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 tools? Short answer: Co-sell tools are the software two companies use to find shared accounts, work joint deals, and report on the pipeline they build together. They span three distinct layers, ecosystem data, partner program operations, and marketplace co-sell operations, and most teams need a tool from more than one layer. The […]
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What is the difference between co-sell and co-marketing? Short answer: Co-sell vs co-marketing compares two partner motions that work at different stages of the same funnel. It is not a question of which to pick: co-marketing creates joint awareness and demand, co-sell works joint deals to a close, and a mature partnership runs both with […]
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What is the difference between co-sell and cross-sell? Short answer: Co-sell vs cross-sell compares two revenue motions that sound alike and work nothing alike. It comes down to one distinction: co-sell is selling with a partner to win a deal, and cross-sell is selling more of your own products to a customer you already have. […]
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What is AWS Marketplace co-sell? Short answer: AWS Marketplace co-sell is the sales motion where an ISV transacts a deal through AWS Marketplace while simultaneously working the opportunity with an AWS field seller through the ACE (AWS Customer Engagements) system. It pairs a private offer with a registered, accepted opportunity, so the AWS rep gets […]
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What is AWS Marketplace strategy? Short answer: AWS Marketplace strategy is the set of strategic decisions an ISV makes about whether and how to use AWS Marketplace as part of their go-to-market motion. It covers strategic intent, listing model, pricing approach, channel design, and operational stack, and the answers shape everything from your pricing page […]
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What is co-sell activation? Short answer: Co-sell activation is the structured process of taking a partner from signed to actively producing co-sell pipeline. It is the difference between a paper partnership and a producing one, and it lives or dies on a recurring deal-review cadence run for the first six to eight weeks after signature. […]
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What is a co-sell advisor? Short answer: A co-sell advisor is an external advisor, fractional partnerships leader, or consultant on retainer who helps a partnerships org design and run its co-sell motion. They sit alongside the in-house team, diagnose what is actually broken, design the operating model, and coach the team through the first cycles […]
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What is a co-sell agency? Short answer: A co-sell agency is an external firm that runs co-sell programs on behalf of a vendor. It is different from an advisor (who coaches) or a consultant (who designs). The agency executes the mechanics: account mapping, partner cadences, deal reviews, attribution reporting, and partner-program operations. The agency model […]
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What is a partner newsletter? Short answer: a partner newsletter is a recurring communication sent to a company’s partners to keep them informed, enabled, and active. In 2026, the ones that work are not announcements; they are activation tools that drive a specific partner action in every send. A monthly roundup of company news is […]
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Short answer: Always-on partner communications keep partners aware of you. On their own, they do not generate pipeline. The pipeline comes from partner account planning: dedicated, recurring account-planning sessions built on completed account mapping. Always-on comms are the wiring between those sessions, not a substitute for them. Crossbeam network data puts the average win-rate lift […]
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