Why your Partnerships keep dying
Why your company is bleeding money through decentralised deals and how to build a technical implementation team that drives stickiness.
Alero Boyo wants to create something that doesn’t exist…yet.
There’s no template for what she’s building. But she believes that if she gets it right, she’ll solve a problem she’s watched companies ignore for a decade: brands leaving value on the table because they treat partnerships as a nice-to-have rather than operations.
It’s that belief that made her start AlexBoyo World (ABW) four years ago. Today, ABW works with clients like Bujetti, Selar, NaijaSolve, Yield MFB, Itsekiri Homecoming event and Keys2dcity — and Boyo has structured it so she never has to choose between her business and her clients.
“Several brands have approached me for full-time roles, but past experience has taught me that most companies expect total exclusivity. I’m not interested in hiding my own business or shrinking what I’ve built,” she says over a call.
“Now, I’m upfront with them: ‘If you want to work with me, you aren’t just hiring an individual—you’re hiring my entire team.’ Whether I’m supported by five people or ten, the internal structure is my concern; their concern is the results. They’ve agreed to these terms, signed the MOU, and we’ve successfully onboarded the team.”
As we chat, her first event for Bujetti, a financial control platform, takes place tomorrow, and she’s working around the clock to deliver a stellar experience. The goal is to get people to experience the product and generate sign-ups.
“I want organisations to realise that it’s possible to outsource partnerships successfully.”
This negotiation encapsulates Boyo’s thesis: the era of the “partnership manager” as a solitary role within a siloed company is ending. In its place, she is betting on “Partnership as a Service”—a model where strategy and execution are outsourced to specialists who do more than just make introductions.
Boyo has spent the last decade navigating the messy intersection of sales, business development, and marketing at institutions like Jumia, Sterling Bank, Tangerine, and Premia Business Network (PBN). Her observation is consistent: companies are bleeding money because they treat partnerships as a “nice-to-have” rather than operations.
In this conversation, she explains why “brokering deals alone” is a selfish word, what enterprise silos really cost, and how she turned a complimentary event booth into a verified consulting partnership.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and flow.
You’ve worked across eCommerce, banking, insurance, and tech. What’s the consistent failure you see in how African organisations handle partnerships?
The problem is decentralisation without communication. When I was at a financial institution, I moved from marketing to a product role. I wanted to drive credit card usage, so I went out to hunt for lifestyle partners—brands like AXA Mansard and iFitness.
I did the work. I closed the deal with AXA and iFitness. But when we took the MOU to legal, they kicked it back. They told me, “We already signed a deal with these guys six months ago.”
Another department had locked it down, but because there was no centralised partnership system, I had spent weeks chasing a lead we had already converted. That is the enterprise reality. You have the marketing team, the tech team, and the sales team all hunting the same partners, often offering different terms. It’s inefficiency at scale.
So partnerships should be a centralised function like HR or Finance.
Exactly. Organisations need a partnership audit. You need to know who you are already in bed with. If the board says we need $5 billion in revenue for 2026, Strategy and Partnerships should be the first two heads in the room.
Strategy maps the goal; Partnerships map the ecosystem. Then, you distribute the execution to sector-specific managers who report back to a central hub. Without that central brain, you lose leverage.
You have a clear allergy to the word “brokering.” Why?
I don’t really like the word “brokering.” Brokering is introducing Person A to Person B and walking away. Maybe you get a commission, maybe you don’t, but you take no responsibility for the outcome. The industry is full of people who think an introduction is a deliverable. It isn’t.
What does the alternative actually look like in practice?
I’d say sticking around after the connection to execute. If I introduce a client to Bujetti, my job isn’t done when they sign up. My job is to ensure stickiness. We approach it like business consultants. We ask the partner: “What are your goals? What are your actual pain points? How does this integration solve them?”
If you just broker a deal, the relationship dies the moment the champion leaves the company. If you execute a partnership, you embed the product into their operations so deeply that they can’t leave.
Give me a concrete example.
Look at the work we did with Premia Business Network (PBN), a referral-based community of business leaders and Zoho, a cloud-based suite of over 45+ business software applications. Typically, brands like Zoho would just sponsor an event, get a logo on a banner, and hope for brand awareness. That’s low-value.
When I came on as Partnership Lead, we negotiated for PBN to become a technical partner for Zoho. We didn’t just refer community members to Zoho; we built a “PBN Solutions” arm that helped members migrate their actual tech stacks to Zoho. I have to credit PBN Founder, Bola Lawal, for his foresight; he initially offered Zoho a complimentary booth at Growth Con to demonstrate our community’s scale, which paved the way for this high-value collaboration.
So, PBN became a reseller and an implementation partner.
Yes. I stepped up to handle the product demos myself, using my background at Bumpa to bridge the gap.
We consulted with community members—auditing their CRMs, their accounting tools—and then deployed Zoho as the solution.
In less than six months, we hit the revenue threshold to become a verified consulting partner. That is the difference. Brokering would have been introducing Zoho to the community founder. Partnership was building a technical team to implement the software for the end-users. One is a handshake; the other is revenue.
You’ve turned down full-time roles. You’ve said you “lost yourself” in past jobs. What does that mean?
Yes, I’ve resigned from previous roles because the environments often force you to prioritise speed over structure. People want results “now, now.” They want the magic introduction.
But real partnerships are built brick-by-brick. Strategy takes time. I lost myself when I became just an execution arm for someone else’s chaotic vision.
Now you’re hiring for your own agency. Is it easier to build the culture you want?
It’s actually my biggest struggle. I’m a Millennial, and I’m finding a disconnect with the available talent pool. I need execution, not just activity.
There is a “hot and cold” energy I see often—active today, ghosting tomorrow. Partnership roles require an obsession with follow-through. I am trying to build a company where we are “Partnership as a Service.” That means we need people who can execute with the same intensity as a founder. If I can’t find that, I can’t scale.
What’s the hardest leadership lesson you’ve learned running ABW?
That there’s a thinner line between being a toxic boss and being a considerate one than I ever imagined.
I understand the distinction between accountability and toxicity. What surprised me was discovering how close the line can feel when you’re under real pressure.
Last year, ABW went through a difficult stretch. We had lost some deals, the business wasn’t growing as expected, and things were falling through the cracks. At the same time, I had team members who weren’t performing, and daily conversations and corrections weren’t moving the needle.
In that season, I genuinely felt the urge to become a different kind of leader. To shut down, to take everything on myself, to be mean. I thought maybe I was too soft, too empathetic, that being nicer wasn’t working.
But what stopped me was introspection. I had to look within and ask myself: Is this the leader I want to be, or is this just pressure talking? I sought professional support because I recognised that what I was feeling, that frustration, that urge, was something I needed to process properly, not act on.
The unexpected part? I came out of it with more compassion for leaders I had previously judged. I understood, for the first time, why some of my own past toxic bosses may have behaved the way they did. It doesn’t excuse the behaviour, but I now understand the pressure that can drive someone there.
The lesson on the job: empathy is a leadership choice, not just a personality trait. Especially when circumstances push you in the opposite direction.
Hmmm. That deep. You’re moving from consulting to building products in 2026. Why?
Because services don’t scale linearly. I want to build the “dating app for business.”
Right now, if you are a founder in Zamfara with a brilliant prototype but no network, your idea dies. If you are an investor in Silicon Valley looking for that exact innovation, you can’t find him.
We are building a CRM and marketplace that standardises this. I want to turn sales and partnership professionals into verified affiliates. Imagine a platform where you input your project needs, and the algorithm matches you not just with capital, but with partners who have the distribution you lack.
We’ve spent three years doing this manually to understand the friction points. Now we automate it.
Rapid Fire 🔥
What’s one tool you’d marry if you could?
I rely on Claude for structured thinking (it’s topped ChatGPT for me lately) and Selar for growth. Selar is essentially my revenue hub for hosting and selling my masterclasses and digital products.
What’s your content diet? Viral Twitter threads, books or podcasts
I’m not active on Twitter, but I do business podcasts (DOAC) and YouTube videos. I’ve been watching Caleb Ralston lately to understand sustainable brand-building.