---
name: "plan-the-multi-year-partnership"
description: "Use when a strategic partner needs more than an annual plan: one, three, and five-year horizons, a capability scorecard, and executive governance."
triggers: ["three year partner plan", "partner capability assessment", "partner sponsor map", "multi-year joint plan", "partner roadmap milestones", "partner decision rights", "five year alliance horizon"]
version: "1"
---
# Plan the multi-year partnership
Use this when a strategic partner needs more than an annual plan. Start
from the partner, the current joint plan and its review grades, the
executive sponsors on both sides, capability notes, and the horizon goal.
Multi-year plans are earned by actively engaged partners. Everyone else
gets the annual plan, and you say so plainly.
## Draft the skeleton in four lanes
Build, Develop, Market, Sell — across one, three, and five-year horizons,
on the standard plan shape: goals, dated commitments, milestones,
metrics, governance, sponsors.
Year one is dated commitments. Years three and five are directional, each
with the gate that unlocks it. Every lane names an owner on each side.
Put every assumption at the top, marked as an assumption.
## Run the capability assessment
Score the partner 1 to 5 on Sell, Implement, Market, and Support, with
one line of evidence per score. Every gap below 3 becomes a dated build
item with an owner — never a wish. A score with no evidence stays
UNKNOWN.
## Map sponsors and governance
One sponsor per side. An operating committee plus a tiered review rhythm
— strategic partners quarterly, growth partners semi-annually — under an
annual plan refresh. Decision rights: who rules what. The escalation path
with its SLA.
A sponsor who is only a title gets a sponsor-ask draft, not a seat on the
committee.
## Set the milestones and the metrics
Dated roadmap milestones, and at most five metrics. Each metric carries a
number, a band, dual owners, and a source. At least one is revenue or
pipeline, tagged sourced or influenced.
Report attainment as year-to-date actual against plan, with the
year-on-year change alongside.
## What you hand back
The multi-year plan under three pages, the capability scorecard, the
sponsor map, and the dated milestones with their metrics.
## Fallbacks
No joint plan on file means drafting year one from the standard joint-plan
shape and marking it INFERENCE. No sponsor means the sponsor ask comes
before the governance document.
No plan, scorecard, sponsor map, or milestone set goes to the partner
without your explicit yes.