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 […]
Nearbound is a sales motion in which a vendor uses its partner ecosystem as the primary signal and channel to enter a buying account, rather than relying on inbound or outbound. The motion runs on overlap data, partner-led trust, and joint deal mechanics. Done well, it produces materially higher win…
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Forecast renewals are the single most undermanaged line on a SaaS forecast. The new-business pipeline gets weekly review, deal-mechanic gates, and executive scrutiny. The renewal book gets a quarterly health check and a coverage ratio. Renewals deserve the same operating discipline; the math says they outweigh new business in most…
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Forecastable means having the property that an outcome can be predicted with high confidence inside a known time horizon. In B2B sales, a forecastable deal has a named economic buyer, a named forecast event, a shared next step, and an operating cadence that surfaces drift in the period.
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Alex Buckles
Forecast collaboration is the operating practice of producing a single forecast number across sales, partnerships, customer success, and finance through a recurring joint cadence rather than four parallel ones. It turns a contested forecast into a defensible one. Companies that run it cleanly compound accuracy quarter over quarter.
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Alex Buckles
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 […]
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Ecosystem partnerships are the network of technology, services, and channel partners whose combined presence at the same customer accounts produces co-sell, co-build, and customer-expansion opportunities. The operating model is different from one-to-one channel partnerships, ecosystem partnerships compound through overlap, integration density, and shared customer success rather than through bilateral commercial agreements. Run them well and […]
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ELG, or ecosystem-led growth, is a go-to-market strategy in which a company’s partner ecosystem becomes the primary source of pipeline, expansion, and retention rather than a sidecar to direct sales and marketing. ELG companies measure ecosystem-influenced revenue as a first-class number, design their CRM and operating cadence around partner overlap data, and treat the partner […]
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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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An AI partner manager is software that automates the operational layer of a human partner manager’s job: tracking partner activity, surfacing co-sell opportunities, drafting partner communications, capturing attribution, and producing executive-ready reports. It does not replace the human relationship-building work, which is irreducible. The defensible model: AI handles the 60 to 70 percent of partner […]
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What is B2B partner marketing? Short answer: B2B partner marketing is marketing done with and through partners to reach buyers a vendor could not reach alone, spanning co-branded campaigns, joint events, referrals, and shared demand generation. It treats partners as a marketing channel, not just a sales one. Done well, it borrows a partner’s trust […]
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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.
