joint-gtm-planning

{
  "skill_name": "joint-gtm-planning",
  "evals": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "prompt": "We're Verrata, a payroll-compliance SaaS, 110 people, selling into HR ops. Six weeks ago we signed a technology partnership with Skiplane, an HRIS platform. I need a joint GTM plan I can put in front of our leadership offsite on the 9th. Where things stand: my counterpart there is a marketing manager called Dana. I've emailed her VP twice asking for an intro and got nothing back. Dana was enthusiastic at first but it's been three weeks since her last reply. We both sell into HR ops so honestly the better-together angle writes itself, two logos and one audience. We've got $12k set aside; I have no idea what Skiplane has. Give me the plan.",
      "expected_output": "A refusal to produce a signable plan, with the readiness gate failures named individually and the specific missing pieces listed as the precondition for restarting.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Declines to produce a finished joint GTM plan and states that the readiness gate failed before any planning happens",
        "Names the absence of an executive sponsor on the Skiplane side as a disqualifier",
        "Names the partner's three weeks of silence, or unresponsiveness generally, as a disqualifier",
        "Names the unknown partner-side budget or capacity as a disqualifier",
        "Rejects \"we both sell into HR ops, two logos and one audience\" as a joint value proposition and states it fails the neither-alone test",
        "States that a plan cannot fix an unstaffed partnership, rather than proposing a workaround that proceeds anyway",
        "Requires a named owner and a named executive sponsor on each side, four names in total, before planning resumes",
        "Does not invent a launch date, a campaign format, or a budget split for Skiplane",
        "Does not treat Verrata's $12k as sufficient to proceed on one-sided funding"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "prompt": "Kelvinbase (data observability, 60 people) and Margrove, a BI vendor, both sell to analytics teams. We shipped a two-way connector in July. My CMO wants sourced pipeline from this partnership landing inside the quarter, and the quarter closes in seven weeks. I'm the only person on partner marketing and I can give this maybe six hours a week; our designer is booked solid until December. Margrove's team is about the same size as ours. My shortlist right now is a co-authored benchmark report built from both products' telemetry, or a shared booth at the big analytics conference in February. Which one, and what's the plan?",
      "expected_output": "Both shortlisted formats deleted for stated reasons, a re-ranked shortlist of remaining formats with trade-offs, and an explicit recommendation naming which constraint moved which format.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Deletes the co-authored benchmark report and states the reason, a quarter-long format against a seven-week results date and a six-hour weekly ceiling",
        "Deletes the February conference booth and states the reason, the fixed date falls outside the window results must land in",
        "Removes the ruled-out formats from the menu rather than ranking them last or holding them as fallbacks",
        "Presents two or three remaining candidate formats with trade-offs instead of a single option",
        "Identifies the joint webinar as the highest-efficiency B2B format, value bought per unit of two-company coordination, rather than choosing by cost or by audience size",
        "Says explicitly which answer moved which format, for example that the seven-week results date deleted the quarter-long formats",
        "Frames effort as coordination across two organizations, whose sign-off chain the format walks, not as money",
        "Distinguishes the launch date from the date results must land",
        "Recommends a format carrying a form or registration because the objective is pipeline",
        "Makes an explicit recommendation and waits for the user's decision instead of drafting the full plan around one format unasked"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "prompt": "Second time around with the same partner. We're Ashgrove, API security, 200 people; the partner is Tillmark, an API gateway vendor. We ran a webinar together last spring, 380 registrants, both sides came out happy, the relationship is solid. Now my VP wants something out of this partnership that's still producing leads eighteen months from now, not another one-hour spike. No fixed date, she said take the time it takes. The thing that's unusual: Ashgrove has three years of anonymized attack-traffic telemetry, Tillmark has gateway-config data from 4,000 deployments, and neither of us can publish anything meaningful from our own half. Budget is already approved on both sides and we have in-house design. What should we run?",
      "expected_output": "A recommendation of the co-authored research report, explicitly justified as the format the efficiency ordering normally starves, with the promoting conditions named.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Recommends the co-authored research report as the campaign shape",
        "States that the co-authored research report is the format the efficiency ordering normally starves, high value and high effort, losing every ratio round",
        "Names the conditions promoting it here: both sides hold data neither can publish alone, the relationship has already survived one campaign, and the deadline is a quarter out or later",
        "States that the compounding-asset mandate, not cost, is what moved the report above the webinar",
        "Notes that in-house design capacity and pre-approved budget remove most of the report's effort penalty",
        "Does not recommend repeating the joint webinar as the primary shape on the grounds that it worked last time",
        "States that the report passes the neither-alone test because the claim requires both data sets",
        "Treats the report as a gated format and therefore triggers the lead-sharing agreement in full",
        "Plans a quarter-scale timeline covering two review chains plus design",
        "Sets the debrief as a calendar date fixed before launch"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "prompt": "Here's the joint plan my counterpart at Ombrelle sent over. I think it reads well, just a bit flabby. Can you tighten the wording and make it sound sharper for both exec teams?\n\nJOINT MARKETING PLAN - Halvard + Ombrelle\nGoal: grow awareness for both brands and generate leads together\nValue prop: \"Halvard and Ombrelle - better together\"\nAudience: both companies' audiences\nCampaign: co-branded ebook, some social, maybe a webinar\nSplit: both teams collaborate on the content\nBudget: shared marketing budget, TBD\nTimeline: launch in Q2\nLeads: leads will be shared between the teams\nOwners: Halvard growth team + Ombrelle marketing team\nSuccess: engagement, reach, pipeline impact",
      "expected_output": "A refusal to rewrite the prose, with each line scored against the pass checklist and the specific decision missing behind it named.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Declines to polish the wording and states that the missing content is missing decisions, not missing prose",
        "Flags the single merged goal and requires each side's criterion stated separately, each with a number and a date",
        "Flags \"Halvard and Ombrelle - better together\" as failing the neither-alone test because either name could be swapped for any vendor",
        "Flags \"both companies' audiences\" as lacking a segment, overlap evidence, and explicit exclusions",
        "Flags \"maybe a webinar\" as no chosen campaign shape, and requires the rejected alternatives with the reason each was rejected",
        "Flags \"both teams collaborate on the content\" as naming no creator and no approver per asset",
        "Flags \"shared marketing budget, TBD\" as carrying no per-side spend line",
        "Flags \"launch in Q2\" as not a date, and requires one agreed launch date with the approval buffer visible in the phase dates",
        "Flags the leads line as lacking consent basis, transfer mechanism, transfer timing, and a deduplication rule",
        "Flags the owners line as team names rather than four named people, an owner and an executive sponsor on each side",
        "Flags \"engagement, reach, pipeline impact\" as unmeasurable without per-party tracking links and a sourced-versus-influenced rule, and notes that no debrief date is scheduled"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "prompt": "We're co-hosting a webinar in six weeks: us, Norlens, a contract-lifecycle SaaS headquartered in Dublin, with Pellamont, an e-signature vendor out of Denver. Registrations will come off both sides' lists plus some paid promo, and the audience is legal-ops people across the EU and the US. Pellamont's marketing ops wants to host the form in their instance and push everything into our CRM the week after the event. Their head of demand gen said we'll just put one checkbox saying you agree to hear from both of us. I need the lead-sharing and attribution piece nailed down. Write it.",
      "expected_output": "A lead-sharing and attribution section specifying consent parameters, joint-controller split, testable transfer timing, dedup rule, per-party links and the sourced/influenced rule, stopping short of drafted form copy.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects the single bundled checkbox and requires each company's consent to be separable",
        "Requires the form to name both companies and state the purpose of each company's processing",
        "Requires a withdrawal route as easy as giving consent",
        "Names the legal basis for the transfer explicitly rather than leaving it implied",
        "Identifies the co-hosted webinar registration as a joint-controller situation and requires the responsibility split to be documented and disclosed",
        "States that a lead can exercise rights against either company regardless of the internal split",
        "Treats who owns the form as the control point and assigns the data-subject-request duty to a named side",
        "Replaces \"the week after the event\" with a testable transfer timing expressed in business days from capture",
        "Requires a qualified-lead definition agreed jointly for this initiative, noting no cross-company standard exists",
        "Requires a deduplication and existing-relationship rule chosen from excluded from transfer, transferred but flagged, or counted for attribution only",
        "Requires per-party tracked links with a shared campaign identifier and source parameters split per company, ruling out a single untagged shared link",
        "Defines sourced and influenced separately for this initiative and states they are reported separately and never merged",
        "Decides the lead-ownership pattern explicitly, either each side keeps its own channels' leads or all shared-asset leads go to both, rather than leaving it open",
        "Delivers consent parameters and mechanics rather than drafted form copy, and states that writing the literal form wording is downstream asset work"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "prompt": "Building the business case for our first co-marketing push with Quorrin. We're Basalt Metrics. Two things I want reflected in the plan's targets. First, I keep seeing that 60-70% of alliances fail, and my CFO wants to know why ours won't. Second, a partnerships-platform report I read says partner-sourced deals close 46% faster and carry 2.3x the deal size, and I want our plan to target that. Also, can you throw in whatever the industry-standard conversion rate is for joint webinars so we've got something to benchmark against?",
      "expected_output": "Each quoted figure handled by provenance: the failure rate refused as folklore with its real spread, the vendor figures flagged and refused as targets, the non-existent standard named as such, and the user's own history proposed as baseline.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Refuses to present \"60-70% of alliances fail\" as settled fact and identifies it as untraceable folklore",
        "States that published alliance-failure estimates span roughly 20-80% depending on how failure is defined, and presents that spread rather than one number",
        "Flags the 46%-faster and 2.3x-deal-size figures as vendor-self-reported wherever they appear",
        "Explains why such figures are directional marketing claims: self-selected samples, unaudited methodology, incentives pointing one way",
        "Refuses to set a vendor-reported figure as the target the plan must hit",
        "Proposes Basalt Metrics' own historical campaign performance as the baseline instead",
        "States that no industry-standard joint-webinar conversion rate exists to benchmark against",
        "Does not fabricate a specific conversion-rate figure to satisfy the request",
        "Requires every benchmark quoted anywhere in the plan to carry a provenance flag"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "prompt": "Our partner Gravenhorst runs their user conference on 14 October. We're Solvex, 90 people, and we want to launch a joint integration campaign timed to it. Today is 11 September. Internally we'd normally turn a campaign like this around in about four weeks end to end: content, page, emails, promo. Both sides have a small budget and an owner assigned. Give me the sequencing, what happens when, so we hit the 14th.",
      "expected_output": "A backwards-anchored six-phase schedule built on a doubled timeline, with the arithmetic shortfall stated and resolved by cutting scope rather than the buffer.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "States that the plan needs roughly double a single-company timeline, about eight weeks against Solvex's four-week solo estimate",
        "Identifies the surplus as the other organization's approval, legal and brand cycles, and calls it structural to two-company work rather than a contingency",
        "States that the roughly five weeks between 11 September and 14 October does not fit the doubled estimate",
        "Cuts scope rather than the approval buffer to make the date fit",
        "Anchors backwards from 14 October: launch first, then the approval gate, then asset deadlines, then signing",
        "Lays out the six phases in order: agree terms, build assets, pre-launch, launch, follow-up, debrief",
        "States that nothing downstream starts until the plan is signed by four named people",
        "Schedules an explicit feedback buffer between each draft deadline and its review deadline",
        "Commits both sides to publishing simultaneously on one agreed date, and states that a staggered launch reads as one company promoting another",
        "Agrees a scope-cut plan upfront naming which asset drops first if the timeline compresses",
        "Sets the debrief as a calendar date before launch and includes a mid-flight check-in between the two owners at a set date"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 8,
      "prompt": "Quick one. Us, Perlyn, and our partner Astrolume are doing a joint webinar plus a gated checklist. Astrolume writes both pieces, we design them, and we're buying the LinkedIn promo. My counterpart keeps calling this 50/50 and I think that's fine? Separately, Astrolume mentioned they have about $6k of co-op money from a cloud marketplace they could throw at promotion. Their partner marketer said just spend it and we'll sort the paperwork later. How do I write the budget section?",
      "expected_output": "A budget section separating money from labor, picking a funding pattern from the ranked three with a recommendation, and recording the co-op fund's terms verbatim with proof, deadline and a named claim owner.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Separates money from labor and states that \"Astrolume writes, Perlyn designs\" is a task split, not a budget split",
        "Warns that conflating the two breeds resentment when one side's tasks cost more",
        "Presents the three budget patterns in efficiency order: each side funds its own channels, equal cash lines, then proportional to each side's expected lead share",
        "Recommends one pattern explicitly rather than accepting \"50/50\" as given",
        "Notes that the proportional pattern is the fairest and loses every ratio round, and names when to promote it anyway",
        "Records each side's spend as its own separate budget line",
        "Rejects \"just spend it and we'll sort the paperwork later\" for the co-op money",
        "Requires the fund's eligible activities recorded verbatim from the program's terms, including whether an activity plan needs pre-approval before spend",
        "Requires the proof of execution the claim demands and the claim deadline relative to the activity date, both recorded in the plan",
        "Names a specific person on a specific side as owner of filing the claim, and states that an unowned claim goes unclaimed"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 9,
      "prompt": "Consumer side this time. We're Halona, a DTC electrolyte drink brand, around $14M revenue. We want to do something with Fernpost, an outdoor apparel brand with a much bigger Instagram following, aimed at trail runners. Two ideas on the table: a co-branded limited-edition bottle sold through both our stores, or a content series with a trail-running creator both brands already work with. No fixed deadline. We own our DTC store and a warehouse; Fernpost has retail placement. What do we run and how do I plan it?",
      "expected_output": "A consumer-side format decision using the B2C ordering and brand-fit screen, with disclosure and exclusivity handled as consumer-specific, KPIs swapped off pipeline, and the planning spine kept intact.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Uses the consumer-side format ordering with the creator collaboration as the default, not the B2B ordering",
        "States that the co-branded product is the consumer format the efficiency ordering starves, highest value and losing every ratio round",
        "Names the conditions that would promote the co-branded product anyway: a prior successful collab with this partner, secured retail distribution, and an objective needing a durable artifact rather than a reach spike",
        "Notes that Halona's own store and warehouse plus Fernpost's retail placement remove much of the co-branded product's effort penalty",
        "Puts brand-fit screening first on the grounds that the association itself is the risk",
        "States that sponsored-content disclosure is enforced by consumer regulators and puts the disclosure obligation in the creator agreement",
        "Notes that a missing disclosure is public and unfixable after publication",
        "Treats category exclusivity as an explicitly negotiated contract tier rather than assuming it",
        "Warns that brand veto rights can extend past production into published content, unlike the front-loaded B2B approval chain",
        "Replaces pipeline KPIs with reach, engagement, sell-through or brand lift, and states that attribution here is structurally softer",
        "Keeps the planning spine unchanged: per-side goals with numbers, a signed agreement before asset work, one agreed launch date, named owners on both sides, and a scheduled debrief"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 10,
      "prompt": "We did a joint webinar with Cadmere back in May. 412 registrations, attendance was decent. Three months on, our sales team says they got nothing usable out of it, Cadmere's partner lead is telling their exec team the webinar sourced most of their Q3 pipeline, and neither of us can prove anything because we just used one shared short link across both sides' promo. Their head of marketing wants to run it again in November. I want to say yes but do it properly. What should the debrief have covered, and what changes for round two?",
      "expected_output": "A statement that the attribution split is unrecoverable, the full debrief agenda that was skipped, and the specific mechanics that must predate results in round two.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "States that the sourced-versus-influenced split is unrecoverable after the fact because a single untagged shared link was used, and does not attempt to reconstruct it",
        "Requires per-party tracked links from day one in round two, with a shared campaign identifier and source parameters split per company",
        "Traces the attribution dispute to the absence of a lead-ownership rule agreed before the results existed",
        "Lays out the debrief agenda covering results against each side's own goal side by side, lead quality against the agreed definition, collaboration quality, the neither-alone retrospective, and a recorded decision",
        "Includes the case where one side hit and the other missed as an explicit debrief output",
        "Requires a recorded decision of repeat, reshape or stop, and states that an undecided debrief schedules a decision date",
        "States that \"nothing usable\" and \"sourced most of Q3 pipeline\" are not comparable without a jointly agreed qualified-lead definition",
        "Requires the round-two debrief date to be booked at the agree-terms phase, before launch",
        "Sets one attribution window used identically by both sides, and has each side compute its own return on its own spend rather than one blended number"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 11,
      "prompt": "New VP joined and wants us nearbound and ecosystem-led by Q1. Concretely he's asked me for three things: build the joint GTM plan with Vantiq Systems using the standard joint business plan template; set our Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 launch criteria so we know how much marketing muscle each partner launch gets; and run account mapping first, since that's the discipline everything else depends on. We're Karst Data, 140 people. Give me all three.",
      "expected_output": "The vendor-coined vocabulary graded as such, the non-existent template and tier standards named plainly, and the plan built section by section with the user deciding the program-specific parameters.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Identifies \"nearbound\" and \"ecosystem-led growth\" as vocabulary originating with one vendor and its acquired media brands, not as established doctrine",
        "Treats that vocabulary as usable shared language while refusing to build the plan's logic on it",
        "Notes that account mapping as a named discipline was popularized by the same vendor",
        "States plainly that no canonical joint business plan or joint GTM plan template exists",
        "Presents the plan skeleton as assembled practice to validate section by section rather than as an industry-standard form",
        "States that Tier 1/2/3 launch criteria are program-specific with no standard, and makes Karst Data decide them explicitly",
        "Does not invent published thresholds for the launch tiers",
        "Notes that frameworks borrowed from outside partner marketing, such as RACI, OKRs or phase-gate, are real but not partner-marketing inventions and should not be force-fit",
        "Presents each section for validation before drafting the next rather than delivering all three artifacts at once"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "trigger_queries": [
    {
      "query": "Plan the joint GTM motion for our integration launch with Northbeam Analytics",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We signed a co-marketing agreement with a partner last month - now what do we actually build together?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Need a better-together story with our biggest tech partner before their conference",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "How should we split the budget and the leads for a webinar we're running with another vendor?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Draft a co-marketing plan for a joint webinar with our CRM partner",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Our partner and us want to do something together this quarter and nobody has decided what",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "What campaign should we run with a partner if I only have six hours a week?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We're co-hosting a webinar with another company across the EU and US - what has to be agreed before the registration form goes live?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Both companies want to launch the integration on the same day, help me sequence it",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Put together the one-pager both CMOs can sign for the campaign we're running with Flowmark",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    { "query": "joint gtm plan template", "should_trigger": true },
    {
      "query": "We want to do a co-branded product drop with a sneaker brand - plan it",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "How do we decide who owns the leads from a webinar we run with a partner?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    { "query": "partner co-marketing campaign plan", "should_trigger": true },
    {
      "query": "We ran a joint campaign and got nothing. What should the debrief have asked?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Our partner has MDF available - how do we build a campaign around it without losing the money?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Plan a creator collaboration for our skincare launch with a beauty creator we already work with",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "What should go in the agreement between us and our partner before we start making assets?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Two vendors, one audience, one campaign - where do I start?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We want to write a research report with our partner. Is that the right move or should we just do a webinar?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "sequence a joint product launch with a partner",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Our alliance with Rivetlogic is signed but dormant. Wake it up with a campaign.",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Help me decide between a newsletter swap and a joint webinar with a partner",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Need to show my VP what we're doing with our biggest integration partner next quarter",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "How long does a campaign run with another company actually take end to end?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    { "query": "co-marketing launch sequencing", "should_trigger": true },
    {
      "query": "The partner wants brand awareness, we want pipeline. Can we still run something together?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the plan for our joint booth and customer dinner at the industry conference with our partner",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We need tracking set up so we can tell whose audience drove the signups in a campaign with another company",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "joint value proposition for two companies running a campaign together",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "What's a realistic launch date when two marketing teams both have to approve everything?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Set up the measurement for a campaign we're running jointly with another vendor",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Our partner went quiet halfway through the campaign. How should the next plan be structured?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Plan an integration launch campaign with a data warehouse partner",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Two brands, one social moment - how do we plan it so both teams get what they want?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We want to bundle our product with a partner's and take it to market together",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "help me plan a partner marketing campaign end to end",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "What does a campaign brief look like when a second company has to sign off on everything?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "The partner's list is ten times ours. Does that change what we should run together?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We're doing a joint customer story with our partner. Plan it out.",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Before we start building assets with a partner, what do both sides need to agree on?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "How do I tell whether a campaign with a partner actually worked for us and not just for them?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "co-branding campaign plan with another consumer brand",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Plan the go-to-market for the new joint offering we're doing with Sablewire",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We want to do an AMA in our partner's community. Is that worth running?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "Legal asked what happens to the registration data from the webinar we're co-hosting with another vendor",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "First campaign with a brand new partner - what's the lowest-risk thing to try?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "gtm plan for two companies launching something together",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "The exec team wants a better-together narrative with our cloud partner by April",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We're sponsoring a partner's event and also co-authoring a guide with them. Which one first?",
      "should_trigger": true
    },
    {
      "query": "We've got 14 candidate technology partners and capacity for three. Rank them.",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write our deal registration policy - protection window, approval SLA, rejection grounds",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "A direct rep and a reseller are both working the same account. Who gets credit?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Build the quarterly scorecard we review each partner against",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Should our program have three tiers or four, and what unlocks gold?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Design the certification path our resellers complete before their first deal",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Model whether this reseller is actually profitable once we account for cost to serve",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Map every partner type we work with and show me the coverage gaps",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Which partner category should we add next, MSPs or systems integrators?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Should we list on AWS Marketplace or Azure Marketplace first?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "We're building a channel program from scratch - what tier and benefit structure do we need?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Set the commission rate for our new affiliate program",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Audit last month's affiliate payout run before we disburse",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Draft the terms and conditions affiliates accept when they join",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Design the welcome sequence for newly approved affiliates",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "How do I spot cookie stuffing in our affiliate traffic?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "What metrics belong on our affiliate performance dashboard?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the cold email we send to review sites to recruit them as affiliates",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Check this creator's caption for FTC disclosure compliance before it goes live",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the creative brief for the creator we just signed - deliverables and specs",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Shortlist creators for our spring launch and score them",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Prep me to negotiate usage rights and a kill fee with a creator",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the first DM to a creator we want to work with",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Set the KPIs and attribution method for our influencer campaign",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "How much should we pay for a refer-a-friend reward?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "People are self-referring with burner emails - what guardrails do we need?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "How do I break into partnerships from a sales role?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the job description and interview loop for a channel manager",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "I'm starting partnerships work here - which of these tasks should I run first?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write our go-to-market strategy for the new product we're launching",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Plan the launch strategy for v2 of our app",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Build the campaign plan for our Q3 demand gen push",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Set up our user acquisition campaign on TikTok",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    { "query": "Plan our Product Hunt launch day", "should_trigger": false },
    {
      "query": "We're building a Shopify app - how do we get it into the app store?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the landing page headline and subhead for the webinar registration page",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Draft the three promo emails for the webinar we're co-hosting",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the press release announcing our partnership with Vantiq",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the webinar script and the speaker notes",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Design the slide deck for the joint webinar",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Update our cookie consent banner for the new privacy rules",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Set up UTM naming conventions across all our paid channels",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Negotiate the distributor margin on our new reseller agreement",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Plan our own user conference for next year",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the co-op advertising policy our dealers claim funds against",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "How should we price the bundle we're selling with our partner?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Build the business case for acquiring the company we currently partner with",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Which of our integrations drives the most retention?",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Write the MSA and mutual NDA for our new partnership",
      "should_trigger": false
    },
    {
      "query": "Cut the joint webinar recording into short clips for social",
      "should_trigger": false
    }
  ]
}

# Campaign formats and launch sequencing

## Table of Contents

- [Choosing the campaign shape (B2B)](#choosing-the-campaign-shape-b2b)
- [Consumer-side formats (B2C)](#consumer-side-formats-b2c)
- [The six-phase sequencing skeleton](#the-six-phase-sequencing-skeleton)
- [Timeline rules](#timeline-rules)
- [The debrief](#the-debrief)
- [Market-development and co-op funds](#market-development-and-co-op-funds)

## Choosing the campaign shape (B2B)

Rows run in efficiency order - value bought per unit of two-company effort - and that is the order to propose them in. Effort is coordination across two organizations, not money: whose sign-off chain the format walks, and how many drafts cross the boundary.

**efficiency (do first):** joint webinar > better-together page + customer story > newsletter swap == community collab > co-authored research report > bundle or joint offer > integration launch > shared event presence
**value (outcome bought):** co-authored research report > bundle or joint offer > integration launch > joint webinar > better-together page > shared event presence > newsletter swap > community collab
**effort (most first):** shared event presence == integration launch == bundle or joint offer == co-authored research report > joint webinar == better-together page > newsletter swap == community collab
**compliance cost:** bundle or joint offer (commercial terms through both legal chains; a sold bundle cannot be unwound) > every gated format - report, webinar, offer redemption (joint-controller split and separable consent documented before the form goes live) > every ungated format (per-party tracking links only)

| Format                                              | Effort                                                         | Value bought                                                                 | Best when                                                                        |
| --------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Joint webinar or workshop                           | A week of coordination, one speaker per side                   | Strong - a registration list plus both audiences in one room                 | Both sides can field a credible speaker; pipeline is the objective               |
| Better-together landing page + joint customer story | A week, and the customer's sign-off is the long pole           | Medium capture, but it keeps earning after launch                            | An existing shared customer will go on record; evergreen positioning             |
| Newsletter or audience swap                         | An hour of two editors agreeing a slot                         | Weak-medium - list exposure, no capture of your own                          | Audience growth is the objective; cheapest working-relationship test             |
| Community collaboration (AMA, takeover)             | An hour to brief and schedule                                  | Weak - engagement and association; measurement is soft, say so upfront       | Brand association with an already-warm audience                                  |
| Co-authored content (guide, research report)        | A quarter - two data sets, two review chains, design           | Strong gated capture, and the strongest proof the claim needs both companies | Both sides hold complementary data or expertise; audience overlap is topical     |
| Bundle or joint offer                               | A quarter - pricing authority, legal, billing on both sides    | Strong - redemption is revenue, not a lead                                   | Pricing authority exists on both sides; commercial objective, not awareness      |
| Integration or joint-product launch                 | A quarter of launch coordination on top of shipped engineering | Medium capture, high adoption and positioning payoff                         | A real integration exists; objective is adoption and better-together positioning |
| Shared event presence (booth, dinner, side event)   | A quarter, and the date is not yours to move                   | Medium - scans and RSVPs, heavily dependent on the event                     | A fixed-date industry event both sides attend anyway                             |

Reading the ties: the newsletter swap and the community collab both cost an hour and neither captures a lead, so the choice is which asset the initiative needs - list exposure or credibility - not which ratio is higher.

The four quarter-long formats tie on effort because each waits on a second organization's sign-off chain:

- Legal, for the bundle.
- Engineering, for the integration.
- An outside calendar, for the event.
- A research review, for the report.

Selection rules:

- **Default: the joint webinar**, unless the objective is not pipeline. Move up one rung to the better-together page when the objective is evergreen positioning rather than a dated pipeline push, and down to the newsletter swap when this is a first, untested partner.
- **What the efficiency order starves: the co-authored research report.** High value, high effort, so it loses every ratio round - yet it is the only format on this list that proves the "neither alone" claim outright. Promote it anyway when both sides hold data neither can publish alone, the relationship has already survived one campaign, and the deadline is a quarter out or later.
- Pipeline objective → pick a format with a form or registration.
- Awareness objective → accept weak capture, but write that into the measurement section before launch.
- Every gated format triggers the lead-sharing agreement in full; ungated formats still need per-party tracking links.
- Delete a format the user's answers rule out rather than showing it ranked last: no pricing authority kills the bundle, no fixed event inside the window kills the event presence, no proprietary data kills the research report. A format left on the page returns later as scope.

This order 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 proposing anything:

- An existing joint customer base promotes the better-together page above the webinar.
- A partner with a much bigger list promotes the newsletter swap.
- An already-approved co-marketing budget or in-house design capacity removes most of the report's effort penalty.

Re-rank against the Interview answers too:

- A hard external date promotes the fast formats and deletes the quarter-long ones outright.
- A compounding-asset mandate promotes the report and the better-together page over the webinar.
- A low effort ceiling collapses the menu to the two one-hour formats.

## Consumer-side formats (B2C)

Same treatment, different economics:

- The artifact itself is the campaign.
- Brand-fit risk replaces lead capture as the first screen.
- Compliance exposure is public rather than contractual.

Rows run in efficiency order.

**efficiency (do first):** creator collaboration > brand-to-brand content collab > sponsorship > licensed collaboration > co-branded product
**value (outcome bought):** co-branded product > licensed collaboration > creator collaboration > sponsorship > brand-to-brand content collab
**effort (most first):** co-branded product > licensed collaboration > sponsorship > creator collaboration == brand-to-brand content collab
**compliance cost:** creator collaboration (sponsored-content disclosure is enforced by consumer regulators, and a missing one is public and unfixable after publication) > licensed collaboration == sponsorship (royalties, category exclusivity - terms that bind for a fixed term with no exit) > co-branded product (labelling, product liability, both brands' approval chains) > brand-to-brand content collab (mutual approval only)

| Format                                             | Effort                                            | Value bought                                                            | Centre of gravity                                                                                                                        |
| -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Creator/influencer collaboration                   | A week to brief and contract                      | Reach plus borrowed credibility, trackable through codes and links      | The creator's content and credibility; authenticity mismatch is the failure surface, and the disclosure obligation goes in the agreement |
| Brand-to-brand content or social collab            | A week of two social teams agreeing a moment      | A reach spike; measurement stays soft                                   | Shared audience moment - the closest analogue to B2B co-marketing; agree upfront how soft the measurement will be                        |
| Sponsorship                                        | A quarter of negotiation and activation           | Association with a property, and category exclusivity if bought         | Association with an event/property; approval rights can extend past production into published content                                    |
| Licensed collaboration                             | A quarter or more; marketing waits on the license | Product differentiation plus borrowed brand equity                      | One brand's property in the other's product; licensing terms, royalties, and usage approvals dominate the plan                           |
| Co-branded product (ingredient or merged-identity) | A standing job - production, packaging, retail    | A sellable artifact with sell-through revenue and a durable brand asset | The product on the shelf; a quality failure damages both brands symmetrically                                                            |

Reading the tie: the creator collab and the brand content collab both cost a week of two teams' coordination, with no production line and no rights negotiation between them - the creator collab adds only a contract, which is why it wins on efficiency at equal effort.

- **Default: the creator collaboration**, unless the brand cannot accept a third party speaking for it. Move up one rung to sponsorship when the objective is association with a property rather than reach, and down to the brand content collab when no creator fits the brand.
- **What the efficiency order starves: the co-branded product.** It is the highest-value format here and it loses every ratio round. Promote it anyway when a prior collab with this partner already succeeded, retail distribution is secured, and the objective needs a durable artifact rather than a reach spike.
- Delete a format the user's answers rule out rather than demoting it: no licensable property kills the licensed collab, no retail route kills the co-branded product.
- Re-rank on what you know:
  - An owned retail channel removes most of the co-branded product's effort penalty.
  - An existing creator roster promotes the creator collab further.
  - A fixed consumer-moment deadline deletes everything past a week.

The planning spine transfers unchanged from the B2B workflow: per-side goals, signed agreement, one launch date, named owners, debrief.

What does not transfer:

- Lead-sharing mechanics. Consumer collabs rarely transfer personal data between brands; when they do, consumer-marketing consent rules are stricter than B2B.
- The pipeline-native KPI set. Swap in reach, engagement, sell-through, brand lift - and flag that attribution is structurally softer.

## The six-phase sequencing skeleton

No published standard defines joint launch phases - this skeleton is assembled practitioner practice; adjust the durations, keep the order and the gates.

1. **Agree terms.** Both sides sign the joint GTM plan: objectives per side, split, budget, launch date, lead-sharing rule. Gate: four named people have signed. Nothing downstream starts before this.
2. **Build assets.** Each side creates what the split assigns it; the other side reviews. Schedule explicit buffer between every draft deadline and its feedback deadline - cross-company review is where timelines die.
3. **Pre-launch.** Each side teases through its own channels; sales/support teams on both sides get briefed on the story and the offer. Gate: all assets approved by both sides.
4. **Launch.** Both sides publish and promote simultaneously on the one agreed date. Simultaneity is the point - a staggered launch reads as one company promoting another, not a joint motion.
5. **Follow-up.** Leads transfer per the agreed mechanism and timing; each side nurtures its share; mid-flight check-in between owners at a set date.
6. **Debrief.** Both sides review results against each side's own goal, lead quality, and collaboration quality; decide repeat / reshape / stop. The debrief date was scheduled back in phase 1.

## Timeline rules

- Budget roughly **double** what the same campaign would take one company alone. The surplus is the other organization's approval, legal, and brand cycles - a structural property of two-company work, not pessimism.
- Anchor backwards from any fixed date (conference, product release, quarter close): place the launch, then the approval gate, then asset deadlines, then signing. If the arithmetic doesn't fit, cut scope - never the approval buffer.
- One agreed launch date, in writing. "Mid-March" is not a date.
- Fixed-date initiatives get a scope-cut plan agreed upfront: which asset drops first if the timeline compresses.

## The debrief

No published standard defines a joint-campaign debrief agenda - agree this one (or the user's variant) in phase 1 so it is a commitment, not an afterthought:

1. Results against each side's own goal, stated side by side - including the case where one side hit and the other missed.
2. Lead quality, not just volume: conversion against the agreed qualified-lead definition, plus each sales team's verbal read.
3. Collaboration quality: where the timeline slipped and why, whether approvals were the bottleneck, whether communication held.
4. The neither-alone retrospective: did the output actually need both companies, or did it drift into a solo asset with two logos?
5. Decision, recorded: repeat (what changes), reshape (different format, same partner), or stop. An undecided debrief schedules a decision date.

If your harness has persistent memory, store the debrief's outcome next to the plan's decisions - it is the starting context for the next initiative with this partner.

## Market-development and co-op funds

MDF/co-op is established practice with proof-of-performance verification baked in since its co-op advertising origins - but every program's rules are its own. There is no standard threshold, eligible-activity list, or claim process. Record in the plan, verbatim from the funding program's terms:

- Which activities are eligible, and whether pre-approval of an activity plan is required before spend.
- What proof of execution the claim demands (screenshots, invoices, attendance lists, published URLs).
- The claim deadline relative to the activity date - missed deadlines are forfeited money and one of the most common joint-marketing failures.
- Who on which side owns filing the claim. An unowned claim is an unclaimed one.

Treat MDF as a budget line with conditions, not free money: if the funded activity wouldn't survive the "neither alone" test on its own merits, the fund is subsidizing a bad initiative.

# Lead sharing, data protection, and attribution

## The lead-sharing agreement - what it must contain

Write these into the signed plan before launch; every dispute pattern below traces to one of them being left implicit.

- **Who owns which leads.** Two patterns, in efficiency order - propose the first unless the shared asset itself is the point.
  - _efficiency:_ each side keeps its own channels' leads > all shared-asset leads go to both
  - _value:_ all leads to both (each side works the full list, not its own slice) > each side keeps its own
  - _effort:_ all leads to both (form language, transfer mechanism, joint-controller split agreed before launch - a week) > each side keeps its own (near-zero; the per-party links already decide it)
  - _compliance cost:_ all leads to both (both companies named on the form, consent kept separable, the joint-controller split documented and disclosed, either company answerable to the lead) > each side keeps its own (each company processes only what its own channel captured)
  - The high-value pattern loses on ratio every time: promote it anyway when the shared asset - not either side's channel - is what drove registration, and there is time to get the consent wording right before the form goes live. Pick one explicitly; leaving it open is how the post-campaign dispute starts.
- **Transfer mechanism and timing.** How records move between the two companies' systems (export, integration, shared workspace) and by when after capture - "within N business days of capture" is testable; "after the campaign" is not.
- **Qualified-lead definition, agreed jointly.** No cross-company standard exists for what counts as a qualified lead - each company's marketing-automation thresholds differ. Agree one written definition for this initiative (fields required, ICP criteria, exclusions) or each side will report different numbers from the same list.
- **Deduplication and existing-relationship rule.** What happens when a captured lead is already the other side's customer or open opportunity - pick one:
  - Excluded from transfer.
  - Transferred but flagged.
  - Counted for attribution only.

  This is also where any program-wide deal-registration policy binds - consume it, don't redesign it.

- **Follow-up boundaries.** What each side may do with transferred leads (nurture sequence, sales outreach, nothing until a trigger) and any time window.

## Data protection - the generic constraints

Framed on the EU regime (GDPR) because it is the strictest widely-copied template; the logic transfers to most jurisdictions - verify locally, and if you can browse the web, check the current guidance of the regulator covering the campaign's audience.

- **Every transfer needs a legal basis.** Consent is the clean basis for passing a lead to a second company; a "legitimate interest" basis is arguable in B2B contexts but weaker and jurisdiction-dependent. A lead collected for one stated purpose cannot silently serve a different company's follow-up - re-purposing requires reassessing the basis.
- **The consent wording at collection is the control point.** Get the form language right and everything downstream is clean; get it wrong and no later agreement repairs it. The wording must:
  - Name both companies.
  - State the purpose of each company's processing.
  - Keep each company's consent separable (no single bundled checkbox covering both).
  - Use plain language.
  - Make withdrawal as easy as consent.

  Each company must be able to demonstrate the consent it relies on.

- **Joint controllers.** When both companies jointly decide what data is collected and why - the co-hosted webinar registration is the canonical case - many regimes treat them as joint controllers:
  - Document the responsibility split (who answers data-subject requests, who delivers the privacy notice).
  - Disclose its essence to the lead.
  - Expect that a lead can exercise rights against either company regardless of the internal split.
- **Practical checklist for the plan:**
  - Privacy notices on both sides name the sharing.
  - The form's consent line matches the transfer that will actually happen.
  - The transfer mechanism is itself secure.
  - A named contact on each side handles data-subject requests for this campaign.
  - Records of consent travel with the lead.

## Tracking and attribution mechanics

- **Per-party tracked links, from day one.** Share one campaign identifier across both companies and split the source/medium parameters by which company's channel drove the click. Standard URL campaign parameters travel regardless of whose domain hosts the destination, which is what makes two-company attribution workable. A single untagged shared link makes the sourced/influenced split unrecoverable after the fact.
- **Sourced vs influenced, defined for this initiative.** Sourced: the lead's first touch is a campaign link or the shared asset. Influenced: an existing opportunity on either side engaged with the campaign before closing. Track both, report both, never merge them.
- **Attribution window.** Agree how long after the campaign a conversion still counts, per side. No standard exists; what matters is that both sides use the same window.
- **Each side computes its own return** - incremental profit attributable to the initiative over that side's own spend. A single blended number hides the common case where the initiative worked for one company only.

## Resolving the classic disagreements

No alliance-specific escalation standard exists - what is documented is that these four disputes recur, and that the only reliable resolution is deciding them in the signed plan, before launch. When one surfaces during planning, present 2-3 candidate resolutions with trade-offs and a recommendation, like any other fork:

- **Budget split.** Distinguish money from labor - "one side writes, the other designs" is a task split, not a budget split, and conflating them breeds resentment when one side's tasks cost more. Three patterns, in efficiency order: _each side funds its own channels_ (near-zero negotiation, and per-party links already prove who spent what) > _equal cash lines_ (an hour to agree, defensible, indifferent to who benefits) > _proportional to each side's expected lead share_ (a week of forecasting both sides must actually accept). The proportional pattern is the fairest and loses every ratio round - promote it when the two sides' expected shares are visibly unequal, or when a prior campaign already ended in a fairness argument. Record the chosen pattern and each side's line.
- **Asset ownership.** Decide per asset who owns it after the campaign, who may reuse it, and whether co-branding must persist on reuse. Default worth proposing: creator owns, both may reuse with both logos intact.
- **Lead ownership.** The patterns are in the agreement section above; the dispute usually erupts when the shared asset outperforms expectations - which is why the rule must predate the results.
- **Audience/messaging disagreements.** Resolve by returning to the gating question - does this topic serve both audiences? - rather than by compromise wording that serves neither. A message neither side is excited to publish fails the initiative even if both sides approve it.

If a disagreement survives two rounds of candidate-and-recommendation, escalate to the two executive sponsors - that adjudication is what they were named for.

## Benchmark provenance

Nearly every published number about partner-driven performance - win-rate lift, deal-size lift, revenue share from partners - comes from vendors of partnership software measuring their own customer base, or from vendor-commissioned surveys. That provenance makes them directional marketing claims, not independent benchmarks:

- Samples are self-selected.
- Methodologies are unaudited.
- Incentives point one way.

Rules:

- Quote such a number only with its provenance flag attached ("vendor-self-reported").
- Never present a vendor number as the target the plan must hit; use the user's own historical campaign performance as the baseline instead.
- Treat any uncited "X% of partnerships/alliances fail" figure as unverified folklore and keep it out of the plan.

# Joint GTM plan examples

## Worked example - passes the checklist

Context: a mid-market data-quality SaaS ("Datarine") and a BI platform ("Chartview") shipped a two-way integration last quarter. Both sell to revenue-operations teams; 61 shared accounts verified via account mapping. First joint initiative.

```
JOINT GTM PLAN - Datarine x Chartview: integration launch campaign, 10 Mar
Objectives      : Datarine - 150 qualified leads and 25 integration activations by 30 Jun.
                  Chartview - 100 qualified leads and a published joint customer story by 30 Jun.
Joint value prop: "Dashboards you can finally trust" - Chartview visualizes what Datarine has
                  verified. Neither-alone test: Datarine has no visualization layer, Chartview
                  no data-quality engine; the claim requires both products.
Audience        : RevOps leads at 200-2,000-employee B2B companies. Evidence: 61 mapped shared
                  accounts + integration waitlist. Excluded: accounts already using both products.
Campaign shape  : joint webinar + gated benchmark report. Rejected: newsletter swap (no lead
                  capture, pipeline objective) and event booth (no fitting event before Q3).
Assets & split  : Datarine writes the report (its telemetry data); Chartview designs it and
                  builds the registration page (its design team); each approves the other's work.
                  Reused: Chartview's webinar setup, Datarine's shared-customer draft story.
Budget & funding: Datarine $9k (content, promotion); Chartview $7k (design, hosting, promotion).
                  Chartview's cloud-marketplace MDF: $5k pre-approved for paid promotion,
                  proof = invoices + published URLs, claim within 60 days of activity.
                  Claim owner: Chartview partner-marketing manager.
Sequencing      : sign 14 Mar → assets done 18 Apr (one review round each, 1-week feedback
                  buffer per draft) → both-side approval gate 25 Apr → pre-launch 28 Apr →
                  launch 6 May (both sides, same day) → leads transferred within 3 business
                  days of each capture → mid-flight check-in 20 May → debrief 24 Jun.
                  (Solo estimate was ~4 weeks; plan carries ~8 - the doubling is the buffer.)
Leads & tracking: registration form names both companies, separable consent line per company,
                  withdrawal link. Joint-controller split documented: Chartview hosts the form
                  and answers data-subject requests; both privacy notices name the sharing.
                  Qualified lead = RevOps or analytics title, 200+ employees, business email.
                  Dedup: leads already open opportunities for one side are flagged, not
                  transferred. Shared campaign identifier; source parameter split per company.
                  Sourced = first touch on a campaign link; influenced = existing open
                  opportunity that engaged; 90-day window, both sides.
Owners          : Datarine - J. Okafor (partner marketing, owner), CMO (sponsor).
                  Chartview - L. Mestre (alliances, owner), VP Marketing (sponsor).
Measurement     : leads per party via tagged links, qualified-lead conversion, activations,
                  sourced/influenced pipeline reported separately, per-side return on own spend.
                  Reporting: shared dashboard weekly. Debrief booked 24 Jun.
```

Why it passes:

- Two separate goals with numbers.
- The value prop names why both products are required.
- Four named people.
- One launch date with visible buffer.
- Consent, transfer timing, dedup and attribution all written down.
- MDF carries proof and deadline with an owner.
- The debrief is a calendar date.

## Negative example - the logo-swap plan

The most common bad joint GTM plan. Annotated with which checklist items each line fails.

```
JOINT MARKETING PLAN - Acme + Bolt
Goal            : grow both brands and generate leads together        [no per-side goals, no
                                                                       numbers, no dates]
Value prop      : "Acme and Bolt: better together"                    [slogan, not a claim -
                                                                       either logo could be
                                                                       swapped for any vendor;
                                                                       fails neither-alone]
Audience        : both companies' audiences                           [no segment, no overlap
                                                                       evidence, no exclusions]
Campaign         : co-branded ebook, social posts, maybe a webinar    [no chosen shape, no
                                                                       rejected alternatives -
                                                                       "maybe" is not a plan]
Split           : both teams will collaborate on content              [no named creator or
                                                                       approver per asset]
Budget          : shared marketing budget, TBD                        [no per-side lines; TBD
                                                                       is a placeholder, and
                                                                       unowned MDF goes
                                                                       unclaimed]
Timeline        : launch in Q2                                        [no date, no phases, no
                                                                       approval buffer - the
                                                                       slip is pre-written]
Leads           : leads will be shared between the teams              [no consent wording, no
                                                                       mechanism, no timing, no
                                                                       dedup - this line is
                                                                       where the post-campaign
                                                                       dispute starts; possible
                                                                       data-protection breach]
Owners          : Acme marketing team + Bolt marketing team           [teams, not names; no
                                                                       sponsors - nobody to
                                                                       escalate to when Bolt
                                                                       goes quiet]
Success         : engagement, reach, pipeline impact                  [unmeasurable - no
                                                                       per-party links, no
                                                                       sourced/influenced rule,
                                                                       no debrief date]
```

The pattern to recognize: every line reads agreeably and commits nobody to anything. When a draft plan looks like this, do not polish the wording - go back to the Interview and the readiness gate, because the missing content is missing decisions, not missing prose.

---
name: joint-gtm-planning
description: Plan one joint go-to-market motion with one already-chosen partner - the joint value proposition, co-marketing campaign shape, launch sequencing, budget and market-development funds, the lead-sharing and attribution agreement, and the closing debrief. Covers B2B vendor-to-vendor co-marketing, consumer co-branding, and creator collaborations. Use whenever the user mentions a joint GTM plan, partner co-marketing, a joint webinar or integration launch, or a better-together story with a named partner, even if they never say GTM. Macro strategy only, no ad copy, email bodies, or asset production. Do NOT use for direct-vs-partner deal policy - use mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@co-selling-strategy instead.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Maya-Beth Finotti
  version: "1.4.1"
---

# Joint GTM Planning

Plan one joint go-to-market initiative with one specific partner. The partner is already chosen - ranking candidates belongs to `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@alliance-prioritization`. What gets planned here is a single motion:

- The customer-facing "better together" story.
- The campaign shape.
- Who does what, with which budget.
- The launch sequence both sides commit to.
- The lead-sharing and attribution agreement.
- The debrief that decides whether to repeat.

The output is a joint GTM plan both companies can sign - a decision artifact, not campaign assets. Ad copy, email bodies, webinar scripts, and landing pages are tactical work downstream of this plan. Note the boundary with the ecosystem sibling: its joint-value-proposition workshop filters whether a partner _category_ can articulate joint value at all; this skill drafts the actual customer-facing claim for one named partner and one initiative.

## 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 first for a previously approved plan with this partner and confirm what changed instead of re-interviewing.

- Which partner, and what state is the relationship in: newly signed, signed but dormant, active with prior campaigns, or a strategic alliance with executive ties?
- What is the initiative, and what business objective drives it: pipeline generation, an integration or product launch, entering a new segment or market, brand association, a shared event?
- Who is the target audience, and what account or audience overlap is verified - mapped overlap data, customer-interview evidence, or assumption?
- What can the two companies credibly claim together that neither can alone? A draft joint value proposition, or a blank page?
- What assets does each side already have: integration, content, customer stories, audience channels, event presence, house lists?
- What budget does each side commit, and are market-development or co-op funds available - with what claim rules and deadlines?
- What is each side's effort ceiling: hours available, headcount assigned, how much approval capital the owner can spend, and how reversible the commitment must stay? Money is not the constraint that picks the campaign shape - two-company coordination is.
- What is the timeline, is any date fixed (an event, a product release, a quarter close), and by what date must results actually land? A launch date and a results date are different constraints.
- Is the goal a one-off win this quarter, or a compounding asset that keeps earning after launch? Never let this stay implicit - it flips the campaign-shape ranking outright.
- Who is the named owner on each side, and who is the executive sponsor on each side? Four names.
- What lead-sharing and data-protection constraints apply: regions covered, consent regime, each side's CRM, any existing data-sharing agreement?
- What does success mean to each side _separately_? Never accept one merged "shared goal" - asymmetry hidden now becomes the post-mortem later.

## Workflow

Hold one discipline throughout: at every real fork - campaign shape, sequencing pattern, lead-split rule, budget structure - present 2-3 candidate approaches with trade-offs and an explicit recommendation, then wait for the user's call. Never let an assumption harden into the plan unstated.

1. Run the Interview. If you can browse the web, read both companies' sites, the partner's public partner page, and any existing joint listing - audit reality before planning on it.
2. Gate on readiness before planning anything. Decline, with reasons, when a disqualifier holds:
   - No named owner or no executive sponsor on either side.
   - The partner is unresponsive or uncommitted.
   - No joint value articulable beyond putting two logos on one asset.
   - The two sides' objectives don't intersect at all - one wants leads, the other only brand reach, a known co-marketing failure pattern.
   - One side has no budget or capacity.
   - A live co-sell policy dispute is burning - hand that to `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict` first.

   When the gate fails, name the missing piece and stop - a plan cannot fix an unstaffed partnership.

3. Draft the joint value proposition for this initiative: the customer-facing claim, who it serves, and why it takes both companies. Apply the "neither alone" test - if either company could credibly ship the initiative solo, it is a solo campaign wearing a partner logo; reshape or kill it.
4. Establish mutual value and audience overlap:
   - State each side's objective separately, with a number and a date.
   - Consume verified overlap output from the ecosystem sibling when it exists; otherwise approximate from customer evidence, never from assumption.
   - Define the target segment and its explicit exclusions - existing customers of both sides, or of just one?
5. Choose the campaign shape - the biggest fork. Read [references/campaign-formats-and-sequencing.md](references/campaign-formats-and-sequencing.md) first: it ranks the B2B and B2C format menus by efficiency - value bought per unit of two-company coordination - and the default is the joint webinar in B2B, the creator collaboration in B2C. Shortlist 2-3 formats from the top of that order, after deleting the ones the Interview answers rule out and re-ranking against what you know about this pair of companies. Present them with effort, value, and compliance trade-offs and an explicit recommendation. Say out loud which answer moved which format:
   - A hard results date deletes the quarter-long formats.
   - A compounding-asset mandate promotes the research report and the better-together page.
   - A low effort ceiling collapses the menu to the one-hour formats.
6. Split work, assets, and budget:
   - Allocate creation by each side's strength.
   - Record each side's spend as its own line.
   - Record market-development or co-op fund terms verbatim - eligible activities, proof-of-execution required, claim deadline.

   Unclaimed funds are a top failure mode.

7. Sequence the launch through six phases: agree terms, build assets, pre-launch, simultaneous launch on one agreed date, follow-up, debrief. Budget roughly double a single-company timeline - the surplus is the other organization's approval and feedback cycles, and it is the norm, not a contingency. Anchor backwards from any fixed date. Same reference.
8. Design the lead-sharing and attribution agreement: the consent _decision_ at the point of collection, plus the mechanics that follow from it.
   - Legal basis.
   - Both companies named.
   - Consent kept separable rather than bundled.
   - Withdrawal route.
   - Who owns the form - the control point (see the data-protection section below).
   - Transfer mechanism and timing.
   - A jointly agreed qualified-lead definition.
   - Deduplication rule.
   - Per-party tracking links.
   - The sourced-vs-influenced rule for this initiative.

   Decide those parameters here and record them; drafting the literal form copy is per-asset execution and hands downstream with the rest of the asset work. If a program-wide attribution policy exists from the co-selling sibling, consume it as a constraint - never redesign it here. See [references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md](references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md).

9. Assemble the plan (next section) and present it section by section, validating each with the user before drafting the next. Revise on pushback. Require explicit approval of the whole document before finalizing - and its real-world counterpart: both companies' owners sign it before any asset work starts.
10. Score the approved draft against the pass checklist. State which checks fail and iterate until every one passes.
11. If your harness has persistent memory, memorize the approved plan's key decisions - partner, initiative, campaign shape, launch date, lead-sharing rule, per-side goals - so later runs (mid-flight check-ins, the debrief, the next initiative with this partner) start from them.
12. Hand off what this skill does not do - choosing partners, deal-registration policy, program tiers, relationship economics, ongoing scorecards, enablement curricula - to the siblings in Reference.

## The Joint GTM Plan

Deliver every engagement as this artifact - one page both companies can sign:

```
JOINT GTM PLAN - <company> x <partner>: <initiative>, <date>
Objectives      : each side's goal separately, each with a number and a date
Joint value prop: the customer-facing claim + why it takes both companies
Audience        : target segment, overlap evidence, explicit exclusions
Campaign shape  : format chosen, where it sat in the efficiency order, what moved it there,
                  alternatives rejected and why
Assets & split  : who creates and who approves each asset; existing assets reused
Budget & funding: each side's spend as its own line; MDF/co-op terms verbatim
Sequencing      : phase dates, the one agreed launch date, approval buffer shown
Leads & tracking: consent basis + parameters, transfer mechanism + timing, qualified-lead
                  definition, dedup rule, per-party links, sourced/influenced rule
Owners          : named owner + executive sponsor on each side - four names
Measurement     : KPIs per side, reporting cadence, scheduled debrief date
```

Every line carries a reason - "launch on the 14th because the partner's conference opens the 15th" is reviewable; a bare date is not.

**Pass checklist** - the plan is not done until every check passes; state the failing checks and the gap each time:

- Each side's success criterion is stated separately, with a number. A single merged goal fails.
- The joint value proposition passes the "neither alone" test.
- Four named people: an owner and an executive sponsor on each side. A team name is not an owner.
- One launch date, agreed by both sides, with the approval buffer visible in the phase dates.
- The leads line names the consent basis and its parameters at collection, the transfer mechanism, and the hand-off timing - parameters, not drafted form copy.
- Every tracked link attributes to a specific party; no shared untagged link exists.
- Any MDF/co-op money carries its proof-of-execution requirement and claim deadline.
- The debrief is a scheduled date, set before launch - not "afterwards".
- Every benchmark quoted anywhere in the plan carries a provenance flag.

## Established practice vs vendor vocabulary vs no standard

Grade what you cite honestly - this field mixes real practice with vendor marketing:

- **Established, safe to present prescriptively:**
  - Co-marketing itself (academic lineage to Koichi Shimizu, 1981).
  - The signed co-marketing agreement, covering topic, timeline, per-side goals, asset ownership, lead-sharing, promotion, and reporting.
  - MDF/co-op funding with proof-of-performance (verification mechanics dating to 1930s co-op advertising).
  - Separate tracking links per party.
  - Consent language at the form level.
  - Executive sponsorship.
  - The post-campaign debrief.

  General frameworks borrowed in - RACI for ownership, OKRs for objectives, phase-gate for the approval gate - are real but not partner-marketing inventions; use them lightly, never force-fit.

- **Vendor-coined vocabulary:** "nearbound" and "ecosystem-led growth" originate with one vendor (Crossbeam) and its acquired media brands; account mapping as a named discipline was popularized by the same vendor. Usable as shared vocabulary, never as doctrine.

- **No standard exists:**
  - There is no canonical joint business plan or joint GTM plan template - the skeleton above is assembled practice, so validate it section by section rather than treating it as an industry form.
  - Launch-tier criteria (Tier 1/2/3), joint business review agendas, MDF thresholds, and cross-company qualified-lead definitions are all program-specific - make the user decide them explicitly.
  - The circulating "60-70% of alliances fail" figure is untraceable folklore. Never quote a single alliance failure rate as settled fact: published estimates span 20-80% depending on how failure is defined, so present the spread with its provenance - `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@alliance-prioritization` owns this number's treatment.

## B2B and B2C

The planning discipline is identical on both sides:

- Goals stated separately per side.
- A signed agreement before asset work.
- Brand-fit screening (association itself is the risk).
- One agreed launch date.
- Named owners.
- A debrief.

What genuinely changes:

| Dimension                                                                         | B2B (vendor-to-vendor co-marketing)                                              | B2C (co-branding, brand and creator collabs)                                                |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Centre of gravity                                                                 | Pipeline and lead mechanics                                                      | The product or content artifact itself, and brand-fit reputational risk                     |
| Typical deliverable (each side's own efficiency order is in the format reference) | Joint webinars, better-together pages, co-authored reports, integration launches | Creator collaborations, brand content collabs, co-branded products                          |
| Success framing                                                                   | Pipeline-native: leads, sourced/influenced revenue                               | Brand-equity and recall; attribution structurally harder                                    |
| Regulation                                                                        | No consumer disclosure regime; risk lives in the private contract                | Consumer-protection disclosure enforcement (FTC-style) applies to sponsored creator content |
| Exclusivity                                                                       | Many parallel non-exclusive partnerships are the norm                            | Category exclusivity is an explicit, negotiated contract tier                               |
| Approvals                                                                         | Front-loaded through both marketing/legal chains, pre-launch                     | Brand veto can extend past production, into published content                               |

### Lead sharing and data protection

Sharing captured leads between two companies is regulated processing of personal data in most jurisdictions - the EU's regime (GDPR) is the strictest template, but the logic travels. Every transfer needs a legal basis, and a lead collected for one stated purpose cannot silently serve another company's follow-up.

The control point is the consent wording at the moment of collection. The form must:

- Name both companies.
- State the purpose.
- Keep each company's consent separable rather than bundled.
- Make withdrawal easy.

When both companies jointly decide what data is collected and why - a co-hosted webinar is the classic case - many regimes treat them as joint controllers: the responsibility split must be documented and disclosed, and a lead can exercise rights against either company regardless of the internal split.

Full mechanics and the agreement contents: [references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md](references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md).

## KPIs

Measure this initiative only - the partner's ongoing scorecard belongs to `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-performance`.

- Track **partner-sourced and partner-influenced separately** for this initiative; collapsing them hides whether the motion generated demand or decorated it.
- Score each side against its own separately stated goal - a campaign can succeed for one company and fail for the other, and the plan must be able to say so.
- Core set: leads per party (via per-party links), qualified-lead conversion against the jointly agreed definition, pipeline and revenue attributed, audience growth per side, asset engagement. Qualitative debrief: was collaboration smooth, did the content need both companies, would either side repeat.
- Compute return as incremental profit attributable to the initiative divided by each side's own spend - each side computes its own; a blended number hides asymmetric outcomes.
- Published benchmark numbers in partner marketing are overwhelmingly vendor-self-reported (platforms selling partnership software, surveying their own customers). Quote any such number only with that flag attached; prefer the user's own historical campaign data as the baseline.

## Failure modes

| Symptom                                              | Fix                                                                                                 |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Each side quietly optimizing for a different outcome | Restate both goals separately in the plan; gate approval on both sides accepting both               |
| Launch date slips repeatedly                         | Double-the-solo-timeline buffer; anchor backwards from a fixed external date; escalate via sponsors |
| Logo-swap campaign nobody engages with               | Apply the "neither alone" test; reshape around a real joint capability or kill the initiative       |
| Leads never transferred, or disputed after the fact  | Transfer mechanism, timing, and consent parameters written into the signed plan before launch       |
| MDF or co-op money expires unclaimed                 | Record eligible activities, proof-of-execution, and claim deadline as a budget line with an owner   |
| Partner goes quiet mid-initiative                    | Executive-sponsor escalation path exercised early; shrink scope rather than limp to the date        |
| Nobody can say whether it worked                     | Per-party links from day one, sourced/influenced split, debrief date scheduled pre-launch           |
| Partner's misstep splashes onto your brand           | Brand-fit screen at the readiness gate; mutual approval rights on every co-branded asset            |

## Invocation Examples

- "Plan the joint GTM motion for our integration launch with a named data-platform partner - both sides have budget, launch is tied to their user conference."
- "We ran a joint webinar with a partner and got nothing. Plan the next initiative differently, and tell me what the debrief should have asked."
- "Draft the lead-sharing and attribution agreement for a co-marketing campaign covering EU and US audiences."

## Reference

- [references/campaign-formats-and-sequencing.md](references/campaign-formats-and-sequencing.md) - the B2B and B2C format menus ranked by efficiency (value per unit of two-company coordination), with the effort, value and compliance axes split out, the six-phase sequencing skeleton, fixed-date anchoring, MDF/co-op mechanics.
- [references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md](references/lead-sharing-and-attribution.md) - the lead-sharing agreement contents, data-protection mechanics (legal basis, separable consent, joint controllers), tracking-link conventions, qualified-lead alignment, benchmark provenance flags.
- [references/plan-examples.md](references/plan-examples.md) - one worked joint GTM plan and one annotated negative example (the logo-swap plan).

Sibling skills (same collection):

- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@alliance-prioritization` - upstream: choosing which partner to invest in. This skill starts after that decision.
- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@co-selling-strategy` - the program-wide deal registration and attribution policy this plan operates under as a constraint.
- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-ecosystem` - the ecosystem map and account-overlap landscape this plan consumes as targeting input.
- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-performance` - ongoing partner scorecards and business-review cadence beyond this initiative's own measurement.
- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-channel-conflict` - a live dispute between direct and partner sellers over an account; resolve it before planning a joint motion.
- `mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@partner-marketplace-strategy` - marketplace listing strategy, if the initiative includes a marketplace motion.