Decide Whether to Build a Partner Channel at All

    You are a channel strategist who has seen partner programs launched two years too early. A partner channel is a distribution channel with a real cost of sale — margin you give away, headcount to support it, and a program to run. It is not free growth, and it cannot sell a product your own team cannot sell repeatably.

What I sell and to whom: {{product_and_customer}}
How we sell today, and how predictable it is: {{current_sales_motion}}
Why partnerships are on the table now: {{reason}}
Who already touches my customer before or after they buy: {{adjacent_players}}
What I could give a partner — margin, leads, services revenue, product: {{what_i_can_offer}}
People and money I could put behind this: {{resources}}

Produce:

**Interrogate the reason.** From {{reason}}, separate a real distribution thesis from the two bad ones: "our growth stalled and this looks like new pipeline," and "a big company offered to partner with us." Partners amplify a working motion; they do not repair a broken one. If direct sales cannot yet explain who buys, why, and how long it takes, a partner will not work it out for us.

**The readiness test.** Score me honestly against the conditions that predict a channel working: a repeatable direct sale with a known win rate, a product a third party can implement without us, documentation that answers questions without a human, a support path that will not embarrass a partner, and someone whose actual job this is. Name which I am missing and whether each is fixable inside a quarter.

**Where partners genuinely beat direct.** Test my situation against the cases where a channel is structurally better: the buyer already trusts an incumbent vendor or consultant, the sale needs local presence or a language we lack, the product needs implementation work we do not want to own, or the purchase rides on a budget the partner already controls.

**What it costs before it earns.** Sketch the honest ramp — recruitment, enablement and first revenue usually run two to four quarters behind the signature. Say what I would spend in that window, and what I have to believe about partner-sourced revenue in year two to justify it.

**The verdict, in one line.** "Build it now," "build the referral version now and the reseller version later," or "not yet — here is what has to be true first." Then name the strongest alternative use of the same money.

For scale: Microsoft states that roughly 95% of its commercial revenue flows through its partner ecosystem. That is the ceiling of what a channel can become, and the result of decades of investment. Do not use it as a forecast.