The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
What is partner pipeline for the CFO? Short answer: Partner pipeline for the CFO is the view of partner-influenced and partner-sourced revenue translated into the language a finance leader uses to make budget decisions, conversion rates, attribution clarity, and a defensible return on the program’s cost. It is the difference between a partnerships team that […]
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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 ecosystem-qualified leads? Short answer: Ecosystem-qualified leads are leads that meet a qualification bar set by partner signal rather than by marketing activity alone. They are accounts a partner already works with, has a relationship inside, or shares as a customer, and that overlap is the qualifying evidence that the lead is real and […]
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What is ecosystem ROI? Short answer: Ecosystem ROI is the return a company earns on what it invests in its partner ecosystem, measured as the revenue and efficiency the ecosystem produces against the cost of running it. It is measured badly far more often than it is measured well, usually because teams count only the […]
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What is an executive alignment meeting? Short answer: An executive alignment meeting is a quarterly, ninety-minute working session between the most senior revenue leaders at two partnering companies, structured to produce a one-page artifact with a joint number, the next quarter’s commitments, and the reciprocal asks each side owes the other. It is not a […]
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What is the right way to think about Forecastable pricing? Short answer: Forecastable pricing is structured around the size and shape of the partnership motion you are trying to forecast, not around seats or storage. Most buyers should size the investment against the partner-sourced and influenced pipeline they expect to clean up, not against the […]
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What is a fractional VP of partnerships? Short answer: Fractional VP partnerships is a senior leader engaged part-time to install the operating model, run the first two quarters of cadence, and either hand the function to a full-time hire or stay on for ongoing oversight. The role exists because most companies need senior judgment well […]
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What are co-sell email sequences? Short answer: Co-sell email sequences are the structured, multi-touch email flows that keep a joint selling motion moving between live conversations. They are not marketing nurtures; each touch is tied to a specific deal event and a specific recipient, and the goal of every send is a reply, not an […]
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What are co-sell email templates? Short answer: Co-sell email templates are reusable copy patterns for the specific moments a joint selling motion repeats: the first partner reach-out, the deal-review request, the customer intro, the stall nudge. They give a partner manager a tested starting point so each send is fast to write and built to […]
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What is a co-sell alignment specialist? Short answer: A co-sell alignment specialist is the operator who keeps a vendor and its partners working the same accounts on the same cadence. They own the deal-review rhythm, the overlap data, and the attribution plumbing that turn a signed partner into a producing one. Most partnerships orgs do […]
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What is the co-sell alignment specialist role? Short answer: The co-sell alignment specialist role is a defined operations seat that owns the seam between a vendor’s sellers and its partners’ sellers. It exists so deal-level co-sell work has a single accountable owner instead of being split across people who all have a different first priority. […]
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What are co-sell best practices? Short answer: Co-sell best practices are the operating habits that consistently turn a signed partnership into joint pipeline. They are mechanics, not attitudes: a fixed deal-review cadence, clean overlap data, named roles, and attribution set before the first joint call. The phrase gets misused. Most lists of co-sell best practices […]
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What are partner spiffs? Short answer: Partner spiffs are short-term, targeted incentives that reward a partner’s individual reps for taking a specific action, registering a deal, closing a particular product, hitting a number by a deadline, on top of the standard margin or commission. They are a tactical nudge aimed at the people doing the […]
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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.
