Nearbound Marketing: What It Is and How It Works
Demand generation that runs through partners by borrowing their trust, measured as pipeline.
Forecastable Blog
Forecastable's Education Center -- The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
Latest Post
Categories
All Account Mapping (11) AI in Partnerships (9) B2B Sales Foundations (24) Co-Selling (30) Ecosystem-Led Growth & Nearbound (9) Partner Attribution & Reporting (12) Partner Enablement & Onboarding (7) Partner Marketing (7) Partner Programs (16) Partner Tech & PRM (17) Partnerships Forecasting (13) Partnerships Roles & Hiring (22) Partnerships Strategy & Leadership (40) Uncategorized (1)Latest Post
Partner Tiering: What It Is and How to Design It
What is partner tiering? Short answer: partner tiering is the practice of grouping partners into levels (typically by production, commitment, or capability) and matching investment and benefits to each level. In 2026, the tiers that work are earned on output, not assigned on logos or revenue size. A tier system is an investment allocation tool, […]
Read Article
Editor's Picks
MDF Programs That Generate Real Pipeline (Not Just Activity)
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 […]
Joint Demand Generation: How to Run Co-Marketing That Converts
Short answer: joint demand generation campaigns with partners produce 2x to 4x the ROI of solo demand-gen when designed correctly. They produce 0.5x or worse when designed wrong. The difference comes down to four design decisions. You need a shared ICP, a single accountable owner, lead-level attribution, and a structured handoff motion. Get those four […]
Partner Tiering: What It Is and How to Design It
What is partner tiering? Short answer: partner tiering is the practice of grouping partners into levels (typically by production, commitment, or capability) and matching investment and benefits to each level. In 2026, the tiers that work are earned on output, not assigned on logos or revenue size. A tier system is an investment allocation tool, […]
Read Article
OEM Partnerships: How They Work and When to Use Them in 2026
Short answer: OEM partnerships are commercial agreements where a hardware manufacturer lets another company’s product become part of what it ships, and lets a wider channel sell the result. Picture a server builder or a commercial mobile device maker. Around its OEM program sits a crowd. Software vendors want their product certified and embedded so […]
Read Article
B2B Partnerships: A 2026 Operating Guide for Revenue Leaders
B2B partnerships are commercial relationships between two business organizations designed to produce joint customer outcomes and shared revenue. The category covers reseller channels, technology integrations, services and SI alliances, marketplace co-sell motions, and a long tail of joint go-to-market relationships. Strong B2B partnerships compound on operating discipline; weak ones run on personality and produce inconsistent […]
Read Article
AWS ACE: How the APN Customer Engagement Program Actually Works
AWS ACE (the APN Customer Engagement program) is the operating mechanism that lets AWS partners track and co-sell deals with AWS field sellers. Partners that run ACE well produce co-sell revenue that compounds; partners that treat ACE as a back-office reporting task produce ACE pipelines that look full and don’t close. The thing that separates […]
Read Article
Partner Incentives and Incentive Programs: Designing Ones That Work
Partner incentives are the financial and non-financial mechanisms a vendor uses to motivate partner behavior beyond the baseline margin. Strong partner incentive programs are designed around four principles: tied to outcomes the partner team can actually drive, paid out fast enough to influence behavior, simple enough to communicate without a deck, and audited often enough […]
Read Article
ServiceNow Partner Program: How It Works and Who Should Join
The ServiceNow Partner Program (run through the Now Partner Hub) is a tiered partner program that gives partners access to ServiceNow’s enterprise customer base, joint go-to-market support, and certification credentials. The program organizes partners into a tier structure (Registered, Specialist, Premier, Elite, plus designations like Build Partner and Service Partner) with progressive benefits at each […]
Read Article
Partner Onboarding: A 90-Day Operating Cadence That Compounds
Partner onboarding is the structured 90-day program that takes a newly signed partner from contract close to first sourced deal. Most teams treat onboarding as a one-week checklist; the partners who actually produce revenue went through a 90-day cadence with weekly close dates, an executive sponsor, and a forcing function on the first joint deal. […]
Read Article
Channel Sales Strategy: A Framework Anchored in Partner Economics
A channel sales strategy is the operating plan that defines how a vendor sells through partners: which partners, in which segments, with which economics, on which cadence, against which pipeline target. Most published channel strategies are partner-count plans. The right strategy is anchored in partner economics: the producer-consumer ratio, the partner-attached pipeline target, the operating […]
Read Article
Partner Program Examples: Structural Patterns Behind Programs That Scale
Partner program examples are most useful when you read past the logo gallery and study the structural mechanics: tier requirements, deal-registration rules, MDF gates, certification thresholds, co-sell expectations, and attribution policy. The same five or six structural patterns repeat across every successful program, regardless of category or scale. The patterns are what’s portable; the brand […]
Read Article
Partner Recruitment Strategy: A Practical Guide
Targeting the partners worth signing from an ideal partner profile, not from inbound interest.
Read Article
