co-selling-strategy

{
  "skill_name": "co-selling-strategy",
  "evals": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "prompt": "Northvale Systems - we sell a mid-market ITSM platform, $48k ACV. Average sales cycle from opportunity creation to closed-won is 140 days. I'm writing our first deal-registration policy for our four reseller partners. My draft was going to be: 30-day protection window (that's what our biggest competitor publishes), approval \"as fast as we reasonably can\", and rejections handled case by case by whoever picks up the form. Registration grants price protection, nothing else. Write the policy.",
      "expected_output": "A deal-registration policy that resizes the protection window against the reported 140-day cycle, replaces the vague approval promise with a named SLA, publishes a closed list of objectively verifiable rejection grounds, and adds a non-price support bundle to what registration grants.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "States the rule that the protection window must be at least 75% of the average sales-cycle length",
        "Recommends a protection window of at least 105 days and explicitly rejects the proposed 30-day window",
        "Derives the window recommendation from the stated 140-day cycle rather than citing a bare standard number",
        "Defines an extension rule with a defined length and a documented-activity trigger, rather than leaving the window open-ended",
        "Replaces \"as fast as we reasonably can\" with a named approval SLA, defaulting to 48 hours",
        "Keeps registration approval and dispute adjudication as two separate clocks with two different durations",
        "Sets the dispute-adjudication SLA at 5 business days",
        "Publishes rejection grounds as a closed, explicit list instead of case-by-case approver discretion",
        "Makes every listed rejection ground objectively verifiable from the registration record, with none left discretionary",
        "Names duplicate registration or an account already in the active direct pipeline as a rejection ground",
        "Names insufficient proof of partner involvement or value-add, a \"just forwarding a name\" submission, as a rejection ground",
        "Adds a non-price support bundle such as pre-sales engineering access, priority deal support, or co-marketing support to what registration grants, rather than price protection alone",
        "Warns that slow or ad-hoc approval is itself what drives speculative land-grab and duplicate registrations"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "prompt": "Kestrel Data, B2B analytics, roughly $60k ACV, 22 quota-carrying AEs. Our VP of Direct Sales has volunteered to approve all partner deal registrations since he knows every account in the pipeline better than anyone. Partnerships would own and publish the partner-influenced revenue number each quarter, and he and my partner manager would settle any credit arguments between themselves when they come up. Write the decision-rights section of our co-sell charter.",
      "expected_output": "A decision-rights section that moves registration approval off the VP of Direct Sales on separation-of-powers grounds, co-owns attribution with revenue operations, and replaces ad-hoc credit negotiation with a named adjudicator, an SLA and a timestamp tiebreaker.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects the VP of Direct Sales as registration approver because the approver's own quota must not be affected by the decision",
        "Reassigns registration approval to partnerships or channel/partner operations, a function with no competing quota",
        "Frames the problem as a structural conflict of interest rather than a question of trusting the individual",
        "Assigns first-pass duplicate and territory-conflict review to channel operations",
        "Retains an administrator override path to reverse mistaken approval or rejection decisions",
        "Rejects partnerships as sole owner of the partner-influenced revenue number",
        "Makes attribution co-owned by partnerships and revenue operations",
        "Justifies co-ownership as making the number an auditable company fact rather than a self-serving one",
        "Replaces case-by-case dispute settlement between two people with a named adjudicator and a defined SLA",
        "Sets the dispute-adjudication SLA at 5 business days",
        "Names the timestamped registration record as the objective tiebreaker in contested credit",
        "Names a specific role on every decision-rights line rather than a team or shared ownership",
        "Flags rules-of-engagement document ownership - partner or ecosystem leadership, co-designed with sales, CS, RevOps and legal - as a practitioner convention the user must confirm for their own org, not a measured industry standard"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "prompt": "Tuppence, two founders, seed stage. We sell a $29/month scheduling tool, self-serve signup, no sales team - our biggest account pays $1,400 a year. We're not growing as fast as we'd like and a channel seems like the obvious unlock. Build us the full co-sell operating charter: registration policy, deal credit splits, rules of engagement, the lot. We want resellers and SIs.",
      "expected_output": "A refusal to build the charter, with the disqualifiers named explicitly, and a recommendation to run two or three deeply engaged referral partners with no formal program instead.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Declines to produce the co-sell operating charter rather than drafting it as asked",
        "States the reasons for declining explicitly instead of declining vaguely",
        "Names the ACV floor of roughly $3,000-$5,000 for any sales-assisted motion and places the stated $1,400 annual contract value below it",
        "Flags the absence of a proven direct sales motion as a disqualifier, stating that partners amplify a working direct motion and do not fix a broken one",
        "Identifies reaching for partnerships as a fix for a growth problem as itself a disqualifier, given the stated slow-growth motivation",
        "Recommends two or three deeply engaged referral partners with no formal program as the alternative",
        "Declines to design reseller or SI mechanics at this stage",
        "Produces no protection window, no deal-credit split, and no comp-neutrality model",
        "Notes that a trivially cheap, self-serve, auto-installing product may structurally have no partner play at all regardless of stage",
        "States what would have to change before the readiness gate could be revisited",
        "Notes that a formal program with a dedicated full-time operator only pays off around the EUR 1M-5M ARR range, and that a part-time owner below that is inadequate"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "prompt": "Halberd Cloud. We're standing up one registration policy that covers everybody: 6 resellers, 2 distributors, 4 SI/consultancy partners, 9 ISVs with integrations into our platform, and about 30 referral partners, mostly ex-customers who send us intros. Plan is one form, one 10% registration discount for all of them, one 60-day window. Keeps it simple and nobody can claim favouritism. Sanity-check it.",
      "expected_output": "A rejection of the single undifferentiated policy, with each partner type mapped to the mechanic its own economics require, and the registration discount deleted outright for the types that do not earn on margin.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects a single undifferentiated registration policy applied across all partner types",
        "Maps each named partner type to the registration and credit mechanic its own economics require",
        "States that referral partners need clean attribution and payment reliability, not margin protection or formal registration",
        "States that resellers and distributors need formal deal registration, with distributors at the same formal tier plus reseller-network development tooling",
        "States that SI/consultancy partners are motivated by services pipeline, certification and qualified leads, and that resale-style registration does not map to them",
        "States that ISV/tech partners need integration certification, marketplace listing or developer access, and that resale registration is commercially irrelevant to them",
        "Deletes the registration discount from the menu for the SI, ISV and referral partners rather than offering them a reduced rate",
        "Justifies that deletion on the ground that those types do not earn on margin, so a discount buys no registration behaviour at any level",
        "Keeps the discount as a live option only for the resellers and distributors, where margin is their economics",
        "Recommends a non-price bundle - pre-sales engineering access, priority deal support, co-marketing support - as the default grant",
        "States the ordering of the two grant types explicitly and notes that it inverts for resellers and distributors",
        "Notes that a published discount is effectively irreversible once granted to the channel while a non-price bundle stays adjustable per partner",
        "Flags that one identical policy in the name of fairness produces a policy that motivates no partner type correctly"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "prompt": "Ardent Logistics Software, enterprise, $180k ACV. Our CRO told me flatly that the comp plan is locked until the FY27 planning cycle 14 months out and he will not reopen it - not for this, not for anything. Meanwhile our 3% marketplace fee currently comes out of the AE's commission, and AEs lose 40% of quota credit on any deal a reseller touches. I have about 20 hours over the next month and I need something I can actually ship this quarter. What's the plan?",
      "expected_output": "A plan that deletes every comp-neutrality funding rung outright because the comp plan is closed, records the missing neutrality as a stated known risk, and caps the deliverable at the registration and rules-of-engagement work that fits within the quarter.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Deletes all three comp-neutrality funding models from the plan rather than demoting or deferring them",
        "Names the CRO's refusal to reopen the comp plan as the specific answer that deleted them",
        "Records the missing comp neutrality as a stated known risk rather than an item at the bottom of a to-do list",
        "Explains that a rung parked at the bottom of a list silently reappears later as scope nobody can sign",
        "Caps the deliverable at registration policy and rules of engagement",
        "Identifies the 40% quota-credit loss and the 3% marketplace fee passed to commission as the canonical adoption killer behind reps routing around or sandbagging partner deals",
        "States plainly that the sandbagging behaviour will persist while comp is untouchable, rather than implying the remaining fixes resolve it",
        "Promotes the one-hour, partnerships-only fixes - published rejection grounds, and the attribution lock window plus dispute SLA - given the within-quarter deadline",
        "Deletes the heavyweight joint-business-planning track given the within-quarter deadline",
        "Expresses effort as hours, meetings, sign-off chains and reversibility, never as a currency amount",
        "States the ranking of the remaining fixes out loud with an explicit ordering line rather than implying it by list order",
        "Does not propose full double comp, quota retirement or a secondary channel metric as a phased or later-stage recommendation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "prompt": "Meridian Fielding, HR tech, $55k ACV, 90-day cycle. Co-sell has been live 18 months. Where we're at: rejection grounds have been published for over a year, registrations show up as a field on the opportunity record in the CRM so AEs see them there, and attribution locks two weeks after deal creation with a 5-day dispute SLA. Despite all of that our AEs still quietly drag their feet on partner deals - three partner managers have complained this quarter. Give me the remediation plan, ordered.",
      "expected_output": "A remediation plan that promotes comp neutrality to first position because the exact promotion symptom is present, names the default ordering it overrides, and does not re-recommend the three fixes already in place.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Promotes comp neutrality to the first fix rather than the last",
        "Names the promotion trigger explicitly: reps still sandbagging or routing around partner deals after registration visibility, published rejection grounds and the lock window are all already in place",
        "States that the default efficiency ordering ranks comp neutrality last and that this case overrides the default",
        "Does not re-recommend published rejection grounds, registration visibility, or the lock window plus dispute SLA as new work, since all three are reported as already in place",
        "Emits separate ordering lines for efficiency and for value where the two axes disagree",
        "States that comp neutrality is the highest-value fix and the worst ratio, and gives the reason: a contractual commitment to the field, a quarter of work, and a finance-plus-CRO sign-off chain",
        "Warns that following the efficiency line alone means working the cheap rungs forever and never buying the one fix the others cannot substitute for",
        "Checks whether quota credit shrinks when a partner attaches, or a marketplace fee hits commission, as the diagnostic behind the reported symptom",
        "Recommends quota retirement as the default comp-neutrality rung, on the ground that it is one clause, one sign-off chain, and reversible at the next plan cycle",
        "Names full double comp as the move-up option and ties it to this symptom persisting after quota retirement is already in place",
        "States the required sign-off chain: finance funds the parity, and sales leadership or the CRO embeds it in the comp plan and the rules-of-engagement document",
        "Warns that executive buy-in to alter field comp is difficult in practice and needs real political effort budgeted for it",
        "Expresses fix effort in orders of magnitude such as an hour, a week or a quarter, never as a currency amount"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "prompt": "Sablefield, dev-tools vendor, $75k ACV. Today, at the end of each quarter, my partnerships team goes through the closed-won list and tags the deals a partner helped with. Sales does not trust the number and keeps saying we're marking our own homework. Separately, we just lost three weeks on one deal where a hyperscaler rep, a regional SI and one of our own referral partners all claimed a piece of it - our registration tool only has a single partner field per opportunity. Fix the attribution section of our charter.",
      "expected_output": "An attribution section that moves the claim upstream of the outcome with a 14-day lock after deal creation, co-owns the number with revenue operations, and writes an explicit multi-party split rule decided at registration.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects credit claims made after the deal closes, on the ground that a claim made once the outcome is known is unprovable and political",
        "Requires the attribution claim to exist before the outcome is known",
        "Sets an attribution lock window of 14 days after deal creation",
        "Explains that the lock window exists to prevent backdated or opportunistic late credit claims",
        "Moves ownership of the number from partnerships alone to partnerships co-owned with revenue operations",
        "States the partner-sourced test as \"would the deal still exist if the partner had not participated?\"",
        "Distinguishes partner-sourced from partner-influenced and keeps them as separate records rather than one flag",
        "Requires an explicit multi-party split rule written into the charter instead of assuming one partner per deal",
        "States that the multi-party split is decided at registration, not at close",
        "Cites the structural argument that a customer works with roughly seven partners in a typical buying process",
        "Sets a monthly or quarterly reconciliation cadence for contested or ambiguous attribution",
        "Names the deal-registration timestamp as the objective tiebreaker for contested attribution",
        "Notes that most registration systems were built for one partner per deal, so the single-field limitation is a known structural problem in co-selling rather than a local tooling bug"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 8,
      "prompt": "Corvid Analytics. The board wants one headline partner number each quarter - \"partner-attached revenue\" - and my CRO wants me to commit to hitting 40% partner-sourced pipeline by Q4 because he read that's where mature programs land. One partner, Ridgeway Consulting, is currently 48% of everything our channel does. Write the KPI section of our co-sell charter.",
      "expected_output": "A KPI section that keeps sourced and influenced as separate tracked numbers, refuses the borrowed 40% target, flags the single-partner concentration, and confines win-rate and cycle comparison to the company's own data.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Recommends tracking partner-sourced and partner-influenced separately rather than reporting only a combined partner-attached number",
        "Explains that a combined number cannot tell whether partners generate pipeline or accelerate it",
        "Allows partner-attached only as an additional executive roll-up alongside the two separate numbers, never as a replacement for them",
        "Refuses to commit to the 40% partner-sourced figure as a target, and flags the published 20-30% and 40-50% ranges as vendor content rather than independent research",
        "Flags Ridgeway Consulting at 48% of channel revenue as concentration risk against a threshold of roughly 30%",
        "Includes registration time-to-approval, dispute rate and adjudication-SLA compliance among the tracked KPIs",
        "Includes attach rate among the tracked KPIs",
        "States that no independent industry benchmark exists for registration approval rate or time-to-approval, so targets must come from the program's own history",
        "Restricts win-rate and cycle-length comparison between partner-attached and direct deals to Corvid's own data",
        "Explains that cross-company win-rate comparison is unreliable because opportunity-creation criteria differ by company",
        "Sets a quarterly review cadence for the KPI set",
        "Does not present the partner-lift trio of bigger deals, higher win rates and faster cycles as established fact"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 9,
      "prompt": "Ambergate, security vendor. We're kicking off with Northcliff Integrators, a 400-person SI. Their partner team is keen but their leadership will not commit anyone at VP level to this - I've asked twice and got nothing back. I want to run a proper joint business plan with them: exec kickoff on both sides, shared objectives, quarterly reviews, the full thing. I also have 11 other smaller partners I'd eventually want to do the same with. How do I run the JBP?",
      "expected_output": "A recommendation that removes the heavyweight JBP track from the menu because no partner-side executive sponsor exists, and runs the lightweight single-session playbook fill for Northcliff and the other 11 partners instead.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Removes the heavyweight joint-business-planning track from the menu entirely rather than presenting it and recommending against it",
        "Names the missing partner-side executive sponsor as the reason for that deletion",
        "States that an unsponsored joint plan produces a document nobody executes",
        "Recommends the lightweight single-session playbook fill for Northcliff Integrators instead",
        "Specifies the lightweight track as one fixed template filled per partner in a single 90-minute working session",
        "Specifies that the template is built once and reused, with only the content changing per partner",
        "Lists the template sections: ICP and target-account criteria, roles and ownership matrix, joint deal-stage map with an exit criterion per stage, messaging and assets per stage, and metrics and review cadence",
        "Requires a named individual, never a team, in every cell of the ownership matrix",
        "States \"shared ownership is no ownership\" as the reason for the named-individual rule",
        "Makes the lightweight track the default for all 12 partners until something specific moves one of them up",
        "States the condition that would move a partner up to the heavyweight track: needing to influence that partner's own quota-carrying field sellers, with both sides funding the review cadence",
        "States the ordering across the two tracks on more than one axis and notes that value and efficiency disagree",
        "Names a named executive sponsor appearing later as the trigger to revisit the heavyweight track"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 10,
      "prompt": "Fennimore Systems. I'm putting the co-sell business case in front of our exec team next Tuesday. I want to open with the three stats everyone quotes - partner deals close faster, close bigger, and have the highest win rate of any channel - then position us on an ecosystem-led growth maturity model so they can see we're at stage 2 of 5. Draft the framing and tell me what numbers to put on the slide.",
      "expected_output": "A framing that grades each borrowed claim honestly, corrects the win-rate stat, refuses the maturity-model placement, and substitutes a measurement plan built on Fennimore's own data.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Flags the partner-lift trio of bigger deals, higher win rates and faster cycles as tracing to vendor marketing rather than independent research",
        "Corrects the \"highest win rate\" claim by noting the underlying data shows partner referrals have the highest sales velocity, roughly 3.8x, which is a different claim",
        "Refuses to present the three stats as targets or commitments to the exec team",
        "Attaches the vendor-sourced, directional-only flag to any of those figures that are still quoted at all",
        "Refuses to place Fennimore at \"stage 2 of 5\" on a maturity model",
        "States that co-sell readiness and maturity models are competing consultant frameworks with no canonical standard, and presents them as a category of options",
        "Identifies \"ecosystem-led growth\" and \"nearbound\" as real but vendor-coined vocabulary, usable as shared language and never as doctrine",
        "Separates what is safe to present prescriptively - the partner-sourced / partner-influenced / partner-attached taxonomy, comp neutrality, rules-of-engagement documents, and deal registration with protection windows - from what is not",
        "Proposes a partner-attached versus direct comparison inside Fennimore's own data as the substitute for the borrowed statistics",
        "Names the absence of any independent benchmark as the reason the borrowed figures cannot carry the business case"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "trigger_queries": [
    { "query": "Write our co-sell operating charter for resellers and SIs", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How long should our deal registration protection window be?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our AEs and our partners keep landing on the same accounts and nobody knows who owns what", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Design a deal registration policy for our channel program", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What should a partner deal registration actually grant the partner?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Set up rules of engagement between direct sales and our reseller partners", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Who should approve partner deal registrations?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We need a policy for splitting deal credit when a partner is involved", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "partner sourced vs partner influenced - how do we define the line?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "My reps lose quota credit when a partner touches a deal and they've stopped attaching partners", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What is comp neutrality and do we actually need it?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Draft the attribution policy for deals where a partner helped", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I stop partners registering accounts they have no relationship with?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We want to co-sell with hyperscaler field sellers, what operating model do we need?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our partnerships team reports influenced revenue and sales says the number is made up", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Set an SLA for approving or rejecting registrations", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What rejection grounds should we publish for deal registration?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Need a policy for when two partners both claim the same opportunity, before it ever happens", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should partner-attached deals pay the rep full commission?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Build the governance for how direct and channel sellers work the same account", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "how do we decide who gets the credit on a deal three partners touched", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our marketplace fee comes out of the AE's commission and they route around the marketplace", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Write the deal protection policy for our VAR program", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "I need named account carve-outs that partners cannot register against", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What goes in a co-sell charter?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Design the escalation ladder for contested partner registrations", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Do we give registered deals an extra discount or something else?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do reps find out that a partner registered one of their accounts?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "we're about to let partners sell alongside our team and I have no idea what rules to set", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Attribution keeps getting claimed at close and it is turning political", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should we lock attribution at some point after the deal is created?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What KPIs prove our co-sell motion is working?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our SIs and our resellers are on the same registration form and it fits neither", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "partner registration approval is taking two weeks and partners are furious", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Write the section of our partner agreement that covers deal protection windows", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is a joint business plan worth it with this partner or should we do something lighter?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our channel manager approves registrations but he also carries a direct number", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Give me the operating model for partners and reps selling into the same accounts", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "how do you run a co-sell program without the sales team hating it", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We have a partner portal for registrations and the AEs never open it", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Set up deal registration for the first time, we have never had one", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "define what counts as a valid deal registration versus a name drop", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "My CRO wants one partner revenue number for the board and I am not sure that is right", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our program is live but reps sandbag every partner deal, what do I fix first?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Can you write the policy layer for direct-versus-partner selling?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "what is a reasonable protection window if our sales cycle is 150 days", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Need to document how partners claim opportunities and what that claim buys them", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Build the decision rights for our partner program, who decides what", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "our partner manager and our AE argue about splits on every single deal", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Formalize the handshake between our field team and our channel", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should partnerships own the influenced revenue number by itself?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I structure deal credit so nobody games it?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Are we even ready to co-sell? ACV is 40k and direct is working well", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Write the registration and credit rules for a new hyperscaler co-sell motion", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Ridgeway registered Acme yesterday and our AE has been working it for two months, who wins?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Adjudicate this dispute for me: two partners both claim the same account, here are the timestamps", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our retailer is furious that we are discounting on our own D2C site, what do we do", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write our MAP policy for resellers", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Plan the joint webinar and launch sequence with our new integration partner", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Draft the better-together story for our partnership with Fennimore", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How much MDF should we put behind this co-marketing campaign?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design our partner program from scratch: tiers, benefits, requirements", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How many partner tiers should we have?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our gold tier holds 80% of partners, how do we recompress the ladder?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the demotion rules for our silver partners", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Model the P&L for our reseller relationship with Northcliff", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Is partner CAC cheaper than direct CAC for this one partner?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Rank these six candidate alliances by expected value", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which of these three partners deserves our investment next quarter?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build the certification curriculum for our reseller partners", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What training does a partner need before their first deal?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design the QBR structure for our top 10 partners", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our partner scorecard, what dimensions and what weights?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Is listing on the Azure marketplace worth it for us?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should we go 1P or 3P on Amazon?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Map our whole partner landscape and find the coverage gaps", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which partner category should we launch next, MSPs or agencies?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What commission rate should we pay our affiliates?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Set the cookie window for our affiliate program", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Audit this affiliate payout run before we disburse it", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Draft our affiliate program terms and conditions", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "This affiliate's conversion rate tripled overnight, is it fraud?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the welcome email series for newly approved affiliates", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What metrics go on an affiliate performance dashboard?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the outreach email to recruit coupon sites into our affiliate program", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Check this Instagram caption for FTC disclosure compliance", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Draft the campaign brief for the creator we just signed", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Shortlist creators for our B2B podcast sponsorship push", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Negotiate usage rights and exclusivity with this creator's talent manager", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the first DM pitching a collab to this YouTuber", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we measure the ROI of one influencer campaign?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How big should our refer-a-friend reward be?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "People are creating fake accounts to farm our referral bonus", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I break into partnerships from an AE role?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the job posting for a channel partner manager", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which partnerships skill do I need for this task?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a sales enablement one-pager for our new pricing", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build our sales funnel blueprint from lead to close", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design the compensation plan for our direct AEs", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What is a good quota-to-OTE ratio for enterprise AEs?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Set up lead routing rules in our CRM", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we forecast the pipeline more accurately?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the MEDDIC qualification checklist for our AEs", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our sales cycle is 140 days, how do we shorten it?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Draft the territory plan for our EMEA field team", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build the onboarding plan for our new SDR cohort", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design our customer referral landing page copy", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Set up co-op advertising funds for our retail distributors", "should_trigger": false }
  ]
}

# Attribution Taxonomy and Compensation Neutrality

Citations name the publishing vendor or consultancy. Treat single-source specifics as one practitioner's convention.

## The taxonomy (established industry practice)

- **Partner-sourced**: the partner identified or initiated the opportunity, tested by _"would the deal still exist if the partner had not participated?"_ - if no, it is sourced. Measures pipeline generation. (Forecastable, Unifyr)
- **Partner-influenced**: the opportunity originated elsewhere (direct, marketing) but a partner materially advanced or accelerated it. Measures acceleration, not origination. (Unifyr, Suger)
- **Partner-attached**: some orgs collapse sourced + influenced into one number for executive reporting. Practitioners advise keeping the two separate for actionability - a combined number can't tell you whether partners generate pipeline or speed it up. (Pedowitz Group)

A more granular model adds four dimensions, with attribution **locked within 14 days of deal creation** to prevent backdated credit claims:

- Partner type.
- Motion (sourced/influenced).
- Influence role (tech win / deal access / implementation).
- Influence event.

This is one consultancy's framework (Forecastable), not an industry-wide standard. Present it as an option for orgs with multi-partner deals.

## Attribution governance

- **Co-own the number: partnerships plus revenue operations.** Partnerships alone reporting its own attribution looks self-serving. RevOps co-ownership makes it "an auditable company fact." (Forecastable)
- Reconcile contested or ambiguous attribution on a monthly or quarterly cadence, with deal-registration timestamps as the objective tiebreaker.
- Attribution claimed only after close is "unprovable and political" - require the claim to exist before the outcome is known.
- Adjudicate disputes under a defined SLA. The one concrete number in the literature is 5 business days (Forecastable).

## Comp neutrality (established term and practice)

Definition: the rep earns the same commission and quota retirement whether the deal closes direct, through a partner, or through a marketplace. The partner or marketplace fee is absorbed at company level or built into list price - never passed through to rep commission.

One vendor claims 64% of ISVs now run comp-neutral models and calls neutrality "the single most predictive variable in whether a sales team adopts marketplace channels" (Introw, Invisory). This claim is unverified beyond the citing sources, but the directional logic is corroborated by the failure-mode evidence below.

### Three funding approaches, ranked by value per unit of effort (Forma.ai, SaaStr)

Present them in this order. The axes disagree, so read all four:

- efficiency: `quota retirement > full double comp > secondary channel metric`
- value: `full double comp > quota retirement > secondary channel metric`
- effort: `full double comp > secondary channel metric > quota retirement`
- compliance cost: `full double comp > secondary channel metric == quota retirement`

The most effective rung is not the best ratio. Full double comp buys the most conflict reduction and still ranks second, because it costs a standing budget line and a commitment the field disputes if you ever withdraw it. That is exactly what this order starves: the rung a ratio never selects on its own.

Promote it on the symptom named in rung 2 below, not on ambition and not on a round it can win. The compliance tie is real, not a hedge: all three amend a comp plan, so all three are contractual commitments to the field and all three clear the same finance-plus-CRO sign-off chain. Only double comp adds an open-ended payout that cannot be pulled mid-plan-year.

1. **Quota retirement** - channel/partner revenue retires the rep's quota dollar-for-dollar (or at a partial rate). One clause, one sign-off chain, reversible at the next plan cycle, and it removes the canonical adoption killer: the rep no longer loses credit for attaching a partner. Best ratio, and the recommended default rung.
2. **Full double comp** - pay full commission to both the direct rep and the partner on the same deal, treating a channel deal exactly like a direct one. Cited as most effective at reducing internal conflict. One case study reports doubled sales the following year (single case, not a benchmark).

   Costs a standing budget line and the least reversible commitment on the page. Move up to it when quota retirement is in place and reps still route around partners - that symptom, not ambition, is the trigger. Cheaper variant: pay a fixed % of commission scaled to estimated co-sell effort.

3. **Secondary channel metric** - a channel-volume measure (dollar quota, or % of deals requiring partner involvement) triggers accelerators on top of base comp. Adds positive pull but does not repair the base credit loss, so it buys no neutrality on its own.

   It also needs a channel-volume number RevOps can audit every plan cycle, which is a standing job rather than a one-time clause. Lowest value and second-highest effort - hence last.

Constraints that delete a rung rather than demote it:

- No auditable channel-volume measure in the CRM: **delete the secondary channel metric.** An accelerator nobody can audit becomes a dispute engine, which is the failure this whole section exists to prevent.
- The comp plan already retires quota on partner-attached revenue: **delete quota retirement** as a proposal, confirm it in the charter, and start the menu at full double comp.
- Sales leadership will not reopen the comp plan at all: **delete all three.** Say so plainly, cap the charter at registration and rules-of-engagement, and record the missing neutrality as a known risk rather than proposing a rung that cannot be signed.

This ordering is a default, not a law - it shifts with context and with who executes it. Re-rank it against what you already know about the user before presenting. Consider an existing plan that already credits partner deals, a partnerships leader with real standing in comp reviews, or a single strategic partner whose deals are rare enough that per-deal exceptions beat any plan change.

### Sign-off requirements

Neutrality only holds if three functions align (Partnerled, Partner-Path):

- **Finance** funds the parity - it absorbs the partner/marketplace fee.
- **Sales leadership / CRO** embeds it in comp plans and the rules-of-engagement document. One source calls this co-sign "non-negotiable." The same sources warn that getting executive buy-in to alter field comp is "very difficult" in practice - budget real political effort for this step.
- **Partnerships** defines the registration and approval mechanics that make neutral credit assignable.

## Directional benchmarks - flag every one when quoting

None of these is independent research; use them to frame conversations, never as targets to promise.

- Partner-sourced pipeline share: 20-30% cited for early-stage programs, 40-50%+ for mature channel-led businesses (Introw - vendor content). Concentration-risk flag when one partner exceeds ~30% of channel revenue.
- Industry-wide partner revenue share: one source cites 26-28% of revenue via partners in 2025, up from 18-20% in 2024 - unverified aggregate with no named study behind it (Introw).
- Win-rate context: general B2B baseline ~21% across all opportunities, ~29% for qualified-only. Partner/referral deals reported in the 35-55% range (Landbase, mixed vendor sources). Cross-company win-rate comparison is unreliable because opportunity-creation criteria differ by company - logging opportunities only post-qualification structurally inflates the number.
- The widely repeated claim that partner-sourced deals have "the highest win rate" is unverified: the primary data behind it actually shows partner _referrals_ have the highest sales _velocity_ (3.8x) - a different claim. The headline partner-lift trio (more likely to close, faster, bigger) traces to account-mapping vendor marketing.
- One analyst observation worth keeping (Jay McBain): the average customer works with roughly **seven partners in every buying process** - the structural argument for writing an explicit multi-party split rule instead of assuming one partner per deal.

## Negative example: the comp-misalignment spiral

What the failure looks like in practice, assembled from sourced findings:

- The comp plan rewards booking, not channel discipline. A rep who attaches a partner loses quota credit, or a 3-5% marketplace fee is passed through to their commission. Result: "if a rep loses quota credit when a partner co-sells, they will never say yes" - reps quietly avoid and sandbag the partner motion. (Suger)
- Registrations live in a partner portal the sales team never opens. The direct AE "never saw the registration" and is functionally excluded from the process as neither informed nor consulted. This is where channel conflict originates. (Fullcast)
- With no attribution lock and no dispute SLA, credit is negotiated deal by deal. One consultancy audit found reps spending **50% of their time negotiating splits and justifying influence** rather than selling. (Forma.ai - single audit, directional)
- Multi-party deals (vendor rep + cloud-provider rep + SI) break the tooling: most registration systems were built for one partner per deal. "The single hardest operational problem in co-selling is attribution." (Suger)

Each element is preventable by a charter line: neutrality funding model, registration visibility inside the sales system, a lock window, a dispute SLA, and an explicit multi-party split rule.

# Charter Examples

One worked charter and one annotated failure. Every number below is derived from a specific input in the situation described, not a default - re-derive each value from the user's own cycle length, ACV, partner mix, and comp structure rather than copying these.

## Worked example: mid-market B2B SaaS, reseller + SI mix

Situation: $40k ACV, 100-day average sales cycle, proven direct motion, two partner types (resellers, SIs), goal of growing partner-sourced pipeline.

```
CO-SELL OPERATING CHARTER - <company>, <date>
Scope            : Resellers + SIs, mid-market segment. Account classes: named-account list
                   (top 20) direct-only regardless of registration; all else shared-pursuit.
Process track    : Lightweight playbook-fill per reseller (90-min working session, fixed
                   5-section template); heavyweight JBP reserved for the one strategic SI.
Attribution      : Sourced vs influenced tracked separately; sourced test = "would the deal
                   exist without the partner?"; attribution locks 14 days after deal creation.
Registration     : Grants price protection + pre-sales engineering access + priority support.
                   Window 90 days (cycle is 100 days; 90 > 75% rule), one 30-day extension
                   on documented activity. Approval within 48h. Rejection grounds, published,
                   closed list: (1) duplicate registration, (2) account already in active
                   direct pipeline or an existing customer, (3) account on the named-account
                   list, (4) not qualified - no budget, timeline, or decision-maker access,
                   (5) no verifiable partner relationship with the account, (6) thin
                   submission with no evidence of value-add activity. Every rejection
                   carries its reason.
Credit & comp    : Comp-neutral via quota retirement - partner-attached revenue retires rep
                   quota dollar-for-dollar; partner margin absorbed at company level, never
                   passed to rep commission. Multi-party split decided at registration, not
                   at close. Signed off by Finance and CRO.
Decision rights  : Registration approver: partner operations lead (no quota impacted).
                   First-pass dedup/territory check: channel ops, automated. Attribution
                   co-owned by Partnerships + RevOps, reconciled monthly. Disputes:
                   RevOps adjudicates within 5 business days, registration timestamp as
                   tiebreaker. RoE document owner: VP Partnerships, CRO co-sign
                   (user-decided - no industry default exists).
Engagement rules : Direct AE pulled in when a registered deal passes discovery; SI engaged
                   on any deal with an implementation component. Named-account exceptions
                   listed above. Escalation: automated flag -> channel ops review ->
                   RevOps adjudication.
KPIs & review    : Sourced pipeline share and influenced revenue share (tracked separately),
                   attach rate, time-to-approval vs 48h SLA, dispute rate. Quarterly review;
                   flag any partner exceeding ~30% of channel revenue.
```

Why it passes the checklist:

- Every decision-rights cell names a role with no competing quota.
- The window clears the 75%-of-cycle rule.
- The rejection grounds are a published closed list, each one verifiable from the registration record.
- The two clocks are kept apart: 48h to approve a registration, 5 business days to adjudicate a contested one.
- Comp neutrality is funded and signed off.
- A rep can test any deal against the rules in one read.

## Negative example: the charter that causes the conflict it was meant to prevent

Each line below is a real, sourced failure pattern - annotations in brackets.

```
Scope            : "All partners, all segments."
                   [No account classes, no named-account exceptions - every deal is
                   potentially contested ground.]
Registration     : 30-day window on a 120-day sales cycle; approval "as fast as possible";
                   rejection reasons decided case by case.
                   [Window at 25% of cycle punishes partners for the vendor's own cycle
                   length; unpublished rejection grounds make every rejection look
                   political; slow ad-hoc approval is itself what drives land-grab and
                   duplicate registrations.]
Credit & comp    : Partner deals pay reps 50% of normal commission; the 3% marketplace fee
                   is deducted from rep commission on marketplace deals.
                   [The canonical adoption killer: a rep who loses credit when a partner
                   attaches will never say yes, and reps route around the marketplace.]
Decision rights  : "Registrations approved by the VP of Direct Sales. Credit splits
                   negotiated between the rep and the partner manager on each deal."
                   [Approver's own quota is affected by the decision - structural conflict
                   of interest. Per-deal negotiation with no lock or SLA is how reps end up
                   spending selling time arguing splits instead of selling.]
Engagement rules : Registrations visible in the partner portal.
                   [The portal the sales team never opens: direct AEs are blindsided,
                   neither informed nor consulted - the documented origin point of
                   channel conflict.]
Attribution      : "Partner influence recorded at close by the partnerships team."
                   [Claims made after the outcome is known are unprovable and political;
                   partnerships as sole owner makes the number look self-serving.]
```

The fix is not better dispute handling downstream - it is rewriting these lines upstream so most disputes never form.

# Deal Registration Policy and Rules of Engagement

Citations name the publishing vendor or consultancy so single-source claims stay auditable. Treat vendor-content items as one practitioner's convention unless corroborated.

## The four decisions a registration policy must make

Converged core structure of a registration policy document (PartnerStandard deal-registration guide - consultant content):

1. **Protection-window duration** - how long a registration shields the partner, plus extension triggers.
2. **What registration grants** - customer protection plus a defined support bundle, never protection alone.
3. **Approval criteria and SLA** - response timeline and who decides.
4. **Dispute resolution** - tiebreaker rules and escalation path.

The same source's framing is worth repeating to users: "the form is not the point - the trust the form creates is."

## Protection windows

Reported ranges vary by context - present as a range, not a fixed rule (ZINFI, xAmplify):

| Context                                  | Typical window             |
| ---------------------------------------- | -------------------------- |
| SMB / general deals                      | 30-90 days                 |
| SaaS standard                            | 90-180 days                |
| Enterprise / complex                     | 90-180 days                |
| Named/strategic account-level protection | up to 12 months, renewable |

One vendor (xAmplify) proposes a tiered 90/180/365-day schema by segment - a single vendor's proposal, not observed universal practice.

- **Rule of thumb: set the window to at least 75% of average sales-cycle length.** This is the load-bearing sizing rule. A window shorter than the cycle punishes partners for the vendor's own cycle length.
- Published real-world example: Check Point runs a 90-day registration, extendable once by 30 days (120-day max), with reminder emails 30 days before expiry.

## What registration grants

Two grant types, ranked by value per unit of effort: `non-price bundle > additional discount`. On effort they invert - `additional discount > non-price bundle` - because a published discount is the harder commitment to reverse, not the harder one to write.

- **Non-price bundle**: pre-sales engineering access, co-marketing support, priority deal support. Costs internal hours per registered deal and is adjustable per partner without renegotiating anything.

  For partner types that don't earn on margin (SI/consultancy, ISV/tech, referral, marketplace), it is the entire value of registering: a margin-only grant gives them no reason to register at all. Best ratio, and the default grant for every partner type.

- **Additional discount**: commonly cited at **5-15%** beyond standard partner pricing for registered deals (rework.com). Recurring margin on every registered deal, published to the channel and effectively irreversible once granted. For resellers, VARs and distributors it outranks the bundle on value, since margin _is_ their economics - that is the one context where the ordering flips.

For SI, ISV, referral and marketplace partners, **delete the discount from the menu** rather than offering it at a lower rate: they do not earn on margin, so it buys no registration behaviour at any level.

## Approval: criteria, SLA, separation of powers

- Recommended default: **48-hour approval SLA** (PartnerStandard). The same source recommends three published rejection grounds. Prefer the fuller canonical list held by `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict` - a short list reads cleaner but pushes every unlisted case into approver discretion, which is the thing the published-grounds rule exists to remove.
- Documented approver convention (Oracle PRM docs; Fullcast):
  - The channel account/sales manager approves, typically on a 24-48h SLA.
  - **Channel operations** runs the first-pass review (duplicate and territory-conflict checks, often automated).
  - Administrators hold override authority to revert mistakes.
- **Separation of powers**: the approver must not be someone whose quota is affected by the decision. Direct sales leadership approving registrations that block direct reps' credit is a structural conflict of interest - approval authority belongs with partnerships/channel ops, separated from the competing P&L (PartnerStandard - consultant content, but the strongest governance principle in this literature).
- Initial approval rate and time-to-approval are not benchmarked across the industry: set targets from the program's own history rather than an external number. The one numeric SLA convention in circulation covers dispute adjudication (below).

## Rejection grounds actually used

Common published grounds (ZINFI):

- Duplicate registration: account already active in the CRM or assigned to a direct rep.
- Territorial conflict.
- Insufficient proof of value-add or genuine partner engagement - "just forwarding a name." One source reports ~12% of submissions denied on this ground.
- Speculative land-grab: the partner has no real relationship with the account. Ease of registration must be balanced against this abuse, since slow or manual approval itself causes land-grab and duplicate-claim behavior.

## Escalation ladder for contested deals

Consistent across sources (Forecastable, rework.com):

1. Automated duplicate/conflict detection by account name or domain.
2. Flag to channel/partner ops for manual review.
3. The documented, timestamped registration record serves as evidence of the first-mover claim.
4. Revenue-operations adjudication under a defined SLA - the one concrete number in the literature is a **5-business-day dispute-adjudication SLA** (Forecastable).
5. Attribution locks **14 days after deal creation** to prevent late, opportunistic credit claims.

Resolution options when two parties both claim an opportunity: award-to-one, co-registration with a defined split, or reject-both (rework.com). Deliberately not ranked - which one applies is settled by what the registration record shows about each claimant, not by effort or payoff, so an efficiency order here would be false precision. The tie-break rules that do decide it belong to `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict`.

## Rules-of-engagement document sections

Converged across ZINFI, Impartner, and Gradient Works - a genuine, widespread practice, not one vendor's invention:

1. Account/territory ownership rules: direct-only, partner-only, open/shared-pursuit with priority rules.
2. Lead/deal registration process - how a partner formally claims an opportunity.
3. Deal protection policy - criteria for a _valid_ registration: named contact, confirmed buying intent, active partner involvement, not a company-name drop.
4. Approval/rejection SLA and the conflict-resolution ladder.
5. Conflict escalation process - a predictable governance path, not ad hoc negotiation.
6. Lead distribution and brand-representation rules.
7. Review/update cadence.

Plus, per other sources: co-sell trigger conditions (when direct-team support gets pulled in) and named-account exceptions reserved for direct regardless of registration. A real published example exists: HubSpot's partner-program sales rules of engagement are public and worth reading as a reference artifact. Forrester also sells a "Mitigating Channel Conflict: Rules of Engagement" report - analyst-grade but paywalled.

Ownership of the rules-of-engagement document itself has a practitioner convention rather than a settled industry standard: partner or ecosystem leadership owns the framework, co-designed with sales, customer success, revenue operations, and legal - ownership meaning maintaining the model, monitoring adherence, and driving updates, not making decisions alone (per The Pedowitz Group). This lines up with the comp-plan linkage's CRO/sales-leadership co-sign-off, but is one consultancy's stated pattern, not a measured industry norm - the user still decides it explicitly for their own org rather than inheriting a default.

# Partner Types, ACV Bands, and Process Tracks

Citations name the publishing vendor or consultancy. Treat single-source specifics as one practitioner's convention.

## Registration and credit mechanics by partner type

The best-corroborated pattern in the co-sell literature: mechanics map to how each partner type earns money, and do not generalize across types (PartnerStandard, Suger).

| Partner type              | Primary economics                                                               | Mechanic the charter needs                                                                                                   |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Referral                  | Flat fee or % of first-year revenue (typically 5-20%) for an introduction       | Lightest touch - clean attribution tracking and payment reliability, not margin protection or formal registration            |
| Reseller / VAR            | Margin between wholesale and resale; owns contract, billing, first-line support | Formal deal registration is essential - pricing/margin rules, enablement, registration to prevent direct-vs-channel conflict |
| Distributor               | Two-tier economics, sell-through volume commissions                             | Same formal tier as resellers, plus reseller-network development tooling                                                     |
| SI / consultancy          | Services revenue, not resale margin                                             | Resale-style registration doesn't map - motivate with services pipeline, certification, co-sell support, qualified leads     |
| ISV / tech partner        | Builds on the platform, sells its own product                                   | Resale registration is commercially irrelevant - needs integration certification, marketplace listing, developer access      |
| Marketplace / hyperscaler | Revenue share tied to a specific transaction                                    | Registration exists but is transaction-linked; rate, caps, payment trigger, and clawback terms travel with the record        |

Edge case: **OEM/white-label** partners own the entire customer-facing relationship, so traditional registration conflict doesn't arise at all.

Hyperscaler programs converge on one generic architecture (Tackle, Clazar, Labra - vendor summaries; Microsoft Learn is the one primary source):

1. Partner-network tier membership.
2. Marketplace as the transaction rail.
3. An opportunity-sharing system that assigns an ID and routes the deal into the platform's own pipeline.
4. Escalating co-sell status tiers unlocking deeper field-seller engagement.

Published gating exists - for example, Microsoft requires a $25,000 minimum deal value for registration, and its top co-sell tier requires ~$100K revenue and a transactable marketplace offer. Treat these as one platform's published mechanics, not portable defaults.

## ACV bands and segment differences

- One consultant's bands (PartnerStandard - illustrative, single-sourced, not authoritative):
  - Below €3-5k ACV: channel is difficult and referral is the only realistic motion.
  - €5-50k: referral plus light co-sell becomes viable.
  - Above €50k: resellers/SIs/service partners become viable.
- The general floor for _any_ sales-assisted motion: practitioner consensus around $3k ACV for a hyper-efficient team, $5k once overhead is counted (SaaStr) - below that, stay self-serve and skip co-sell overhead entirely.
- **Segment differences (SMB / mid-market / enterprise) have no settled co-sell design.** The intuitive mapping - lightweight self-serve registration for SMB, formal with legal/security gates for enterprise - is an inference from general sales-segment practice, not an established convention. Present it as a hypothesis for the user to confirm against their own motion, never as established practice.

## Readiness diagnostics for the disqualifier gate

Questions worth asking verbatim during the gate, beyond the five disqualifiers in SKILL.md:

- One investor framework's readiness screen (Insight Partners):
  - Have you established a predictable ARR engine through direct sales already?
  - Is there real market pull, or would a channel be "pushing the ball uphill"?
  - Do you have referenceable customers partners can point to?
  - Is the product documented and understood well enough for a third party to implement or sell it?
- Operational threshold (PartnerStandard - single consultant source): early-stage companies should start with **two or three deeply engaged referral partners, not a formal program**. A formal program with a dedicated full-time operator only pays off around €1M-5M ARR. Below that, a shared/part-time owner is inadequate.
- Foundational overhead that must exist before registration can credibly run: basic partnership agreements, a program outline, partner pricing, rules of engagement, registration procedures, and sales-ops readiness. Skipping straight to a formal program without this scaffolding is itself disqualifying (Avoid The Drift).
- Second-order disqualifier: passing the readiness gate and then jumping straight to drafting a partner agreement instead of running discovery first. "Not ready" is also about skipping the design process, not only company stage.
- Fit-based disqualifier: a trivially cheap, auto-installing product may structurally have no partner play at all, regardless of ACV or stage.
- Commercial diagnostics in this space run 130+ checkpoints across four dimensions - business fundamentals, growth stage, general partner readiness, operational readiness for the specific partner type - but only the dimension names are public. Use the dimensions as an outline, not a checklist to fabricate.

## The two process tracks

No single dominant design methodology exists. Published guidance splits into a lightweight and a heavyweight track, ranked by value per unit of effort and presented in that order: `lightweight playbook > heavyweight JBP`.

The axes disagree: on raw value `heavyweight JBP > lightweight playbook`, and on effort `heavyweight JBP > lightweight playbook` too, which is exactly why the higher-value track loses on ratio. Choose per partner. A portfolio usually needs both, and the ordering shifts with partner type, ACV, and who on the user's side runs the session.

### Lightweight: single-session playbook fill (transactional / high-volume partners)

Best ratio, and the default for every partner until something moves it. Buys a named owner per cell and a shared deal-stage map - the two things most co-sell disputes actually turn on. Costs one 90-minute session per partner plus a one-time template build.

Build one fixed 5-section template, then fill it per partner in a single 90-minute working session with the partner-program owners of both companies present. Only the content changes per partner; the structure stays fixed (Forecastable - vendor content):

1. ICP and target-account criteria - where both companies have credible reason to engage.
2. Roles and ownership matrix - **a named individual, not a team, in every cell**: "shared ownership is no ownership."
3. Joint deal-stage map with an exit criterion per stage, giving deal reviews a shared language.
4. Messaging and assets per stage.
5. Metrics and review cadence.

### Heavyweight: joint business planning (strategic / enterprise alliances)

Highest value, worst ratio. Buys two-sided executive sponsorship and a budgeted plan - the only lever that moves a partner whose own field sellers carry quota. Costs weeks of drafting, a two-sided sign-off chain, and a standing quarterly review job.

Move up to it only when the partner's sellers are the ones you need to influence and both sides will fund the reviews. If the partner side will not name an executive sponsor, drop this track from the menu entirely rather than recommending against it: an unsponsored joint plan produces a document nobody executes.

Rooted in retailer-supplier planning, adapted to tech alliances (The Gap Partnership, ZINFI, NACDS):

1. Senior-leadership kickoff establishing ground rules and visible sponsorship on both sides.
2. Alignment on shared, measurable objectives.
3. Each side shares its own business plan and the mutual growth opportunity is discussed.
4. Plan drafted across functional sections: GTM, marketing, sales KPIs by quarter, training/certification, communication SLAs.
5. Formal approval and sign-off, then execution with quarterly reviews.

Readiness gate before starting: "is there enough business happening, is the incremental opportunity big enough, and is there adequate will-and-skill on both sides to invest the time."

Three published ways to actually run it, ranked by value per unit of effort: `the 5-step sequence above > AWS objective vocabulary > CHAMP workshop`. Only the efficiency axis is stated, because CHAMP's value is a single consultant's uncorroborated claim and ranking it on value would be false precision.

- The 5-step sequence above costs nothing beyond the meetings it schedules and already delivers sponsorship, objectives, and a review cadence.
- AWS's own program guidance is the most authoritative published design sequence for platform/hyperscaler co-sell, framed around launched opportunities, influenced revenue, marketplace gross software sales, and co-sell opportunity counts:
  1. Define SMART objectives.
  2. Align initiatives to each objective.
  3. Adopt the marketplace as a strategic channel.
  4. Build enablement.
  5. Secure cross-functional sponsorship (internal leadership plus the partner's own sales managers).
  6. Allocate people/budget/time per initiative.
  7. Monitor through regular reviews.

  An hour to borrow the objective vocabulary, which is useful even outside that platform. Narrower than a full method.

- CHAMP is a certifiable methodology delivered as a 2-day cross-functional workshop producing a Partner Plan and a Joint Plan - two days of senior calendar plus a consultant, and not independently corroborated. Mention it as an option, never as a standard.

## Partner discovery-session mechanics

Single vendor source (Forecastable), specific enough to reuse with that flag:

- Pre-read one-pager sent 24 hours ahead: overlap-account list, draft joint value frame, the proposed motion, three open questions for the partner side.
- Right attendee: the partner-side partnerships leader or regional sales leader - defer the session if that person can't attend.
- Length: 60 minutes as a working session. 15 minutes is a vendor pitch. 90 is a relationship meeting the partner side won't make time for.
- Directional conversion benchmark: mature programs convert 3-4 of 8 discovery sessions into a scoped co-sell pilot. Weak programs convert ≤1 of 8.

Account-overlap mapping through a neutral third party (rather than emailing spreadsheets between partners) is now standard practice for building the overlap list. The associated partner-lift statistics (bigger ACV, higher win rate, faster cycles) are that category's own vendor marketing - directional only.

---
name: co-selling-strategy
description: Design the operating model for how direct sales and partner sellers collaborate on shared deals - deal registration policy (protection windows, approval SLA, rejection grounds), deal credit and attribution split (partner-sourced vs partner-influenced, comp neutrality), and channel rules of engagement between direct and partner sellers. Covers B2B co-sell motions at the policy level. Use whenever the user mentions co-selling, partner deal registration, deal credit splits, partner attribution policy, or reps and partners working the same account, even if they never say co-sell. Do NOT use for adjudicating a live contested deal - use mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict instead.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Maya-Beth Finotti
  version: "1.3.4"
---

# Co-Selling Strategy

Define how direct sales and partner sellers collaborate on shared deals: the policy layer, never the deal-by-deal execution. This skill designs three artifacts as one coherent operating charter, and validates it with the user section by section:

- **Deal registration policy** - how a partner formally claims an opportunity and what that claim grants.
- **Credit and attribution model** - who gets counted and paid when a deal has more than one parent.
- **Rules of engagement** - between direct and partner sellers.

Co-selling is a B2B discipline with no true B2C analogue. It presupposes named accounts, quota-carrying reps, a consultative sales cycle, and an opportunity record - none of which exist in a consumer transaction.

The consumer-side counterparts are trade marketing, co-op advertising funds, and shelf-placement/channel agreements: a different discipline with different mechanics, so never force-fit deal registration or comp neutrality onto retail partnerships. The one part that transfers to any context, B2B or B2C, is the governance discipline itself: unambiguous ownership rules, documented tiebreakers, published criteria.

## Interview

Ask before proposing anything. One question per message; offer multiple-choice options when possible. Skip anything the user already answered. If your harness has persistent memory, check it for a previously approved charter first and confirm what changed instead of re-interviewing.

- What does the direct sales org look like - segments covered (SMB / mid-market / enterprise), inside vs field, how quota is structured?
- Which partner types are in play or planned: referral, reseller/VAR, distributor, SI/consultancy, ISV/tech, marketplace/hyperscaler?
- What are ACV, average sales-cycle length, and direct win rate? (Cycle length sets the registration protection window.)
- When did an AE last close a co-sell deal and call it a good experience - and what made it good?
- Does the current comp plan create any friction against attaching a partner to a deal?
- How does an AE find out which partner to call for a specific account today, and how long does that take?
- If an AE decided to ignore the partner motion entirely, what would happen?
- What is the goal: partner-sourced pipeline, influenced revenue, marketplace transaction volume, reaching segments direct can't?
- Is there a working attribution record today - timestamped registrations, or credit claims made at close?

Ask these three last, always. Every ranked menu later in this skill is re-ordered against the answers, and by the time the reader reaches a menu they have already committed to a path.

- By what date must this motion show a result, and what has to be true by then? A date inside one quarter deletes the heavyweight JBP track and promotes the one-hour registration and lock-window fixes. A date beyond two quarters keeps comp-plan work in play.
- One-off unblock, or a compounding asset? One-off promotes registration policy and rules of engagement, which pay out on the next deal. Compounding promotes comp neutrality and attribution co-ownership, which pay back every quarter and almost nothing in the first one.
- What is the effort ceiling - hours available, whether sales leadership will reopen the comp plan at all, and how reversible the change has to be? A refusal to reopen comp deletes every comp funding rung outright. A demand for reversibility demotes anything published to partners, since a granted discount is far harder to withdraw than an internal rule.

## Workflow

1. Run the Interview. If you can browse the web and the user has a published partner or deal-registration page, read it - audit reality before designing on a blank page.
2. Gate on readiness before designing anything. Decline, with reasons, when any disqualifier holds:
   - The ICP can't be clearly articulated yet.
   - Direct sales hasn't proven it closes reliably on its own.
   - Positioning, pricing, or process is still shifting.
   - ACV sits below roughly $3-5k, the practitioner floor for any sales-assisted motion (general SaaS consensus, not a co-sell-specific study).
   - Partnerships are being reached for as a fix for a growth problem.

   Partners amplify a working direct motion. They do not fix a broken one. When the gate fails, recommend two or three deeply engaged referral partners with no formal program, and stop.

   See [references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md](references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md) for deeper diagnostic questions for this gate.

3. Pick the process track. Present both in ranked order with the trade-off in each, and recommend explicitly. The axes disagree:
   - efficiency: `lightweight playbook > heavyweight JBP`
   - value: `heavyweight JBP > lightweight playbook`
   - effort: `heavyweight JBP > lightweight playbook`

   **Lightweight playbook fill:** one fixed template filled per partner in a single 90-minute session. Buys a named owner per cell and a shared deal-stage map, the two things most disputes actually turn on, for one session per partner plus a one-time template. Best ratio, and the default for every partner until something moves it.

   **Heavyweight joint business planning:** exec kickoff on both sides, shared measurable objectives, multi-week drafting, formal sign-off, quarterly reviews. Buys two-sided executive sponsorship and a budgeted plan, the only lever that moves a partner whose own field sellers carry quota, for weeks of drafting, a two-sided sign-off chain, and a standing quarterly review job. Highest value, worst ratio - move up to it only for a partner whose sellers you need to influence directly and where both sides will fund the review cadence.

   Delete the JBP track from the menu, rather than recommending against it, when the partner side will not name an executive sponsor: an unsponsored joint plan produces a document nobody executes. Run lightweight and revisit when a sponsor exists.

   Read [references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md](references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md) before this step - the ordering above is a default that shifts with partner type, ACV, and who on the user's side actually runs the session.

4. Map each partner type in play to the registration and credit mechanic its economics actually require (same reference):
   - A referral partner needs clean attribution, not margin protection.
   - A reseller needs formal registration.
   - An SI is motivated by services pipeline.
   - An ISV/tech partner needs none of the resale mechanics.

   Never ship one undifferentiated policy across types.

5. Design the five policy decisions in order, one at a time. For each decision:
   - Present 2-3 candidate approaches ranked by value per unit of effort, never cheapest-first.
   - Fold each option's trade-off into its own line and state an explicit recommendation.
   - Get the user's call before moving on.
   - Say the ordering out loud with a `>` line, and emit a separate line per axis wherever cost, value, effort and efficiency disagree.
   - Express effort as hours, meetings, sign-off chains and reversibility, never as a currency amount.
   - Drop any option the user's answers to the last three interview questions rule out, instead of demoting it, and say which answer deleted it.

   Every ordering here is a default: re-rank it against what you already know about this user before presenting it.
   1. **Attribution taxonomy** - partner-sourced vs partner-influenced, and whether to also publish a combined "partner-attached" number. See [references/attribution-and-compensation.md](references/attribution-and-compensation.md).
   2. **Deal registration policy** - what a registration grants, protection window and extension rules, approval criteria and SLA, published rejection grounds. See [references/deal-registration-policy.md](references/deal-registration-policy.md).
   3. **Credit and compensation** - the comp-neutrality funding model and the multi-party split rule. Same attribution reference.
   4. **Rules of engagement** - account classes (direct-only / partner-only / shared-pursuit), co-sell trigger conditions, named-account exceptions, escalation ladder. See the registration reference.
   5. **Decision rights** - who approves registrations (never a role whose quota the decision affects), who co-owns attribution (partnerships plus revenue operations is the defensible default), who adjudicates disputes and under what SLA, and who owns the rules-of-engagement document. Practitioner convention puts this with partner or ecosystem leadership, co-designed with sales, CS, RevOps, and legal, but it is one consultancy's stated pattern rather than a measured norm - name it as a starting point and make the user confirm it for their own org rather than asserting it as settled.

6. Assemble the charter (next section) and present it section by section, validating each with the user before the next. Do not finalize without explicit approval of the whole document.
7. Score the approved draft against the pass checklist below. State which checks fail and iterate until every one passes.
8. If your harness has persistent memory, memorize the approved charter's decisions - later runs (KPI reviews, adding a partner type, revisiting a window) start from them instead of re-interviewing.
9. Hand off what this skill does not do - resolving a live contested deal, planning a launch with one partner, program tiers and economics - to the sibling skills in Reference.

## The Co-Sell Operating Charter

Deliver every engagement as this artifact - a decision record the user can hand to sales leadership, finance, and partner operations:

```
CO-SELL OPERATING CHARTER - <company>, <date>
Scope            : partner types covered, segments, account classes (direct-only / partner-only / shared-pursuit)
Process track    : lightweight playbook-fill by default, heavyweight JBP by exception, per partner type
Attribution      : taxonomy adopted, the sourced test used, lock window after deal creation
Registration     : what it grants, protection window + extension rule, approval criteria, SLA, published rejection grounds
Credit & comp    : neutrality model + how it is funded, quota-retirement rule, multi-party split rule
Decision rights  : registration approver, attribution co-owners, dispute adjudicator + SLA, rules-of-engagement doc owner
Engagement rules : co-sell trigger conditions, named-account exceptions, escalation ladder
KPIs & review    : metrics tracked, targets, review cadence
```

Every line carries a reason: "90-day window because the average cycle is 100 days" is reviewable. A bare number is not.

**Pass checklist** - the charter is not done until every check passes. State the failing checks and the gap each time:

- Every decision-rights line names a specific role and, wherever possible, an individual. Shared ownership is no ownership.
- The registration approver's own quota is unaffected by approval decisions.
- The protection window is at least 75% of the average sales-cycle length the user reported.
- Rejection grounds are published, explicit, and a closed list - every ground objectively verifiable from the registration record, none discretionary. Take the canonical set from `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict`, which owns it. Enumerate rather than trimming, because a ground left off the list is a rejection nobody can defend.
- The comp model carries sign-off from finance and sales leadership, or the deviation is recorded as a deliberate exception with its risk stated.
- An AE can tell from one read whether a concrete deal is registerable, protected, and comp-neutral - walk one real deal scenario through the rules with the user to test this.
- Direct reps see registrations inside the system they already work in. A policy whose records live only in a portal the sales team never opens fails by definition.

## Established practice vs vendor vocabulary

Grade what you cite honestly - the co-sell literature mixes real standards with vendor marketing:

- **Established, safe to present prescriptively:** the partner-sourced / partner-influenced / partner-attached taxonomy, comp neutrality, rules-of-engagement documents, and deal registration with protection windows.
- **Real but vendor-originated vocabulary:** "ecosystem-led growth" and "nearbound" - widely adopted terms, but coined by vendors; use them as shared vocabulary, never as doctrine.
- **No standard exists:** co-sell readiness and maturity models are competing consultant frameworks. Present them as a category of options, not as a canonical model.
- **Directional at best:** the headline partner-lift benchmarks (bigger deals, higher win rates, faster cycles) trace to vendor marketing, not independent research. Quote them only with that flag attached.

## Diagnosing an existing motion

When the user arrives with a running co-sell motion instead of a blank page, work the fixes in the order below - highest value per unit of effort first, not cheapest first. The axes disagree, so state both when presenting the plan:

- efficiency: `published rejection grounds == lock window + dispute SLA > registration visibility > tiebreaker ladder > attribution co-ownership > comp neutrality`
- value: `comp neutrality > registration visibility > published rejection grounds > lock window + dispute SLA > attribution co-ownership > tiebreaker ladder`

The tie at the front is earned, not a hedge: both are one published paragraph, drafted in about an hour, signed off inside partnerships alone, and each kills a distinct high-frequency symptom.

Comp neutrality is what this order starves. It is the highest-value fix on the page and still ranks last on ratio, because it is a contractual commitment to the field costing a quarter and a finance-plus-CRO sign-off chain. A reader who only follows the efficiency line works the cheap rungs forever and never buys the one fix the others cannot substitute for.

Promote it to first on one symptom: reps still routing around or sandbagging partner deals after registration visibility, rejection grounds and the lock window are all in place. Where interview question 3 said sales leadership will not reopen the comp plan, comp neutrality is deleted from this plan and recorded as a known risk - never left at the bottom of the list, where it reappears as scope nobody can sign. Re-rank the rest against the user's own situation - a team whose rejection grounds are already published starts at the second rung.

| Symptom                                                                 | Check first                                                                            | Policy at fault                         | Fix effort                                                    |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Flood of speculative registrations on accounts the partner barely knows | Are proof-of-involvement criteria and rejection grounds published?                     | Registration - approval criteria        | An hour, partnerships alone                                   |
| Reps spend selling time arguing credit splits                           | Attribution lock window and dispute SLA                                                | Attribution governance                  | An hour, partnerships alone                                   |
| Direct AEs blindsided by partner registrations                          | Where the registration record lives - portal only, or the sales system?                | Rules of engagement - visibility        | A week of RevOps config                                       |
| Two claimants on one account, no clean resolution                       | Timestamped system of record and tiebreaker rules                                      | Decision rights - escalation ladder     | A week, plus tooling that may not exist                       |
| Partner-influenced revenue reported but nobody trusts it                | Are claims accepted at close, with partnerships as sole owner of the number?           | Attribution - taxonomy and co-ownership | A quarter of process change across two teams                  |
| Reps quietly avoid or sandbag partner deals                             | Does quota credit shrink when a partner attaches, or a marketplace fee hit commission? | Credit & comp - neutrality              | A quarter, finance + CRO sign-off, contractual once published |

## KPIs

Track sourced and influenced separately: collapsing them hides whether partners generate pipeline or accelerate it. Core KPIs:

- Partner-sourced pipeline share.
- Partner-influenced revenue share.
- Attach rate.
- Registration time-to-approval.
- Dispute rate.
- Adjudication-SLA compliance.

Compare win rate and cycle length for partner-attached vs direct deals inside the user's own data only, since cross-company benchmarks are unreliable: opportunity-creation criteria differ by company, and no independent industry benchmark exists for registration approval rate or time-to-approval. Review quarterly. A program where one partner drives more than ~30% of channel revenue carries concentration risk worth flagging.

The few published benchmark numbers that exist are vendor-sourced and directional only. They live, with their flags, in [references/attribution-and-compensation.md](references/attribution-and-compensation.md).

## Invocation Examples

- "Write the co-sell operating charter for our reseller and SI partners - mid-market, 100-day average sales cycle, comp treatment currently undefined."
- "Our AEs do not know when a partner-registered deal is protected. Draft the deal-registration policy and walk one real deal through it."
- "Partnerships and RevOps disagree about who owns attribution on partner-influenced deals. Write the decision-rights section."

## Reference

- See [references/deal-registration-policy.md](references/deal-registration-policy.md) for protection-window ranges, approval SLA and separation-of-powers rules, rejection grounds, escalation ladders, and rules-of-engagement document sections.
- See [references/attribution-and-compensation.md](references/attribution-and-compensation.md) for the attribution taxonomy, governance and lock windows, the three comp-neutrality funding models, and sign-off requirements.
- See [references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md](references/partner-types-and-process-tracks.md) for the partner-type-to-mechanic map, ACV bands, the two process tracks, and partner discovery-session mechanics.
- See [references/charter-examples.md](references/charter-examples.md) for one worked charter and one annotated negative example.
- See `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict` for the contested-deal layer: protection-window sizing, the tie-break, the rejection-grounds list, the escalation and adjudication ladder, and the comp-neutrality decision. Both skills write rules, and they write different ones - this skill owns the cooperative layer (what a registration grants, approval SLA and separation of powers, attribution, the co-sell charter), and consumes that skill's numbers rather than restating them.
- See `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@joint-gtm-planning` for the go-to-market motion with one specific partner (co-marketing, launch sequencing).
- See `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-program` for overall program structure - tiers, requirements, benefits.