For many successful SaaS companies, partners aren't just an important part of the business, they are the business. With 84% of B2B decision makers starting a purchase process with a referral, it's clear that partners can have a huge impact on your revenue. Companies often see over 11% growth in new business with a referral program in place with referrals having a higher chance of converting, tending to close faster and having higher lifetime values.
But while the benefits of partners can be significant, amazingly only 30% of B2B companies even have a referral program. Others that do have a program integrate with many different applications in an attempt to support a variety of different kinds of partners including MSPs, VARs, resellers and others. But the problem with a number of different solutions is that it can silo information and you risk not giving your partners and your customers a consistent experience.
While a business may benefit from a partner program, it can be difficult to launch from scratch and manage going forward. You need to be able to effectively incentivize partners and be able to track their progress for the correct payout. For example, are you going to pay a commission as a percentage of a sale price or based on an action (like a successful onboarding).
You also need to be able to give access to your product in order to sell it and empower partners to finish the sale with a completed payment. You could find solutions for each of these needs and switch between them. The other option is to opt for a partner management portal as part of a comprehensive revenue stack.
It's very common for customers to have portals where they can access their subscription and change their payment details. However, when it comes to partners, most companies don't have a streamlined process for accessing products, invoicing, accepting payment and then finally paying out partners.
Not only do you need a portal to manage your customers, you also need a portal to manage your partners so that they can continue to help you grow your business.
Similar to other cloud-based platforms you use, a portal experience can be branded and customized based on type of user. Permissions and access to different types of experience can be set so that what's inside the portal for your MSP partner might be very different from your VAR, and certainly different from your customer.
The important part of building the portal is to understand the different types of processes that you currently use to refer business and translate those processes and functionalities into the portal experience.
The part that is going to matter to your partners when it comes to a portal experience always comes down to the bottom line. Your portal experience for each different type of referral partner, whether a reseller, or consultant, needs to enable and reward their success.
One of the best ways to empower your partners is to give them the ability to give your prospective customers Configure Price Quote (CPQ). This enables highly customized quotes for customers as designed by your partners and then gives customers the ability to pay right away using their preferred payment method.
The process is fast and all payment processing, calculations and payouts are done automatically through the integrated revenue stack and partner management platform. You can easily enable cross-sells, track sales in real-time and reward your best performing partners with unique commissions.
With competition for customers so fierce, you need to ensure you can attract and onboard as many clients as possible. Partners are a great way to do this.
If you want an effective partner program to grow your business, you need the tools to make it happen. A partner management platform integrated into a comprehensive revenue stack can give you and you partners all the tools you need to enable, track and reward success.
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