The Channel Mirage: Why Your Forecast Is Lying to You

Time to get real about partner pipeline.

“Where’s the channel revenue coming from, and how do I forecast it?”

If you're a Sales Leader in a B2B tech business, you've probably asked yourself that question more times than you can count. When it comes to direct sales, the answer usually feels within reach. You’ve got the CRM, the forecast calls, the dashboards. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s familiar. But when you look at partner-led revenue? Things start to get murky. The numbers are there, sure. Pipeline is logged. Deals are progressing, allegedly. But you can feel it - something’s off.

And you’re right. Most channel forecasts are built on shaky ground. We pretend they’re solid because they come in a spreadsheet, or show up on a partner call, or land in a partner portal. But when those deals slip, or vanish, or get claimed by both partner and direct teams… suddenly you’re caught having to explain phantom revenue.

It’s no wonder Forrester found that only 23% of companies feel they have full visibility into their partner pipeline. And yet, nearly three-quarters of global B2B revenue is expected to come through indirect channels within the next year.

So why is something so critical still so unreliable?

One of the biggest culprits is how we think about attribution. We’re stuck in this old binary mindset, partner-sourced versus partner-influenced, and it’s just not how modern deals work.

In reality, revenue is the result of a series of interactions. A partner might have initiated a conversation, but your direct team might develop the opportunity. Or maybe marketing warmed them up, the partner nudged it forward and closed it. Who gets credit?

Jay McBain, Chief Channel Analyst at Canalys, said it well: the future of attribution isn’t about who gets credit, it’s about who enabled velocity.

In other words, stop asking who found the deal. Start asking who helped move it.

But attribution isn’t the only problem. Let’s talk about pipeline quality. Too often, the channel is treated like a black box. Deals come in, sometimes well-qualified, sometimes not. You have no way of knowing how real they are unless someone on your team inspects them. But in many companies, that doesn’t happen. Partner pipelines are accepted at face value, and that’s where the danger starts.

Without direct inspection, you're relying on trust and assumptions. Are those deals still active? Are they really at the stage the partner says they are? Are they even in your ICP?

And let’s not forget the ghost deals, the ones that sit untouched for weeks, or worse, those claimed simultaneously by your internal team and your partner.

One company I worked with discovered 30% of their partner-attributed pipeline had already been closed-lost by their direct sales team.  The communication between direct sales and channel partners was practically non-existent, so the partners didn’t even know.  That’s the kind of stuff that quietly destroys your forecast.

The irony? Everyone wants the same thing, to close revenue. But without shared definitions, consistent qualification, and real-time visibility, you’re navigating in the dark. And no matter how smart your team is, you can’t forecast what you can’t see.

So, what’s the answer?

It’s not about punishing partners or putting more rules in place. It’s about creating shared accountability. That means getting your channel and sales teams aligned on how deals are qualified and how stages are defined. It means inspecting partner deals just like you would your own. And it means shifting the attribution model away from “ownership” and toward “orchestration.”

The most effective CROs I know don’t treat partner revenue like a bonus. They treat it like core pipeline, and they run it with the same discipline they apply to their direct teams. They don’t chase more leads. They drive more accountability. They stop relying on after-the-fact spreadsheets and start using real-time insights to understand what’s working.

Because the truth is, your forecast probably isn’t broken. Your trust model is.

And if you want predictability from your channel, it starts by getting honest about the mirage you’ve been staring at, and rebuilding the foundation underneath it.