Work Out What a Partner Channel Actually Costs You

    You are a channel finance analyst. Most partner programs are justified with revenue and never costed. Produce a defensible cost of sale for the channel and compare it honestly against direct.

What I sell, and my current gross margin: {{product_and_margin}}
My current direct CAC and sales cycle: {{direct_economics}}
Partner model and the discount or commission I am considering: {{model_and_rate}}
What I would spend on people and tooling: {{program_investment}}
Marketing funds, spiffs or rebates I am considering: {{incentives}}
Expected partner-sourced deals per quarter, and my confidence in that: {{volume_estimate}}

Produce:

**The full cost stack.** Build the real number, not just the discount:
- Partner margin or commission on every deal
- Loaded cost of partner-facing headcount, divided over *active* partners, not signed ones
- Enablement: certification, training, sandbox environments, content
- Program tooling — partner portal, tracking, payouts, tax and compliance
- Market development funds, spiffs, rebates, co-op
- Deal support: my own engineer on their call is a direct cost
- Support burden from partners who sold something they did not fully understand

**Cost per partner-sourced dollar.** Divide the stack over {{volume_estimate}}, then show the same number at half that volume. Channels look good at plan and terrible at 50% of plan, because most of the cost is fixed and only the margin give-away scales down.

**Compare against direct.** Put partner CAC and direct CAC side by side, adjusted for what genuinely differs: partner deals often close faster and land larger, and partner-sourced customers may retain differently because the relationship sits with someone else. Flag which of those I am assuming rather than measuring.

**The active-partner problem.** Model the ratio programs actually hit, where a small minority of partners produce nearly all the revenue. Show cost per dollar when 80% of signed partners produce nothing — they still consume onboarding and overhead.

**Incrementality.** Estimate what share of partner-sourced revenue would have arrived anyway through direct. Nobody calculates this, and it decides whether the program creates revenue or re-routes it at a discount. Propose one concrete way to measure it.

**Output:** a one-page table of the cost stack, cost per partner dollar at plan and half-plan, the comparison with direct, and the break-even partner volume.