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Partner pipeline creation
Partner pipeline is easy to generate and hard to keep. Referrals arrive with no buyer context, co-sell deals stall between two sellers who each assume the other owns the next step, and the QBR becomes a recap rather than a source of new opportunities.
The material here is about pipeline hygiene: what qualifies a partner-referred deal, what a co-sell handoff must contain before sales accepts it, and how to structure a partner business review so it ends with named accounts and dates rather than a relationship update.
Written by Chris Lavoie, founder of Partnership Mastermind.
Quick answers
- How do you qualify a partner-referred deal?
- Require the same evidence you would demand of an inbound lead — a named buyer, a stated problem, a timeline, and a next step already scheduled — plus one partner-specific field: what the partner is doing in the deal from here. Referrals without that last field are introductions, not pipeline.
- What makes a partner QBR produce pipeline?
- Walking out with named target accounts, an owner on each side, and a date. A QBR that reviews last quarter without committing next quarter's accounts is reporting, and it will not survive a budget review.
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