Our newsletterVendor reportGartner, 2026
Planning questions suggested by Gartner: objectives and goals, primary strategies and execution, direction of product lines or services, success measures, long-term success factors, and major obstacles
Strategy review & optimization
| Questions about that business partner's domain | Notes of your business partner's answer |
|---|---|
| What are your key business objectives and resultant goals for the next two to five years? | — |
| What are your primary strategies? How do you plan to execute on these strategies? | — |
| What is the direction of the key product line, supply chain, service offerings, etc.? | — |
| How will you know if your unit is successful? What will you measure? | — |
| What are the key success factors that will make or break your unit's success in the long term? | — |
| What major obstacles will the business unit face in reaching these objectives? | — |
Template: Strategic Alignment Discussion Guide for Business Partner Conversations
Template: Strategic Alignment Discussion Guide for Business Partner Conversations- Reader Note:
- This figure is a Gartner planning template rather than research. It lists six prompts for business-partner conversations: objectives and goals, primary strategies and execution, direction of product lines or services, success measures, long-term success factors, and major obstacles. No testing data is provided on whether using this guide improves outcomes.
- Evidence:
- Expert judgment
- Vendor interest:
- High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- Sample:
- Not disclosed
Reader Note:
Evidence:
Vendor interest:
Sample:Good for
Getting a rough orientation, and deciding what to check yourself.
Not for
- Anything that needs a measurement. Nobody counted or tested this.
- This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- The source never says how big its sample was or what went into it.
- The source never says how this number was measured.
Related cards
Strategy review & optimizationTrend
Trend
Open full graphMore than half of brands said economic volatility pushed them to focus harder on ROI
Strategy review & optimizationTrend
Lead quality and MQLs are the top KPI marketers track overall
Strategy review & optimizationIdea
Idea48% of B2B SaaS leaders say aligning affiliate partnerships with sales and marketing shortens sales cycles
Go deeper on this topic
Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.
Strategy review & optimizationIdea
CMOs who plan 18 months or more ahead are 1.5x more likely to report high performanceStrategy review & optimizationTrend
Only 34% of CEOs and CFOs agree with their CMOs on how marketing supports growthStrategy review & optimizationTrend
37% of B2B SaaS leaders say team misalignment is the biggest blocker to partner revenue, while 7% blame tech