Forecastable's Education Center -- The best advice on building partner programs that produce forecastable revenue.
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 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 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 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 does adoption of a co-sell playbook look like? Short answer: How to get co-sell playbook adopted is to shrink the asset to one page, attach it to the weekly co-sell deal review, confirm the comp plan rewards the motion it describes, and audit usage on every deal in the room. A playbook lives or […]
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What does it take to start co-selling? Short answer: How to start co-selling is to pick one partner, agree on the joint number with that partner’s senior leader, name three accounts per AE on each side, ship a one-page joint value prop, and book a weekly thirty-minute deal review on both calendars before the kickoff […]
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What is co-selling without warm relationships? Short answer: Co-sell without warm relationships is possible, and the teams that lean on personal chemistry alone tend to stall first. It works when the joint motion runs on shared mechanics, account overlap, a joint pitch, and a deal-review cadence, rather than on whether two partner managers happen to […]
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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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