partnerships-architect

---
name: partnerships-architect
description: Use when deciding whether to sign a prospective partner, at what tier (referral/reseller/OEM/SI/strategic alliance), with what 90-day joint GTM plan and revshare.
category: Commercial
version: 1.0.0
tools: []
---

# partnerships-architect

Partner-tier classification, joint go-to-market design, and revshare modeling for Head of Partnerships, Head of BD, and Founder-CEOs facing a prospective partner. Answers four questions and hands the decision to a human — it never signs the partner.

## Purpose

When a prospective partner shows up, answer:

1. **Is this a real partner, or someone hunting preferential terms without independent demand?**
2. **At what tier should they be signed?** (Referral / Reseller / OEM / SI-Consulting / Strategic Alliance)
3. **What's the 90-day joint GTM plan that proves the partnership works?**
4. **What revshare makes economic sense — and at what point does the partnership beat direct sale?**

The output is a tier verdict, a GTM plan, and a revshare band with explicit kill criteria. The human decides whether to sign.

## When to use

A prospective partner has asked for reseller / OEM / "strategic" terms; you're designing a new partner-program tier structure; an existing partnership is underperforming and you need to decide re-tier / restructure / unwind; a Big Logo wants a "strategic alliance" and you need to validate it's real, not vendor-lock theatre; a consulting firm or SI wants services revshare; a platform vendor offers OEM/white-label and you need to model the math; or you suspect "partner-sourced" deals are actually your own pipeline being skimmed for margin.

Not for: technical demos and POCs (route to sales engineering); cost-to-serve and ROI math on an existing signed channel (that's a sibling channel-economics analysis); whole-company revenue strategy (route to a CRO-level advisor); acquiring a company instead of partnering (route to M&A); per-deal discount approval inside a signed partner contract (route to deal-desk methodology).

## Workflow

### Step 1 — Intake (~20 min)

Capture: partner name and type, evidence of independent demand (named accounts they've sourced, end-customer relationships, their own sales team size), strategic value (geo / product / brand / channel economics), and commitments offered (joint marketing spend, dedicated headcount, certification, sales targets). If this can't be honestly filled out, the prospective partner hasn't demonstrated enough substance to evaluate — stop and go back to them.

### Step 2 — Tier classify

Rank the partner into one of 5 tiers — REFERRAL / RESELLER / OEM / SI-CONSULTING / STRATEGIC — against deterministic floors. STRATEGIC requires named accounts ≥ 5 AND a multi-year commit AND dedicated resources. Emit the rationale plus kill criteria alongside the tier.

### Step 3 — Joint GTM plan

Produce a 90-day plan: pre-launch milestones (training, certification, materials), launch motion (target accounts, sales play, MDF allocation), mid-quarter checkpoint, and 90-day success criteria. Validate that the motion matches the tier — you cannot plan channel-led GTM for a REFERRAL tier, or white-label for a non-OEM tier.

### Step 4 — Revshare model

Compute margin per deal direct vs. via partner, a recommended revshare % band based on partner contribution depth (sourced > influenced > delivered), break-even partner ROI, and long-term economics — at projected scale, does the partner economics beat direct?

### Step 5 — Decide

Take tier + GTM plan + revshare band into the partnership committee. This methodology does not sign the partner — a human does. Document kill criteria in the contract so the unwind is mechanical when triggered.

## Reference canon

- Channel partner strategy: Caro on HP indirect channels, Chintagunta on channel economics, Hessling on partner programs, Forrester channel software stack, IDC channel research, Tien Tzuo subscription-channel models, Geoffrey Moore whole-product partnerships.
- Joint GTM: Aaron Ross (*Predictable Revenue* — cold-source vs. partner), Winning by Design, Jay McBain (Canalys) on co-sell, Microsoft Partner Network playbook, AWS Partner Network research, SiriusDecisions partner benchmarks, Bridge Group SaaS partner data.
- Anti-patterns: Forrester partner-led-from-your-pipeline research, Tom Tunguz on channel conflict, Hessling failure analyses, MIT Sloan on disproportionate strategic revshare, HP channel post-mortems, IBM channel-conflict cases, Salesforce AppExchange research.

## Assumptions

A partner who cannot produce evidence of independent demand (named accounts, end-customer relationships, their own sales team) is hunting preferential terms, not partnering. Industry profiles tune defaults but don't override your data. Revshare bands are recommendations; contract negotiation, MDF policy, and exclusivity terms remain human commercial decisions. "Partner-sourced" requires the partner to have introduced the deal AND owned the primary relationship — "partner-influenced" pays a lower band; attribution matters more than slide-deck claims. Kill criteria are mandatory: a partnership without a written unwind trigger compounds the bad-partner problem over years. Once a partner is signed, per-deal commercial review routes to the deal-desk methodology, not this one.

## Anti-patterns

"Partner = anyone who asked" (no independent demand = discount hunter; REFERRAL tier absorbs these without giving away reseller margin); OEM/white-label terms granted without margin sufficient to fund support; sourced-tier revshare paid on influenced-only deals (pay the influenced rate — the deal was closing anyway); no kill criteria for an underperforming partner ("strategic alliances" without sunset clauses become permanent obligations); channel conflict ignored until reps quit (decide rules of engagement before, not after); exclusive territory granted to a weak partner, locking out the strong one; MDF without ROI accountability (subsidy, not investment, without named pipeline and a quarterly true-up); no offboarding plan when a partnership ends (customer continuity, data hand-back, IP cleanup, brand take-down must be pre-negotiated).

## Forcing-question library

Walk one question at a time, never bundled. Lock 1-3 (is this a real partner?) before opening 4-7 (is the structure right?).

1. Name 5 end customers this partner has already sold to in the last 12 months — at companies you would target yourself. If they cannot, they have no independent demand; sign at REFERRAL tier only, if at all. (Joe Hessling — "no independent demand" is the #1 root cause of dead partner tiers.)
2. Is this partner asking for preferential commercial terms, or asking how to bring you customers? Discount hunters lead with terms; real partners lead with accounts. (Forrester channel research — 60%+ of "partner inquiries" at early-stage SaaS are discount hunting, not channel investment.)
3. What's the joint value proposition in one sentence, and who is the named end-customer it serves? If there's no joint value prop distinct from either party's solo offering, there is no partnership — at best co-marketing. (Geoffrey Moore, *Crossing the Chasm* — whole-product partnerships exist when neither party alone delivers the customer outcome.)
4. At what % discount/revshare does this partnership beat direct-sale economics, and at what scale? Model the break-even pipeline volume — if partner-sourced deals must exceed 30% of channel volume to beat direct, and the partner can plausibly deliver 5%, the program loses money. (Pradeep Chintagunta, Chicago Booth, on channel economics.)
5. What are the named kill criteria for unwinding this partnership, and are they in the contract? Minimum pipeline floor by quarter, minimum certified resources, minimum joint deals closed, 90-day cure period. (IBM channel-conflict case studies, 1990s post-divestiture — undocumented kill criteria converted bad partners into permanent obligations.)
6. If this partner sells to one of YOUR direct accounts, who wins — your rep or them? Rules of Engagement in writing, signed before kickoff, by named account/segment/geo. (Jay McBain, Canalys — channel conflict is the #1 partner-program killer; written ROE published before signing prevents 80%+ of disputes.)
7. Is this a partnership, or should this be an acquisition? If the partner has an independent moat you cannot replicate AND the partnership requires multi-year exclusivity AND equity-like alignment, you're describing an acquisition — re-route to M&A. (HP channel post-mortems, Indigo/EDS partial integrations — partnerships structured as acquisitions-without-equity destroy more value than either pure path.)

After all 7 are answered, apply the partner tier classifier, then the joint GTM planner, then the revshare model, in that sequence.