Forecastable's Education Center -- The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
What is a co-sell strategy? Short answer: A co-sell strategy is the set of decisions about which partners you sell with, which accounts you go after together, and how the joint motion runs. It chooses where co-sell effort goes so the company produces partner pipeline by design rather than by lucky overlap. It is not […]
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What is an MDF event? Short answer: An MDF event is a partner-funded or jointly funded field marketing motion where market development funds underwrite a customer-facing activity (executive dinner, regional workshop, conference booth, or industry breakfast) with a named pipeline target and a sourced and influenced reporting back to the funding partner. It is not […]
Demand generation that runs through partners by borrowing their trust, measured as pipeline.
Short answer: most MDF (Market Development Funds) programs in B2B SaaS waste 50 to 70 percent of their budget. The cause is structural, not size. MDF gets framed too narrowly as marketing money. It then goes to partners who will not run the activity that drives pipeline. The fix is a defensible MDF program that […]
What are co-sell examples? Short answer: Co-sell examples are concrete illustrations of partners and reps selling together, showing who fronts the customer, how the deal runs, and how credit is shared. They turn the abstract idea of joint selling into specific motions a team can recognize and copy. People talk about co-sell as if it […]
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What is co-sell management? Short answer: Co-sell management is the ongoing operating work that keeps a joint-selling motion producing, running the deal reviews, maintaining attribution, coordinating partners and reps, and unsticking deals. It is the difference between a co-sell program that was launched and one that keeps running. A co-sell motion is not a thing […]
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What is a co-sell plan? Short answer: A co-sell plan is the document that defines how a company will sell with a specific partner, the target accounts, the deal motion, the owners, and the credit rules. It turns a vague intention to partner into a concrete operating plan that reps can run against. A co-sell […]
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What is a co-sell program? Short answer: A co-sell program is the structure that makes joint selling with partners repeatable across many deals and many reps, the defined motion, the ownership, the attribution, and the incentives. It is what turns occasional co-sell wins into a producing, forecastable motion. A co-sell program is broader than a […]
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What is co-sell sales cycle time? Short answer: Co-sell sales cycle time is how long a deal takes to close when a partner is selling alongside your rep, measured from first opportunity to closed-won. It usually runs shorter than a comparable solo deal because the partner’s trust and access compress the early, slow stages of […]
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What are co-sell services? Short answer: Co-sell services are outside help that builds or runs a company’s joint-selling motion, the motion design, the attribution setup, the enablement, and sometimes the ongoing management. They are the hands-on alternative to figuring out co-sell internally or buying software and hoping the motion follows. Co-sell services sit between strategy […]
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What is co-sell software? Short answer: Co-sell software is tooling that supports a joint-selling motion, surfacing account overlap with partners, capturing partner-sourced revenue, and coordinating deals between your reps and theirs. It is the infrastructure a co-sell motion runs on, not the motion itself. The category covers several overlapping tools, ecosystem data platforms, marketplace co-sell […]
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What are partner deal stages? Short answer: Partner deal stages is the structured set of pipeline stages a co-sell deal moves through, with exit criteria at each stage that name both the host-side and the partner-side moves required to advance. It exists because the direct-sale stage map does not capture the partner-side work that makes […]
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What is a partner discovery call? Short answer: A partner discovery call is the first thirty-to-sixty minute working session between a host partnerships team and a partner-side counterpart to determine whether a joint go-to-market motion is operationally viable, with a named joint customer use case, named overlap accounts, and a defined next move at the […]
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What does it take to get AEs to co-sell? Short answer: How to get aes to co-sell is to make co-sell the easiest path to their next deal: pick three named accounts per AE, run a thirty-minute weekly deal review, ship a one-page joint value prop the AE can read in two minutes, and confirm […]
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