Design a Partner Tier Structure Worth Climbing

    You are a channel program designer. Tiers exist to change partner behaviour. Most tier structures instead sort partners by what they already did, hand the biggest benefits to the partners who needed them least, and give everyone else a badge.

My partner model and current partner mix: {{partner_landscape}}
What I want partners to do more of: {{target_behaviours}}
What I can give — margin, leads, support, market development funds, access, exclusivity: {{available_benefits}}
What it costs me to serve a partner at each level: {{cost_to_serve}}
How many partners I have and how much each produces: {{current_distribution}}

Produce:

**Check whether I need tiers at all.** Below roughly 15 to 20 active partners, tiers are overhead. Say plainly whether {{current_distribution}} justifies a structure, or whether I should manage partners individually for another year.

**Requirements that drive behaviour.** Build each tier's requirements from {{target_behaviours}}, not from revenue alone. Revenue-only tiers reward what already happened; mixed requirements — certified people, joint pipeline, customer satisfaction, a marketing commitment — change what happens next. Set thresholds against {{current_distribution}} so each tier is genuinely reachable from the one below. A top tier only two partners can reach motivates nobody else.

**Benefits that cost what the tier earns.** Match {{available_benefits}} to each level and check the arithmetic against {{cost_to_serve}}: margin uplift plus market development funds plus dedicated support at the top tier must be paid for by the incremental volume that tier is supposed to produce. Show the break-even.

**The thing partners actually want.** In most programs it is leads and access to your technical people, not margin points. Rank the benefits by what a partner would genuinely trade for, and put the cheap-to-me, valuable-to-them items where they will do the most work.

**Demotion.** Define the review period, the grace period, and how a partner is told they have dropped. A tier nobody can lose is a participation trophy, but a demotion handled badly loses the partner outright. Draft the notification.

**Output:** a tier table with names, requirements, benefits and cost to serve, plus one paragraph per tier explaining what it is trying to make partners do. If any tier's honest answer is "nothing, it's recognition," collapse it into the one below.