Partnerships architect skill

partnerships-architect

Purpose

Help Head of Partnerships, Head of BD, and Founder-CEOs answer four questions when a prospective partner shows up:

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

The skill emits a tier verdict + GTM plan + revshare band with explicit kill criteria. It does not sign the deal. The human, after running this skill, decides.

When to use

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

Do not use for:

• Technical demos and POCs → business-growth/sales-engineer
• Cost-to-serve and ROI math on existing channel → sibling channel-economics
• Whole-company revenue strategy → c-level-advisor/cro-advisor
• Acquiring a company instead of partnering → c-level-advisor/ma-playbook
• Per-deal discount approval inside a signed partner contract → deal-desk

Workflow

Step 1 — Intake (≈ 20 min)

Fill assets/partnership_intake_template.md. Capture: partner_name, partner_type, evidence of independent demand (named accounts they've sourced, end-customer relationships, their sales team size), strategic value (geo / product / brand / channel economics), commitments they've offered (joint marketing spend, dedicated headcount, certification, sales targets).

If the intake template can't be honestly filled out, the prospective partner has not demonstrated enough substance to evaluate. Stop. Go back to them.

Step 2 — Tier classify

Run scripts/partner_tier_classifier.py --input intake.json --profile saas --output markdown. Output ranks the partner into 1 of 5 tiers — REFERRAL / RESELLER / OEM / SI-CONSULTING / STRATEGIC — with deterministic floors. STRATEGIC requires named_accounts ≥ 5 AND multi-year commit AND dedicated resources. Skill emits rationale + kill criteria.

Step 3 — Joint GTM plan

Run scripts/joint_gtm_planner.py --input gtm.json --profile saas --output markdown. Output: 90-day plan with pre-launch milestones (training, certification, materials), launch motion (target accounts, sales play, MDF allocation), mid-quarter checkpoint, and 90-day success criteria. Validates: cannot plan channel-led GTM for REFERRAL tier; cannot plan white-label for non-OEM tier.

Step 4 — Revshare model

Run scripts/revshare_modeler.py --input revshare.json --output markdown. Computes margin per deal direct vs. via partner, recommended revshare % band based on partner contribution depth (sourced > influenced > delivered), break-even partner ROI, and long-term economics — at projected scale, does partner economics beat direct?

Step 5 — Decide

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

Scripts

• scripts/partner_tier_classifier.py — 5-tier classifier with deterministic floors per tier
• scripts/joint_gtm_planner.py — 90-day joint GTM plan generator with tier-validated motion
• scripts/revshare_modeler.py — revshare band + break-even ROI + long-term economics

All scripts: stdlib only. --help and --sample work on all three.

Quick example

# Emits a 5-tier partner classification with deterministic floors per tier for the built-in sample partner
cd commercial/skills/partnerships-architect && python3 scripts/partner_tier_classifier.py --sample

References

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

Assumptions

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

Anti-patterns

• "Partner = anyone who asked." A partner with no independent demand is a discount hunter. Run the tier classifier — REFERRAL tier exists precisely to absorb these without giving away reseller margin.
• Granting OEM / white-label terms without margin sufficient to fund support. OEM means you support a customer you don't own. If the revshare doesn't fund Tier-2 support cost, the OEM deal is a losing trade.
• Paying sourced-tier revshare on influenced-only deals. Influenced ≠ sourced. The deal was going to close anyway. Pay the influenced rate.
• No kill criteria for under-performing partner. "Strategic alliances" without sunset clauses become permanent obligations after the executive sponsor leaves.
• Channel conflict ignored until reps quit. When your direct rep and your partner both show up at the same account, you lose either the rep or the partner. Decide the rules of engagement before, not after.
• Exclusive territory granted to a weak partner. This locks out the strong partner who would have actually sourced the deals.
• MDF without ROI accountability. Market Development Funds without named pipeline, reported ROI, and a quarterly true-up are subsidy, not investment.
• No offboarding plan when partnership ends. Customer continuity, data hand-back, IP cleanup, and brand take-down must be pre-negotiated. They're impossible to negotiate after the relationship has soured.

Distinct from

• business-growth/sales-engineer — technical sale: demos, POCs, integration scoping. Operates after the partnership decision is made and a deal is in flight.
• channel-economics (sibling) — cost-to-serve and ROI math on an existing channel. Quantifies whether a signed partner is profitable. partnerships-architect decides whether to sign in the first place and at what tier.
• c-level-advisor/cro-advisor — strategic CRO judgment (when to hire a VP Channel, whole-company revenue mix decisions). partnerships-architect is per-partnership.
• c-level-advisor/ma-playbook — when the answer is "acquire them" not "partner with them." Trigger: the partner has independent moat you cannot replicate, or the partnership requires equity to align incentives. Re-route to ma-playbook.
• deal-desk — per-deal discount approval on signed partner contracts.

Forcing-question library (Matt Pocock grill discipline)

Walked one at a time by /cs:grill-commercial or the orchestrator. Recommended answer + canon citation per question. Never bundled. Lock 1-3 before opening 4-6.

1. "Name 5 end customers this partner has already sold to in the last 12 months — at companies you would target yourself." Recommended: if they cannot, they have no independent demand. Sign at REFERRAL tier only, if at all. Reseller/OEM/Strategic floors require demonstrated end-customer relationships. Canon: Joe Hessling — partner-program failure analyses identify "no independent demand" as the #1 root cause of dead partner tiers.

2. "Is this partner asking for preferential commercial terms, or asking how to bring you customers?" Recommended: discount hunters lead with terms; real partners lead with accounts. Listen to the first 30 minutes of the first meeting. Canon: Forrester channel research — 60%+ of "partner inquiries" at early-stage SaaS are discount hunting, not channel investment.

3. "What's the joint value proposition in one sentence, and who is the named end-customer it serves?" Recommended: if there is no joint value prop distinct from either party's solo offering, there is no partnership — there is co-marketing at best. Canon: Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm) — whole-product partnerships exist when neither party alone delivers the customer outcome.

4. "At what % discount / revshare does this partnership beat the direct-sale economics, and at what scale?" Recommended: model break-even pipeline volume. If partner-sourced deals must exceed 30% of channel volume to beat direct, and partner can plausibly deliver 5%, you have built a losing program. Canon: Pradeep Chintagunta (Chicago Booth) on channel economics — channel partnerships without volume floor break even in theory and lose money in practice.

5. "What are the named kill criteria for unwinding this partnership, and are they in the contract?" Recommended: minimum pipeline floor by quarter, minimum certified resources, minimum joint deals closed, 90-day cure period. Unwinding without pre-agreed criteria becomes a 2-year legal battle. Canon: IBM channel-conflict case studies (1990s post-divestiture) — undocumented kill criteria converted bad partners into permanent obligations.

6. "If this partner sells to one of YOUR direct accounts, who wins — your rep or them?" Recommended: Rules of Engagement in writing, signed before kickoff. Territory by named account, by segment, or by geo. Conflict resolution at named human, not committee. Canon: Jay McBain (Canalys) — channel conflict is the #1 partner program killer; written ROE published before partner signs prevents 80% of disputes.

7. "Is this a partnership, or should this be an acquisition?" Recommended: if the partner has independent moat you cannot replicate AND the partnership requires multi-year exclusivity AND the partnership requires equity-like alignment, you're describing an acquisition. Re-route to ma-playbook. Canon: HP channel post-mortems (Indigo, EDS partial integrations) — partnerships structured as acquisitions-without-equity destroy more value than either pure path.

Walk depth-first. Lock 1-3 (is this a real partner?) before opening 4-7 (is the structure right?). After all 7 are answered, invoke partner_tier_classifier.py → joint_gtm_planner.py → revshare_modeler.py in sequence.