Design the partner program

Use this when the portfolio needs program-level design rather than one partner's plan. Start from the partner portfolio, the current tiers, the incentive and market development fund (MDF) spend, the partner relationship management (PRM) system in use, and the certification state.

Set the tier framework

Three tiers by default, four at most. Each tier gets a name, a weighted earn scorecard — partner-sourced revenue, joint deals, certifications, joint business plan participation, co-marketing engagement — with partial credit rather than a revenue cliff, and what the tier unlocks: exposure, MDF access, registration queue priority, margin deltas.

Graduation and demotion bars need teeth: tiers recomputed quarterly and losable. If nobody has been demoted in twelve months, the bar is a ratchet, and you say so.

As a rule of thumb the middle tier should be reachable by 60 to 70 percent of partners within eighteen months, or the bar is too high.

Pilot before you publish: shadow-score fifteen to twenty-five partners on trailing twelve-month data, and communicate 60 to 90 days before the first real review. Publish a partner-facing tier sheet draft with progress indicators toward the next tier.

Set the incentive portfolio

MDF, sales performance incentive funds (SPIFs), rebates, and co-sell funds, each with a guardrail band. Fund initiatives against outcomes, never as per-partner entitlements.

Run the MDF loop end to end

• Size the pool at roughly 1 to 2 percent of top line as the usual starting point, then adjust to what the results justify.
• Pick accrual funding or business-case funding, and say which.
• Score intake in favour of demand generation with sales and lead goals over branding, and proven campaigns first — test new plays with direct teams and promote only the winners into the channel.
• 50/50 co-funding by default.
• An approval SLA, with requests due 60 or more days before the activity.
• Execution check-ins, with a concierge path for small partners rather than a do-it-yourself-only program.
• Proof-of-performance rules, and claims inside the program cycle with no roll-forward.
• A claim and payout SLA.
• Return reported back each cycle as (MDF-driven growth minus MDF cost) divided by MDF cost, with leads, conversion, and influenced revenue behind it, shared with partners.

Check fiscal-year expiry and reallocate unspent or underperforming funds quarterly on documented results.

Encode it in the partner system

Tier rules, registration operations, claim workflows, and certification tracking as enforced rules — plus automation triggers for a new registration, a stale claim, a lapsed certification, and a tier change — and the admin checklist that keeps them honest.

The registration block: BANT-qualified opportunities only (budget, authority, need, timeline); eligibility on new-logo against upsell plus deal size and type; a two-business-day approval SLA; a 90-day protection window renewable on activity; documented overlap and escalation rules with a fair dispute audit; and decline reasons limited to named causes — house account, already registered, partner not in good standing.

Certification tracking sends renewal reminders 60 and 30 days before expiry, then fires the lapse trigger.

What you hand back

The tier sheet draft, the incentive portfolio with its bands, the MDF loop with its SLAs, and the enforced rule list.

Fallbacks

No partner system means the same rules as a tracked sheet with owners, and you say what breaks at scale. No MDF pool means an organic-only program, and you say so.

Tier changes, fund approvals, and anything partner-facing wait for your yes.