Forecastable's Education Center -- The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
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 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 […]
Co-selling is the joint sales motion in which two companies pursue and close the same prospect or customer together, sharing context, sequencing, and accountability for the deal. The motion runs on shared deal mechanics, same logo, same buyer, same forecast date, same next step, not on shared friendly relationships. Companies that confuse the two get […]
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Co-sell is the joint sales motion where two companies pursue and close the same deal together. The motion works when both sellers can name the same buyer, the same use case, the same forecast date, and the same next step. It fails when the relationship is friendly but the deal mechanics are not shared. Get […]
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Alex Buckles
Partner conversation intelligence is the application of AI-powered call analysis (the technology Gong, Chorus, and Clari pioneered for direct sales calls) to partner-facing conversations: joint customer calls, partner manager check-ins, joint discovery calls, and partner activation sessions. Unlike direct-sales conversation intelligence, partner conversation intelligence has to handle two distinct speakers from different companies, attribution of […]
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Alex Buckles
Partner attribution disputes kill deals when resolved late. Learn the three-step protocol to surface disagreements early, apply a written tiebreaker rubric, and escalate to a neutral reviewer—before the deal cycle matures.
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A Co-Sell Plan is not a mutual action plan with a partner column added. It is a different document. The difference is the whole reason a co-sell program either closes deals or just shows up in a pipeline report.
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Short answer: Atlassian’s Komal Shah said it on the ELG Summit stage: five to eight partners are now involved in each enterprise deal. However, most partner-program architectures, the deal-reg system, the comp plan, the partner-manager assignment, are still built for one partner. Therefore, the cadence problem is structural. Specifically, four operating layers, the shared mental […]
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WorkSpan is an enterprise co-sell management platform best known for its hyperscaler integrations (AWS ACE, Microsoft Partner Center, Google Cloud Marketplace) and for managing complex multi-party co-sell motions inside large alliances organizations. Buyers shop alternatives when they want a lighter co-sell layer, account-mapping-first ecosystem data, or a modern PRM that handles partner enablement alongside co-sell. […]
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A Co-Sell Plan is a three-party joint action plan between a vendor, a partner, and a shared prospect. Unlike a Mutual Action Plan, it adds the partner as a named participant with their own commitments and economic outcomes. It’s the operating discipline that turns partner relationships into forecastable pipeline.
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A Co-Sell Alignment Specialist is the operational role between a vendor’s sales team, a partner’s team, and a shared prospect. It runs the cadence of a Co-Sell Plan, captures attribution, and escalates when deals stall. It’s the role most partnerships orgs are missing, and the reason cycles plateau at one overworked partner manager.
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Alex Buckles
Forging strong partnerships has emerged as a core to how B2B revenue actually compounds, but the market demands not just innovation in products and services, but also strategic alliances that can extend reach, enhance offerings, and ultimately drive revenue. Let’s dive into the system for sourcing revenue from large SaaS partners, with the practical playbook […]
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