partnership-bd_skill

Overview

This skill helps you build strategic partnerships and close business development deals with practical frameworks and negotiation tactics. It guides you from opportunity assessment through pitch design, negotiation, and scaling partner programs. Use it to prepare for talks with platforms, channel partners, or corporate sponsors and to avoid common BD pitfalls.

How this skill works

I first surface the partner's goals, your ideal outcome, and whether the market is network-dependent or merit-driven. I help you craft a mutual-benefit pitch, identify internal sponsors, and test hypotheses with manual operations before engineering work. I also provide negotiation timing, leverage strategies, and playbooks for turning single deals into scalable partner platforms.

When to use it

• Pursuing integration or distribution with a platform (Google, Meta, AWS, etc.)
• Negotiating terms with channel partners, consultancies, or large brands
• Deciding whether to accept or defer interest from a big-name partner
• Designing a repeatable partner program instead of one-off deals
• Validating a BD hypothesis with manual pilots before building product

Best practices

• Start by understanding what the partner truly wants and who internally will sponsor you
• Determine if success depends on relationships; adapt strategy if the industry is network-dependent
• Position your product as a case study that helps the partner prove a metric or market
• Test with manual, hacky operations or one-off pilots before investing engineering resources
• Build scalable partner platforms and guard against bespoke, high-maintenance deals
• Practice strategic patience—push back on premature offers to improve terms

Example use cases

• Preparing a pitch and negotiation plan for a platform partnership with a major ad network
• Designing a channel program with consultancies while avoiding assumptions that they will evangelize
• Running a one-hotel pilot to validate a hospitality integration before building APIs
• Mapping internal sponsors and using corp dev to open doors inside a target company
• Creating a self-serve partner onboarding flow to reduce bespoke engineering requests