A DACH partner decides on the economics of the mandate, not on the product. Most vendors never show the partner that calculation. We built an illustrative model for it and summarised it in a two-page briefing.
One question for the first partner meeting
In accessibility, the business case runs through three stages: audit as the entry product, remediation as project work, managed service as the recurring stage. Not every customer takes all three. The partner needs a commercially credible path anyway, and a number to judge it by: the expected partner contribution per acquired audit account, over 24 months, after delivery costs, platform fees and the sales effort for follow-on offers that are not won.
What the illustrative model shows
- Audit without follow-on conversion: −€1,880 per account, because the pursuit effort for follow-on offers remains.
- Audit plus remediation: €8,816 expected over 24 months.
- Full lifecycle: €13,072 expected over 24 months, of which managed service contributes €4,256. It only starts after audit and remediation, so little of it falls into the window.
- Run rate at the end of month 24: €224 per month and account in expectation. It continues beyond the window and is reported separately.
The average hides the distribution
Six out of ten accounts have no follow-on project and end at −€1,880. The expected value of €13,072 is carried by the few accounts that take remediation and managed service. No single account sits at that average, and a partner with only a few accounts will feel the spread before it feels the mean.
Where the channel breaks
The three largest levers are delivery costs, prices and conversion. If the transition rate to remediation falls to 25 percent, delivery costs rise by 20 percent and sales hours by 30 percent at the same time, the full lifecycle ends at −€2,982 per account. At a base cost of €700 per person-day, the lifecycle scenario reaches zero at around €921. The €40,000 entry investment for certification and enablement is shown separately. In expectation it is recovered after four won accounts in the full lifecycle and after five with remediation only. That is an expectation across several accounts, not a guarantee.
How to read the numbers
This is an illustrative scenario model. Prices, cost rates, conversion rates and hours are freely chosen assumptions. They are not market benchmarks and do not come from client data. The value of the model lies in the logic: it shows which assumptions carry the result and when it turns.
A DACH partner channel can pay off. Whether it does is decided by conversion, delivery costs and sales effort, not by project price alone.
Download the two-page briefing (PDF). To test your own partner assumptions against this logic, we are happy to go through them in an initial call.
