tools

scorecard · no email needed

is your partner programme easy to sell?

Twenty statements on how your programme feels from the partner's side: quotes, deal registration, money, support, campaigns and the relationship. Score each one 0, 1 or 2. Nothing is sent anywhere.

ease of doing business

01A partner can find price, margin and how to register a deal on one page in under five minutes.

02We measure how long partners wait for a quote, and we know the number.

03Partners find any document in our portal without asking their channel manager.

04Partners sign one standard agreement per partner type, checked against the law in their country.

05Programme requirements (certifications, training, reporting) are sized to the partner and the local market.

deal registration and conflict

06Deal registration rules fit on one page, including the protection period and what counts as a registered deal.

07Partners get a registration decision within one working day.

08Conflicts with our direct team or between partners follow a written process, with a named person who decides.

09A partner who finds a deal is protected more than one who joins late, and renewals stay with the partner serving the customer.

economics

10A partner can see what it earns on a typical deal, counting its services and renewals, not only the licence margin.

11We have few incentives and rebates, and a partner can explain its own.

12Discount exceptions are rare, logged, and checked against the price the customer actually paid.

13We leave room for partner services and don't sell the same services ourselves in competition with partners.

enablement and technical support

14Partner engineers get technical support from us that is at least as good as what they get from their distributor.

15Training covers customer use cases and how to run a POC, next to product features.

16Partners hear about roadmap and pricing changes before their customers do.

marketing and demand

17Partners get campaigns in the local language that they can send without editing.

18Marketing funds are tied to pipeline, and we report partner-sourced pipeline back to each partner.

relationship

19Each producing partner has a named channel manager who has been in the role for at least a year.

20At least twice a year we ask partners for feedback, including weak and former partners, and tell them what we changed.

how to use it.

  1. Score it yourself, honestly. A 2 means your partners would say the same, not that the rule exists on paper.
  2. Send the same 20 statements to five to ten partners, including weak ones and one you lost. Ask them to score you.
  3. Compare. Every statement where you gave yourself a 2 and partners gave 0 or 1 is a blind spot. Fix those first.

The gap between your score and theirs is more useful than either number. The verdict bands (below 20, 20 to 31, 32 and above) are my starting thresholds, not a benchmark. Move them once you have scored a few programmes.

why these six sections

Partners rarely leave a programme over one big thing. They drift away from slow quotes, rejected registrations, margins they can't explain to their own boss and a channel manager who changed twice this year. The sections follow that path, from the first quote to the yearly review.