Forecastable's Education Center -- The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
What is MEDDIC for partnerships? Short answer: MEDDIC partnerships is the application of the classic sales qualification frame (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion) to co-sell and partner-sourced deals, with a partner-side mirror on every letter so the host AE and the partner counterpart qualify the same opportunity on the same […]
Read Article
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 […]
Alex Buckles
Partner-sourced pipeline should pay AEs the same commission as direct deals with full credit, no haircut. Partner managers get separate quota credit from a different comp pool. This eliminates the zero-sum fight and prevents AE sandbagging of partner intros.
Read Article
Alex Buckles
Partner activation is the work of getting partner sellers, technical teams, and customer success people to actually run deals alongside the vendor. The industry calls this enablement; the work that produces revenue is activation. Most B2B SaaS partner programs invest heavily in enablement content (training portals, certification badges, recorded courses) and underinvest in activation (motion […]
Read Article
Alex Buckles
Partner agency in 2026: the four practical categories, when to hire one vs. build in-house, and how to evaluate without falling for the credentials slide.
Read Article
Alex Buckles
Partner programs in B2B SaaS fail for predictable structural reasons, not for lack of effort. The five most common failure causes: missing executive sponsor, unclear partner ICP, no partner-influenced revenue accountability, weak partner activation (especially the motion and reinforcement layers), and absent operational rigor (attribution, forecast cadence, executive reporting). Get one of these wrong and […]
Read Article
Alex Buckles
Partner pipeline confidence bands report the partnerships forecast as three numbers (low, mid, high) instead of one. The low band includes only deals at stage 4 or later with active Co-Sell Plans and a partner check-in within fourteen days. Mid adds stage 3 deals with active partner engagement. High adds stage 2 deals with strong […]
Read Article
Alex Buckles
The board slide that works for partner pipeline reporting has three numbers and nothing else. Partner-sourced ARR with three to five named accounts. Partner-influenced velocity lift measured in days reduced versus direct deals. Partner-sourced conversion rate compared to direct. No combined “total partner pipeline” headline. No engagement metrics. No forecast. Three credible numbers a CFO […]
Read Article
Alex Buckles
The CRO-CPO relationship works when the CRO treats partnerships as a revenue motion and the CPO treats partner pipeline as a forecast. Both sides need a shared operating cadence: weekly partnership pipeline review aligned to the weekly direct forecast call, joint accountability for partner-sourced ARR targets, and a Co-Sell Alignment Specialist running the operational layer between them.
Read Article
Alex Buckles
Account mapping software pays back in three ways: pipeline acceleration via warm intros to existing prospects, expansion revenue via mapping mutual customers, and risk reduction via knowing which deals overlap with partner relationships. The defensible ROI math is (incremental partner-sourced ARR + accelerated direct ARR + churn-prevented ARR) divided by annual platform cost. Most B2B SaaS teams hit 3-5x ROI within 12 months.
Read Article
ELG works. The honest question is when to use it and when to use something else. Here are the three situations where ecosystem-led growth moves pipeline best, and the four where another motion fits better.
Read Article
Short answer: Second-party data is the AI moat in partnerships. Bob Moore’s 2×2 Matrix names that correctly. However, the data layer alone does not close deals. The next layer, the operating cadence between the second-party data reservoir and a partner-involved close, is where the actual revenue is hiding. Specifically, four operating layers, the shared mental […]
Read Article
