The skill list on job posts is usually a wish list. Here is the list that actually predicts someone can run a book.
Must have
Writing. One-pagers, scopes, QBR notes, seller one-liners. If you cannot make a partner’s rep say one sentence in a meeting, the rest of the motion dies.
Judgment about fit. Customer overlap, complementary product, a partner who can say yes. You will be sold to constantly. The job is to decline most of it.
Commercial literacy. You do not need to be a CFO. You need to know the difference between a referral fee, a co-sell SPIFF, and a marketplace take rate, and which one a field seller will actually care about.
Enough technical literacy to scope. Objects, direction of sync, auth, what happens when a record is deleted. You are translating a customer workflow into acceptance criteria. You are not writing the webhook.
Cadence. A weekly look at the book. A monthly look at adoption. A quarterly look with the partner. Without cadence the book goes cold.
Nice to have
Marketplace certification experience. A language in common with a big platform’s partner team. A network. CRM hygiene that does not require a partner ops hire.
You can skip, at least at the start
Event production as a core skill. Graphic design. Deep code. “Influencer energy.” Running a 200-person partner summit in year one.
How to practice before you have the title
Write a one-pager for a pairing you already use. Draft a discovery agenda and run it on a friend who works at a complementary product. Open three public APIs and write five user stories. Score ten potential partners for a product you know. That is training. Watching keynotes is not.