Published: May 14, 2026
Every year, technology vendors set aside hundreds of millions of dollars collectively, specifically for their partners to use on co-marketing, demand generation, events, and campaigns. And every year, a significant portion of that money expires unclaimed.
This is not a secret in the channel. Everyone in partner programs knows it happens. What is less understood is why — and what the partners who consistently capture and deploy marketing development funds (MDF) do differently from those who don't.
For the partners who build a go-to-market (GTM) and business development infrastructure, MDF becomes a lucrative lifeline asset that can help you scale your business to new, and beyond desired heights. It can help you strengthen your partnerships and strategic alliances with vendors. But before you can use it, you have to get selected for it.
Vendors are those who build technology that they then have the option to provide resell license to other technology services providers or jointly collaborate with them on deals. To enable these efforts, mature vendor GTM programs have a formal selection process.
From the agency side, building and driving GTM, partner marketing and strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) activation programs on behalf of enterprise technology vendors, this is what the selection process has been like for hyperscale vendors who NEED and WANT to make money with and through their partners like Amazon Web Services (AWS) for example. A common conversation that has been happening since the concept of partner marketing in the IT channel existed asks what it takes to retrieve and maximize vendor awarded marketing development funds (MDF) utilization.
Prestige vendors like AWS look at four weighted domains when nominating and scoring partners for funded co-marketing programs. I want to preface this by saying that this partner selection framework was geared towards late-staged startups and small-to-medium sized businesses who were backed by venture capital investors. These partners had signed strategic collaboration agreements, already had a market validated offer, were primarily targeting enterprise markets, and had committed to prioritizing this particular hyperscaler which was AWS. The criteria for selecting participating partners were borne from the brilliant minds (including mine 😊), of those embedded in AWS Emerging Technology Partnerships teams. They fueled the expansion and adaption of such approach by other large-scale technology vendors selecting partners for intimate and strategic co-marketing and co-sell engagement, like Intel.
A team of Partner Development Managers (PDMs) were accountable for measuring and nominating partner participants to engage in these strategic partner marketing programs and engagements across four, weighted go-to-market (GTM) readiness areas.
This readiness area is the one that the vendor's look at whether you've engaged over time vs just signed paperwork. Long-term commitment is one of the strongest predictors that co-investment will be reciprocated. Vendors look at where you sit in the formal partner program (AWS Partner Network (APN) tier or equivalent), how many customers you reach, how many of those run the vendor's technology, the competencies you've earned, the consistency of your pipeline activity in the vendor's deal registration program (AWS Customer Engagement (ACE) platform for AWS), the revenue you drive back to the vendor, and how connected you are across the broader channel partner (CP) and system integrator (SI) ecosystem. A low score here signals a transactional reseller without earned tier, competencies, or ecosystem presence — which makes the partner a risky bet for funded co-marketing.
Vendors won't fund co-marketing for an offer that doesn't exist, isn't built to integrate with their platform, or isn't mature enough to put in front of an enterprise customer. They're measuring how far along your solution actually is — whether it runs on or alongside their stack, whether it's been validated through reference architectures and well-architected reviews, the depth of integration, your industry or use-case specialization, and whether the solution is listed and transactable on the cloud Marketplace. A low score tells the vendor the partnership is not ready for a joint sales motion — and their field team can't confidently bring the partner into customer conversations.
This is a more heavily weighted readiness area because it answers an important question that Partner Marketing Managers need to ask before signing off on MDF. “If I release the funds, is this partner's infrastructure in place to spend them well? Vendors look at whether you have dedicated demand generation or business development representatives and a business intelligence person to capture and document lead and opportunities in correlating systems. They assess whether you have existing value proposition messaging, existing campaign themes, sales enablement collateral, a dedicated landing page or section of your website promoting the partnership, ready-to-activate audience lists, and the marketing tech stack to run and measure campaigns end-to-end. A low score here signals that the partner has the funding but no messaging foundation, no creative, no audience, and no funnel to push it through.
This readiness area holds same weight as ‘Demand Generation Readiness’. Vendors measure whether you have a dedicated GTM execution owner (not someone managing partnerships on the side), disciplined campaign execution with pre-qualified audiences and co-branded assets, deal registration hygiene in the vendors system (AWS Customer Engagement (ACE) platform), full-funnel reporting from cost-per-lead through closed-won, visible executive sponsorship from your leadership team, and tight alignment across your sales, marketing, product, customer success, and partner operations functions. A low score tells the vendor that even strong messaging and a great solution won't produce returns. Campaigns will launch late or never, MDF claims will be incomplete, deals won't register or qualify for co-sell credit, and there will be no proof-of-performance data to underwrite a larger allocation next cycle – or current cycle.
These domains are drawn from the formal nomination and GTM readiness assessment tools and strategies used across enterprise-level partner programs with startup and SMB sized SaaS ISV startups I worked with directly in scale partner marketing engagements. Tap into this level of strategy, show up to your vendor with much if not all of these areas covered and your vendors will throw money at you. The MDF claims process can be grueling, but I believe that’s mostly the case if you don’t already have the infrastructure in place to be ready to receive it and make it produce ROI.
For more insights and perspectives like this, follow Shaun Martinez and ExSailIQ 360° on LinkedIn.
Best regards,
Shaun Martinez, PMMC™
Co-Founder, Principal Strategic Marketing Consultant of ExSailIQ 360
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