The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
What is channel partner recruitment? Short answer: Channel partner recruitment is the process of finding, qualifying, and signing the partners who will actually sell, service, or implement your product. It is the front door of a partner program, and it decides more about the program’s results than any later stage, because you cannot enable or […]
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What is channel marketing? Short answer: Channel marketing is the practice of generating demand through your partners rather than only through your own direct team. It equips resellers, agencies, and technology partners to market your product to their audiences, and it measures the pipeline that motion produces. Done right, it turns partners into a demand […]
What is partner marketing? Short answer: Partner marketing is marketing done with and through your partners to reach audiences you could not reach alone. It spans co-branded campaigns, joint content, referral and affiliate motions, and technology-partner integrations, all aimed at borrowing a partner’s trust and reach. The goal is pipeline that comes recommended, not cold. […]
What is channel marketing? Short answer: Channel marketing is marketing that generates demand through your partners rather than only through your own direct team. It equips resellers, agencies, and technology partners to promote your product to their audiences, and it measures the pipeline that motion returns. In short, it is marketing that reaches buyers through […]
What is nearbound sales? Short answer: Nearbound sales is the GTM motion where the AE works partner-derived signal (account overlap, partner-of-partner relationships, joint customer alerts, ecosystem-level engagement) as the primary prospecting input, instead of cold outbound or inbound MQLs. It sits between inbound and outbound, runs on signal from the ecosystem, and produces a higher […]
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What are outsourced partnerships? Short answer: Outsourced partnerships is the engagement model where a B2B company hires a fractional partnerships leader, a partner-sourced GTM agency, or a partner-as-a-service vendor to run all or part of the partnerships motion instead of (or alongside) building an in-house team. It exists because partnerships is a slow-to-build function with […]
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What is a partner attribution model? Short answer: A partner attribution model is the signed definition for how partner-touched opportunities count toward sourced, influenced, and assisted pipeline and revenue, with named rules for which partner role at which stage produces which credit. It exists because finance will not fund a partner pipeline forecast without a […]
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What is a partner battle card? Short answer: A partner battle card is the one-to-two page AE-facing enablement asset that names the joint value, the named buying personas, the co-sell motion, and the head-to-head competitive position when a host product and a partner product are sold together. It exists because AEs cannot remember the joint […]
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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 is partner discovery data? Short answer: Partner discovery data is the structured intelligence layer that converts raw partner-side signal (account overlap, customer status, buying-committee relationships, deal-in-progress flags) into AE-ready signal with named tiers, partner-side context, and a defined next move per signal. It exists because raw overlap data is not signal, and AEs working […]
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What is a partner ecosystem map? Short answer: A partner ecosystem map is the structured visualization and classification of every partner in a company’s go-to-market ecosystem, with named tiers, partner-type categories (SI, ISV, reseller, marketplace, agency, alliance), joint motion labels, and overlap density per partner per segment. It exists because a company cannot make sound […]
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Account Mapping
Co-Sell
Crossbeam
Crossbeam MCP
Ecosystem-Led Growth
Model Context Protocol
Partner Operations
Alex Buckles
Crossbeam quietly turned its data into a callable utility. The Crossbeam MCP server only pays back if you treat it as the prescriptive layer for your co-sell motion. Here are 12 plays Supernode and Enterprise customers can run this week, the prompts that drive them, and the operating model behind them.
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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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What is PRM software? Short answer: PRM software is the system a vendor uses to run a partner program at scale, handling partner onboarding, a partner portal, deal registration, content distribution, and program reporting in one place. It gives a channel team the administrative backbone that a spreadsheet and a shared drive cannot, so partners […]
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Whether starting with a single sales team or a single partner, any co-sell motion can be live within 30 days.
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My journey from Education to Operations has equipped me with a unique perspective and skill set that perfectly aligns with Forecastable’s mission to help businesses improve sales collaboration through partner co-selling strategies.
At Forecastable, I am passionate about empowering teams and organizations to unlock the full potential of strategic partnerships. By leveraging my expertise in communication, leadership, and operational efficiency, I contribute to creating seamless co-selling processes that align with business goals and deliver exceptional results.
The intersection of my educational foundation and operational experience fuels my dedication to fostering alignment, building trust, and enhancing collaboration between partners. I am driven by the opportunity to contribute to a platform that not only optimizes sales strategies but also strengthens relationships that lead to long-term growth.
Paul Johnson has 20+ years of software development and consulting experience for a variety of organizations, ranging from startups to large-enterprise organization with highly-complex needs.
Mr. Johnson has a long track record of successful technology deployments.
This, combined with his deep passion for machine learning and exceptional user experience design, allows him to lead our technical direction from the front with confidence.
After serving in The United States Marine Corps, Alex Buckles spent the next two decades as a student of revenue production and an advocate for innovation.
Along the way, he has helped numerous companies achieve double and triple-digit growth by crafting and executing high-performing go-to-market strategies, with co-selling at the center of each.
As a once-advanced technical marketer, an expert sales & partner professional, and a strong customer success advocate, Mr. Buckles understands the impact of these functions aligning not only on revenue production, but on the day-to-day execution of the go-to-market strategy. This concept of revenue-team alignment is what quickly became the foundation of Forecastable back in January of 2018.
In his free time, you’ll find him spending quality time with his children, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. 1 in 36 children in the U.S. are on the spectrum and boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed than girls.
With that in mind, Mr. Buckles plans on dedicating the rest of his life serving those living with autism, through his organization Pathways for Autism. From his perspective, there must be a scalable and financially self-sustaining infrastructure established to put as many individuals with autism as possible on a path towards complete independence as adults.
