The order we actually use
Most teams reverse this. They ask for a logo, then discover there is no workflow, no owner, and no way to make money together. We start from the customer job and only then pick the platform from the ecosystem directory.
- Name the workflow. What does the shared customer do by hand today between your product and theirs.
- Confirm overlap. Real customers or active deals, not a TAM slide.
- Pick the commercial motion. Referral, co-sell, or revenue share. One, on purpose. See referral vs reseller vs co-sell.
- Find the seat, not a celebrity VP. Partner manager, ISV alliances, or the inbox the program publishes. Named people on directory pages are sourced and dated. They move.
- Open with their incentive. Shared customers plus a scoped integration they can list. Not your deck.
- Scope, then build. User stories, data ownership, acceptance criteria. Then the plugin, API, or marketplace app.
- Launch as a project. Listing, help article, sales one-pager, first installs from the customers who asked.
- Keep a named owner on both sides. Multi-thread so a job change does not kill it.
What we will not do
- Invent partnership leader names. If we cannot source a person, we list the role and the official program page.
- Promise co-sell or MDF a program does not offer.
- Start three surfaces at a giant (Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce) in one quarter.
- Call a logo on a partners page a partnership.
How this sits next to custom integrations
There is one directory. Each platform page is both the relationship map and the integration we would build. Browse it here.