When your partnerships don't produce, the problem is rarely the partners. It's the business behind them.

When growth stalls, most broadcast and media tech companies add partners. A partner manager, a programme, more logos on the slide.

Then the partners don't sell, and the hire takes the blame.

It usually isn't the partner work. It's that the product, the pricing, the sales team and support were never set up for anyone else to sell it, install it or run it. Fix that first and the partners produce. Skip it and the next hire struggles too.

Six questions, asked once, answered by the whole business.

• Why. What the board needs: the financial goals and the timescale.
• What. What customers are actually buying. The product, packaged and priced, not the technology.
• Who. Who you sell to, and who you don't.
• Where. Which regions, segments and routes earn the most from fixed resources.
• When. In what order. The commercial side needs a roadmap too.
• How. Who sells it, installs it, runs it and picks up the phone, inside the business and through partners.

• Check. A short, paid look at the whole business. One-page picture, a score, a priority list.
• Project. A fixed project on the biggest gaps.
• Retainer. Running the commercial side with the CEO, as a fractional chief commercial officer.

Board-level, scoped engagements. The project and the retainer are priced after the check.

• 25 years inside broadcast and media technology vendors.
• Over $10m of new route-to-market revenue at Wowza, Conviva and Optable.
• Pipeline up 30% and nine of ten inherited accounts kept at Ooyala.