The rejections that kill this deck.

Partnership leads underwrite on customer demand signals from their own base. If you can't name the demand signal inside their base, you're asking them to educate their customers on your behalf.

Cite the specific demand signal from their base: support tickets you've seen, forum threads, a competitor deal, or a survey question they ran. If you don't have one, don't have the meeting yet.

Slide 2 is 'Why now for [Partner]': the demand signal you observed inside their customer base, with source. Not your product features.

BD teams have revenue targets, not enthusiasm targets. Any partnership deck without a rev-share or attach model gets deprioritized.

Propose a specific commercial model: rev-share percentage, referral fee, or bundled pricing. Model it out on a real deal size. Offer to start with a small pilot territory or segment.

Add a commercial-model slide: rev-share %, expected attach rate, projected first-year revenue at their base size.

Co-sells with no integration are hard to sustain. Sales reps forget about them, and the partnership goes dark within 6 months.

Propose the integration explicitly: what shows up in their product, what shows up in yours, what data flows. Even a simple SSO + reporting integration keeps the partnership alive.

Add an integration architecture slide showing 3 touchpoints: sign-up, data sync, joint reporting. Not a wall of API docs.

Channel conflict kills partnerships silently. If direct reps see partner deals as revenue they lose, they'll actively work against the partnership.

Propose a segment split that avoids overlap: you focus on SMB, they focus on enterprise; or you focus on a specific vertical they don't cover. Bring the direct rep into the deal economics.

Add a segmentation slide showing the split explicitly: what accounts you go after, what accounts they go after, how conflict gets resolved.

Partnerships stall when there's no executive on either side who can override a middle manager's 'no.' The BD lead is asking who they escalate to.

Name your executive sponsor by name and title. Offer to have them on the second meeting. If it's the founder, say so. Do not designate someone who hasn't been briefed.

Include an 'executive sponsors on both sides' line in the close of the deck. Name people, not roles.

BD leads are protective of engineering and marketing resources. If the ask is unbounded, the answer is no.

Bound the ask: '2 weeks of engineering for the integration, 1 marketing slot per quarter for a joint post, no rep training required.' Offer to bring your team in for the heavy lifting.

Add a resource-ask slide with the exact ask by function (eng-weeks, marketing slots, exec hours) over the first 90 days.