Technical fit
Does the partner have the skills to deploy, integrate, and operate the product? Certification depth, prior implementation history, in-house engineering capacity — these decide whether the partner can fulfill what they sell.
06.1 · Partner Recruitment
Who should become a partner, and why.
The most common recruitment failure in cyber is signing too many partners with too little buyer overlap and calling it ecosystem. The fix is treating partner recruitment with the same discipline as buyer ICP — specify the profile, recruit against it, refuse the off-profile signups.
The six dimensions of Partner ICP
A Partner ICP works the same way a buyer ICP does. It specifies who fits, so the program can refuse who doesn't.
Services fit
Does the partner have a services line that attaches profitably to the product? Service revenue per software dollar is the partner's economic anchor; if there's no attach, the partner has no reason to lead with you.
Customer-base overlap
Does the partner sell to the same buyers? Sharing an ICP is the difference between channel reach and ecosystem theatre. Partners outside your buyer profile produce logos, not pipeline.
Regional fit
Does the partner cover the geographies you want to enter? Regional density matters more than logo count — one strong regional partner outperforms ten thin national ones every time.
Category adjacency
Does the partner already carry adjacent or complementary products? Adjacent categories create natural bundling motions; orthogonal categories force the partner to learn a new motion from scratch.
Profitability fit
Will the unit economics work for the partner at scale? Front-end margin + back-end rebate + services attach + renewal participation has to clear the partner's opportunity cost. If it doesn't, the partner will sell something else.
The recruitment failure mode
Cyber channel programs default to recruitment volume. Logos look like progress. Quarterly partner-count metrics fund themselves. Eighteen months later the partner directory has 400 entries and 8% of them have closed a deal.
The diagnosis is always the same: the program signed any partner who asked, without a screen for buyer overlap. The cure is the Partner ICP and the discipline to use it — including the discipline to say no to enthusiastic signups who don't match the profile.
The test isn't how many partners did we sign? — it's what percentage of recruited partners produced measurable activity in 90 days? Anything below 30% means the recruitment funnel is broken.