Power your growth: 10 key steps to go to market with Adobe

Overview

Partners are an instrumental part of our market presence. Whether you’re a system integrator, technology partner, or cloud partner, you’re the team customers trust to turn ambition into outcomes—and Adobe products help you lead those conversations, expand your services, and win more work.

In this guide, you’ll find 10 high-impact steps to help you grow your Adobe practice—starting with joining our partner program. You’ll learn how to put program benefits to work right away, including sales tools and resources, incentives, and information on how to access co-selling support from Adobe sellers. Bring Adobe into more deals, build joint pipeline faster, and close business together.

1. Join the Adobe Digital Experience Partner Program

If you’re not already a member of the Adobe Digital Experience Partner Program, it’s time to enroll. Joining is easy—just use the button below to register. Although a good amount of information is publicly available through the Partner Experience Hub (PxHub), joining the program gives you access to additional resources and benefits, especially when you join at the Silver, Gold, or Platinum levels.

Our unified and reimagined PxHub hosts everything partners need to grow an Adobe practice—the latest product information, insights into Adobe sales strategy, industry resources, and a vast library of learning resources and guides like this one to help you drive value from your partnership.

If you’re new to either the program or to the PxHub, use the buttons below to access curated guides to set you on the path to partnership success.

Join now

2. Choose your partnership level and track your progress

Our partner program offers four membership levels: Community, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. As you progress through the levels, your available benefits expand, as do the requirements to maintain your level.

Use the buttons below to understand program details and the benefits and requirements associated with each partnership level. At the time of joining, we recommend starting at the Silver level for access to sales-related content that will help you progress your partnership.

As your partnership progresses, your organization’s program admin can use the Partner Dashboard under Manage Profile to track your company’s standing against level requirements and see what to work on to advance to the next partnership level.

View program details

3. Establish or update your Partner Directory profile

Limited to partners at the Silver level and above—and a key reason we recommend joining at the Silver level—your Partner Directory profile is the key mechanism for customers and Adobe sellers to find relevant partners. When you go to market with Adobe, your profile is often the first stop for vetting your partnership and Adobe experience.

For Directory users, search results are weighted and sorted based on partner level, certifications, and specializations. If you’re new to the program, learn about these topics and start planning to achieve these important credentials. If you’ve already achieved certifications and specializations, these will be automatically reflected in your profile.

4. Stand out with a strong value proposition

One of the most important aspects of your Directory profile is putting forth compelling information that differentiates your company from similar partners. What makes you special? Why should a customer choose you?

Read the Activation Guide linked below for more detailed guidance on developing your unique partner value proposition.

Defining your value prop

5. Develop in-demand skills and expertise

Adobe product certifications, Sales Excellence accreditations, and application specializations help you stand out from the crowd by providing validation to potential clients, employers, and Adobe sellers that you and your company have vital Adobe product knowledge, skills, and experience. Credentials and specializations can also help with career advancement, increased earning potential, and access to exclusive resources.

• Sales accreditation. A sales accreditation is a great place to start learning about an Adobe product. Our free accreditation courses cover the application’s competitive advantages, capabilities, and integrations with other Adobe products, while helping you better communicate the value of Adobe digital experience products.

• Certifications: An Adobe product certification provides rigorous training that validates your expertise in using Adobe products at the Professional, Expert, or Master level as a business practitioner, marketer, developer, or architect.

• Specializations: Once your company has earned the required certifications and logged some successful Adobe projects for customers, you can pursue product specializations that recognize your company’s expertise and effective track record in implementing or servicing a specific Adobe product.

6. Sign up for the Partner Sales Center to register your deals

A fundamental part of going to market with Adobe is gaining access to the Partner Sales Center, a centralized area of the PxHub that allows you to register and track leads.

Although all partners can register leads, partners at Silver or above gain broader access to sales resources. This can include:

• Recognition (attribution) from Adobe of your contribution to specific opportunities

• Financial incentives based on this recognition and reflecting your type of involvement in a deal

• Reporting and insights on your selling partnership by region, industry, and Adobe product

• Engagement from Adobe’s Partner Sales team and account executives to develop and close opportunities

Approved deal registrations are governed by Adobe deal registration guidelines.

7. Align your messaging to Adobe sales strategy

Our most successful partnerships thrive on collaboration and alignment. We want to build on this success by ensuring that we’re aligned with our partners across several key dimensions:

• Sales priorities: Each year, Adobe allocates significant resources in setting revenue and growth targets for specific products, business needs, and markets. This becomes the foundation for all go-to-market messaging and is reflected across resources and materials in the PxHub. Focusing on opportunities that align your strengths with our priorities can drive success for you, Adobe, and our shared customers.

• Customer targets, profiles, and messaging: Aligning on targeted customer and stakeholder profiles can be invaluable, which is part of why we’ve expanded our account mapping activities to include all partners at Silver and above. This alignment becomes the foundation for coordinated sales efforts and messaging consistency.

• Sellers: Once you’ve registered a lead, Adobe may then progress it into a qualified opportunity, which then opens doors to aligning with our Partner Sales team and, when appropriate, directly with Adobe sellers. Be ready to answer questions about the perceived alignment and go-forward strategy for working together.

By aligning in these ways, we’ll be able to strengthen customer engagements through enhanced insights and more tailored conversations. Our collaboration also increases customer trust, improves lead quality and conversion rates, and accelerates sales cycles.

Explore account mapping

8. Identify prospects for joint engagements

When identifying customers for going to market with Adobe, start with those who already see you as a trusted advisor and partner.

• Who are your strongest advocates and champions?

• Do you have relationships with key influencers or decision-makers?

• What types of customers and industries are you best aligned with?

Insights like these can help you identify lookalike accounts to target for joint sales opportunities. In addition to our account mapping benefit described above, you can also identify potential joint customers through:

• Sales Navigator. Use Sales Navigator to discover your prospect or account’s key decision makers, their interests or sphere of influence, and then connect with them to start developing the relationship. Social media profiles can also be a strong source of insights.

• Customer referrals. It’s always a good idea to ask existing customers for reviews, introductions, and referrals to other potential customers. Warm introductions go a long way toward building trust and accelerating the sales cycle.

• Leverage AI to suggest target accounts, compile customer insights, and recommend the best stakeholders and methods to drive engagement.

Once you’ve identified your top prospects, it’s valuable to dedicate marketing resources to support your sales team in driving multi-touch experiences with those accounts. For example, invite customers to digital and live events, and drive connections with personalized notes and other tokens of appreciation that demonstrate your understanding of their needs. We recommend creating at least three touchpoints across your target accounts over a three-month period.

9. Develop your prospecting plan

Once you’ve identified target accounts for joint selling, build a prospecting plan for each one that outlines the activities, tools, and techniques your team will use to convert a prospect into a lead:

• Identify business issues that can be addressed with Adobe products and then draft your initial solution recommendations or point of view (POV).

• Develop a tailored outreach plan, using org charts to identify decision-makers (if you don’t already know them) and plan your outreach strategy.

• Share your POV with the customer and confirm their interest in partnering with you to begin addressing their challenges and goals.

• Register the lead through the Partner Sales Center to get connected with Adobe representatives to support you with the engagement.

10. Leverage Adobe Sales Plays to optimize sales talks

Adobe Sales Plays are a collection of strategies and resources to help our partners and sellers align Adobe applications to our customers’ most pressing business needs. With a three-tiered structure that covers everything from multi-product end-to-end solutions down to sales tactics for individual products, Sales Plays are the most critical resource for going to market with Adobe.

Each Sales Play includes elements to support your team along critical stages of the customer journey lifecycle. Although some resources may be restricted for Community partners, all partners can get a high-level understanding of our Sales Plays and view customer success stories. Silver, Gold, and Platinum partners can go a step further with access to field positioning documents, a customer-facing point of view presentation, and more.

In addition to the Sales Plays themselves, our annual Partner Kickoff Series (hosted early in the calendar year) includes deep-dive webinars to talk you through key aspects of Portfolio and Strategic Sales Plays. There are also self-guided learning courses to help you strengthen your understanding.