Selling to the Buying Committee: One Engagement, Five Different Conversations
A buying committee is not one audience — it is five. The fastest way to lose a six-figure engagement is to show the CEO, the CFO, and the CTO the same slide and hope one of them bites.
READ ▸Certified but Can't Close: The Toolkit That Turns Partners into Sellers
Your partners passed certification — so why is the pipeline empty? Because delivering the work and selling the work are two different skills, and your program only tested one of them. Here's the complete toolkit that closes the gap.
READ ▸Inside the EOS Playbook: How One Methodology Scaled to 500+ Implementers Without Breaking
Most certification programs decay as they grow. EOS grew past 500 certified implementers and got more consistent, not less. The reason is architectural: six design choices that lock together — and stop working the moment you cherry-pick.
READ ▸The Slow Fade: How Partners Leave Your Network Without Saying Goodbye
By the time a non-renewal lands in your inbox, the partner left months ago — you just weren't watching. Here are the four systems that detect the slow fade while there's still time to reverse it: check-ins, pods, buddies, and visibility.
READ ▸Who Decides? Designing Shared Authority for Your Partner Network
Every partner network eventually hits the question no founder wants to answer: who actually decides things around here? An elected council of 5-7 partners, backed by a published authority map, answers it before the politics do.
READ ▸Why Partners Stop Showing Up to Your Monthly Call (and the Agenda That Brings Them Back)
Declining attendance on your partner call is feedback, not flakiness: you're running a broadcast, not a gathering. Here's how to rebuild the hour — block by block — so busy practitioners defend it on their calendars.
READ ▸Can Your Network Survive a Month Without You? The Burnout Test Most Founders Fail
Alan Weiss's Four-Week Vacation test is brutal in its simplicity: disappear for a month and see what breaks. For most partner-network founders, the honest answer is "everything" — and three separate community-building books say that outcome is the default, not the exception. Here is the timeline for fixing it before Month 8 fixes it for you.
READ ▸More Platforms, Less Community: The Tooling Trap That Kills Partner Engagement
Adding another channel feels like investing in your partner network. Jono Bacon calls it Communication Fetishism — and it explains why communities drowning in tools have less conversation than the ones running on a single Slack channel.
READ ▸Compliance or Commitment? What "Tribes" Teaches Founders Building Partner Networks
An operational partner program gets you partners who follow the rules. A movement gets you partners who believe. Seth Godin's four elements — purpose, identity, rituals, communication — explain the difference, and how to close it.
READ ▸Stop Certifying Knowledge. Start Certifying Delivery.
A certification that never expires is decoration, not quality control. If your partner program gates advancement on exam scores instead of delivery records, you're measuring the one thing that doesn't protect your brand.
READ ▸Who Makes the Cut: A Two-Filter System for Selecting Certification Partners
Your certification program is only as strong as the weakest partner you admit. Combining David Baker's market-viability tests with Michael Port's Red Velvet Rope gives you a two-filter selection system that screens for capability and character at the same time.
READ ▸The Founding Grant: Run a Free Year Without Ever Charging $0
Anchor your partner program at $0 and Year 2 renewals collapse. Charge full price on Day 1 and you never reach critical mass. Alan Weiss's licensing playbook points to a third option: send the real invoice every month — and grant it down to zero.
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