Donal Treacy · Working documents · Follow up, 22 July

How I adapt my model to cater for 120 partners without a PRM tool

You asked how the model supports 100 to 150 partners, and reminded me a PRM will not be evaluated, signed off and implemented for the foreseeable future. I answered verbally on the day. Here is the fuller version, working to a target of 120.

1. The PDM

Where the hours goCost per quarter
The PDM's partner facing budget~340 hours
A partner in the 90 day cohort~20 hours
A top account, actively managed~15 hours
A partner in quarterly rhythm~7 hours

2. Current capacity

~25 relationships worked at any 1 time current headcount 0 40
Headcount scales with managed relationships, not logos. Cohorts cycle every 90 days, so ~25 at a time still puts 40 to 60 partners through the programme per year.

3. High touch versus low touch

~95

Light touch

Portal, content, community, monthly group sessions. Run by software at near zero cost per partner.

a live deal earns the move up
~25

High touch

The managed 90 days, then quarterly rhythm. Earned with real pipeline, never with a form.

The traditional way needs 6 to 8 PDMs before anything is proven. This way needs the team we have, plus 1 hire at a named trigger: the rhythm book saturating near 30, with pipeline numbers attached to the ask.

4. Partner sources

Legacy contacts
~150 from previous iterations
Still reachable
~110 after bounces
Live replies
~80 responded to you
Likely to engage
~40 plus, on your read
Your 80 repliers
The census
Developer community
Distributor referrals
Every replier gets a yes in month 1: light touch opens to all of them, and the questionnaire finds the ones with live customer conversations. 4 sources before any cold outreach. 120 is conservative.

5. Tiering benefits

BenefitLight touchHigh touch
Portal, documentation, training content
Community and monthly group sessions
Sandbox and eval access
Deal registration, same quality bar
The managed 90 days, named people
Assigned ADI engineer on the live deal
Quarterly business reviews
Badge, listing, co marketing
Launch: both levels free Results on the board A fee attaches to named tiers, triggered by evidence
Charging starts when the value exists to charge for. The founding cohort pays in pipeline and case studies.

6. Timeline, from October

OctoberThe 80 get their yes. Founding 15 picked for live pipeline.~80 in system
To GSCFounding cohort through the 90 days. First registrations real.~90
Q1Cohort 2, drawn from light touch signals and the census.~100
Q2Cohort 3. Inbound now qualifying itself.~110
Q360 plus through or in the managed programme.120+
Run on tools we already have: Dynamics for the registrations, entered by us. Excel for the tracker. Planner boards for the cohort calendar. Teams and SharePoint for the rest. When a PRM eventually lands, it inherits a working process and a year of clean data.

7. Potential risks

A lot of manual work
  • Registrations entered by us: minutes per deal at pilot volume
  • Cohort size capped at 15 to 20, so the load cannot creep
  • 1 tracker, 1 owner, 12 fields, cleaned weekly
  • Registrations live in Dynamics, so the tracker is never the only copy
Less of a hand on the wheel at light touch
  • ~95 partners run on software, so weak registrations could slip in
  • Every registration, from any level, gets the same 48 hour human review
  • Inactive accounts archived yearly, so the list stays real

The partner's first real deal is the onboarding.

Broadly, the model does not change. Still the same 90 days, the same gates and the same decision making. Scale just changes the gearing.

This is one way to build it. We pivot as needed.