Forecastable's Education Center -- 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 is partner-as-a-service? Short answer: Partner-as-a-service is a model in which a company hires an external team to run some or all of its partnership operations, recruiting, onboarding, enabling, and managing partners, rather than building that capability entirely in house. It lets a company stand up or scale a partner motion without first hiring and […]
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What is partner-assisted selling? Short answer: Partner-assisted selling is a motion in which a partner actively helps your own seller win a deal, contributing trust, technical credibility, customer access, or a complementary product, rather than simply handing over a lead and stepping back. It sits between a pure referral, where the partner passes a name, […]
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What is partner-led GTM? Short answer: Partner-led GTM is a go-to-market model in which partners are the primary route to reaching, selling, and serving customers, rather than a supplementary channel layered on top of a direct sales motion. It means the company designs its entire commercial engine, sales, marketing, support, and product, around partners carrying […]
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What is partner-led sales? Short answer: Partner-led sales is a motion in which the partner runs the sales process and owns the customer relationship, while your own team supports from behind with product expertise, deal desk help, and resources. It inverts the usual arrangement, the partner is the seller in front of the customer and […]
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What is a partner sales process? Short answer: A partner sales process is the defined, repeatable set of stages a partner-involved deal moves through, from the first signal to the close, with an owner and an exit criterion named at each stage. It exists so that partner deals advance on a known set of gates […]
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What is the partner-sourced leads close rate? Short answer: The partner-sourced leads close rate is the share of leads originated by a partner that go on to become paying customers, measured against the same definition you use for direct leads. It tells you whether partner-referred opportunities convert better, worse, or the same as the rest […]
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What is partner-sourced pipeline? Short answer: Partner-sourced pipeline is the total value of open opportunities that a partner originated rather than your own sellers, tracked through the same stages as the rest of your pipeline. It measures how much potential revenue the partner channel is actually creating, as opposed to how many partners you have […]
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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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What is a partner tier structure? Short answer: A partner tier structure is the system of ranked levels, often named something like registered, silver, gold, and elite, that sorts partners by their commitment and performance and ties each level to a defined set of requirements and benefits. It is the mechanism a program uses to […]
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What is partner vetting? Short answer: Partner vetting is the structured evaluation a program runs before signing a partner, judging whether the partner has the fit, the intent, and the capacity to actually produce, rather than signing anyone willing to sign. It is the gate that decides which relationships get the program’s finite time and […]
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