Leadership will ask “how many partners.” That number is almost useless. You can sign twenty and produce nothing. Learn to change the question.
The numbers that survive a follow-up
Active connections. Customers using the integration this week, not listings on a website. Influenced pipeline. Deals where the partner or the integration showed up, with a definition you wrote down. Sourced revenue. Deals that would not exist without the partner. Harder. Use it when you can defend it. Time to first integration. How long from “yes” to live. This is an ops number, and it tells you if the motion is real.
Installs without active use are a listing problem or a scope problem. Report both.
A monthly note the CEO will read
Five lines. What shipped. Active connections vs last month. Pipeline the partners touched. One risk. One ask (engineering, a legal hour, a seller intro).
Do not send a 12-tab dashboard in month two.
OKRs
One objective. Two or three key results you do not fully control. “Sign five partners” is a task. “Three integrations with 20 active accounts each” is a result. If you could complete the key result alone at your desk, it is not a key result.
When the number is zero
Say so. Then show the leading indicators: scopes in flight, listings in review, customers waiting. Zero with a honest funnel is better than a vanity “24 partners” that is a graveyard.