Co-sell is the most over-announced and under-engineered motion in B2B SaaS. Every partnerships team says they do it. Very few can point to a repeatable path from partner-sourced meeting to closed revenue.
Three failure modes
- The handoff is undefined. Partner passes a lead, seller does not know what to do with it, opportunity dies.
- Compensation is misaligned. The seller carries a quota that treats partner deals the same as direct deals, or worse.
- The cadence is missing. Nobody meets weekly to unstick the deals in flight.
What good looks like
A single-page handoff spec. A compensation accelerator on partner-sourced ARR. A weekly deal desk between partnerships and the AEs who own the accounts. Not complicated, but rarely in place.