuable Experience

• 3+ years in partner marketing, channel marketing, co-marketing, or a partnerships / referral role where you owned pipeline
• Standing up or scaling a referral or affiliate program
• Building co-branded collateral and running co-op or manufacturer joint campaigns (e-blasts, webinars, one-pagers, magazine placements)
• Hands-on with Salesforce: accounts, contacts, campaigns, and how referrals are tracked and attributed
• Working with a sales team to enable them with partner or account intelligence
• SMB or owner-operator customers, and ideally distributor / co-op / buying-group ecosystems, rather than enterprise targeting

Technical Requirements

• Comfortable in a CRM (Salesforce): accounts, contacts, campaigns, and clean partner-to-pipeline reporting
• Comfortable with spreadsheets, lists, and outreach tooling, and with partnering with a Marketing Engineer on the enrichment behind partner-rep data
• Able to work from Redwood City and travel to co-op markets, partner events, and stores as needed

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with paint, hardware, building materials, farm and feed, lawn and garden, or related industries and their co-ops and buying groups (Benjamin Moore, AllPro, Emery Jensen, House Hasson, Blish-Mize, Orgill, Florida Hardware, LBM Advantage, HDA / HDN, NHPA)
• Experience negotiating rate cards, sponsorships, or media placements with partners
• Comfort using AI tools to draft collateral, partner outreach, and enablement material at speed

Interview Process

1. Intro Call (30 mins) - Intro conversation with Shannon to get to know you.
2. Round 1 (remote, 30 mins) - Titus, Head of Marketing, will go more in depth on the role and your experience.
3. Take home exercise (paid) - Build a partner plan: assume we are sponsoring a large Lumber distributor as a preferred vendor, and with that we will be able to send physical postcards, email blasts, banner ads, magazine ads, webinars and newsletter inserts. Design and build a reusable set of tools to produce sample materials you would use in this campaign and propose cadence to hit $500k in pipeline.
4. Round 2 (onsite) - Three conversations, plus lunch in our office:
1. (1 hr) Review your take-home and walk the hiring team through your decisions and assumptions
2. (30 mins) Conversation with Addy about events and conferences and how you'll work together
3. (30 mins) Conversation with Zach, one of our Product Managers, about how you