Great question! Here are the main differences: 

1. Features - Directory customization, CRM sync, Ai, Stripe Connect...
2. Circles - Create and collaborate with groups of partners on GTM, event leads, or house partners by tier.
3. Leads lists - Create and pipeline partner leads lists from our database.
4. Matchmaking - Automated matchmaking is reserved for Pro users.

Watch this video to learn more: 

One - Begin all your partnerships discussions with a Memorandum

Partnerships can fail to generate anything for either party simply because expectations weren’t set and a plan was never created.

• List out why you align - persona’s, markets, geo.
• Where are you going to promote one another? When?
• What’s the end goal of the partnership? And what is that going to take?

Here’s the template >

Two - Start with a co-marketing campaign to build synergy and create an audience

Too many partnerships are started with the ask of “What can you do for me?” When a true partnership should start with the question of “What can we do for each other?”

• Courses
• Events
• Webinars
• Guest posts
• Expert interviews
• Podcasts

Examples:

https://blog.nextinymarketing.com/make-easy-professional-quality-videos-with-soapbox-by-wistia
https://heap.io/resources/paving-the-funnel-scott-breitenother
https://smith.ai/blog/how-to-track-smith-ai-live-chat-in-google-ads-google-analytics

Three - Prior to any larger co-marketing campaigns, map accounts

Account mapping is the first step to co-selling. It’s where you both load your customers and prospects (or sync CRM) to a secure third party software like Reveal to see if there is overlap, and view the size of the audiences on both sides (potential exposure).

Both parties have the view of the overlap and watch that as you run your co-marketing of the content to each others’ audiences. Success can be determined by the value of the new leads that came from the partner, and tracked using this software/process.

Four - Set alerts in Sales Navigator when your tech partner hires a new CS or salesperson

CS are often those who refer to agency partners the most, followed by Salespeople. They can only support the user/prospect so much. The rest comes from service providers they know do great work with their solution.

1. Save the accounts (partner company names)

2. Set an alert for new hires under the title of CS / sales / BD and/or Partnerships.

3. Send that person a link to your agency profile document (links, services, client persona, goals…)
Here’s an article on setting these alerts >>

Five - Stage out the partnership in task list Gantt format

We run client services in our project management solutions, why not do the same with our partnerships? Tech partnerships progress in the same flow. Put them all into a PM tool, and run them. This will ensure you are progressing and committing to grow revenue.

Vetting backlog >> Tinkering >> Demo >> Co-Marketing >> Partner Memorandum >> PRM Onboarding >> Product Training >> Co-Selling >> Trusted Partner

Six - Create a course that includes multiple tech partners

Courses can be great lead-gen for agencies. Further, they can be enormous for technology who simply can’t teach their users what to do after the tool is setup up (that’s your job). Aligning with a few tech partners on a curriculum that would increase retention for their solution, as well as bring you both new prospects, is a great way to partner.

1. Write up the general outline.
2. Pick out a few classes that can mention and even show how to use a certain solution.
3. Reach out to the partner teams at those tools as ask what they can do to support your agency in the creation of the course + marketing it (sponsorship, designing assets, linking to it…)
4. Give free seats to users of your tech partners.
5. Create a co-marketing agenda with your partners.
6. When you have aligned, launch the course.

Here’s an example >>

Seven - Track the right partnerships-influenced KPIs

Pipeline velocity is the first to monitor. That is, how much faster are clients moving through the pipeline now that you have the co-marketing, co-selling and increased support from your new partner… And, another great KPI, is overall engagement on partner-led events. These are events that partners invite you to, or events you put on together. Monitor the RSVPs and show rate (not including clients of yours who show). These two are great partner success indicators.

Eight - Lean on partners for assets and copy

We’ve heard from several agencies that they’d love to market their affiliation and work to get more clients onto services that include the technology partner. But, they don’t have the internal resources to allocate towards designing assets and coming up with copy… These are all things your tech partner should be providing you. My best tech clients have un-branded resource folders their partners can grab, add their logo, and start using in their services pitch.

• Designed ads
• Pitch decks
• Product comparisons
• Marketing materials
• Landing page and email copy

Nine - For collaborative events - require you host the landing page

This is a strategy for those agencies who are in sales mode. When partners ask you to lead a webinar or other virtual event, where you are going to be leaned on to present, ask to host the landing page on your site or your events platform. It won’t always fly, or make sense, but in the right circumstances, it will mean much higher returns because you gain:

• Traffic to your site
• Opt in emails for your list
• Higher thought leadership than if you were seen as a guest

Ten - Finally, consider productizing services and white labeling for other agencies

Productizing is when you take the standardized services you know are rinse / repeat, putting a price tag on them, then listing them on the pricing page. This is a bigger strategy, sales, and ops shift, but agencies like our friend Richard at Six & Flow, Penguin Strategies, Flow Candy (eCommerce) have adopted with huge success. When your productize your services, there is a tool (or two) that are embedded in those services you may require clients to have or get. This brings opportunity to get referrals from the sales and CS people at said tech partner(s).
The next step to that is selling the productized service to other agencies. Then, you truly become a huge resource for your tech partners to help their new agencies sell more.

Here's a great example of productizing your services: https://www.penguinstrategies....

The Directory product is very exciting because the options on the market right now for partner teams are incredibly expensive for how simple the technology is. 

We have built this product to be customizable to a certain extent: 

• Adjust colors, branding
• Add to a subdomain or reverse proxy
• Change the lead routing to any team member
• Add any listing you want
• Or, pull in active partners and "enable" them to be shown

One of the best aspects of our directory product is the fact that you or the listings you show (who are connected in Partnerhub®) can update the directory profile app-wide in your or their own account. 

No need to waste time trying to keep those listings up to date on behalf of your partners. 

And, the CTA to "Partner with us" automatically sends you an invite from their account to partner. You can accept, deny, or schedule a call.

Zapier integration comes out in August so you can: 

• Trigger emails (think onboarding partners) 
• Push referrals into CRM
• Alert your team in Slack when you have a new partner request...
• And much more.

Then Salesforce shortly after that, followed HubSpot, then Stripe Connect.

All of these are included in the Pro plan.

This is actually easy - if you are approved to join, you have what's needed to succeed.

But, for tech companies - to really grow your program inside - try to make sure you always have two things:

1. A Live Offer. These can be anything from co-marketing opportunities, events you want to include partners in, free accounts, white paper collaborations, podcast guest spots...
2. A great program incentives description like this one from our friends at SurveySparrow:

"White-label or use our account hierarchy to do custom implementations and managed services for your customers.
+ Social mentions and the opportunity to get showcased in front of our 100K customer base.
+ Revenue share of 25% of the revenue recognized from the customers brought in through the partner in perpetuity for the lifetime of the customer.
+ MDFs for demand generation - Co-marketing and co-creation with the partner.
- SPIFFs apart from the 25% commission!"

Yes. You can invite team members as Admin's or Member's. And, you can bulk import your entire roster, or add them one at a time.

Great question! Below are the feature comparisons between Partnerhub® and the top 4 Partner Relationships Management tools. 
The main differences between us and other PRMs are as follows:

1. The main difference is how we are built - as a marketplace and matchmaking system for partnerships. We did not build Partnerhub® as a "PRM product". We built it to be used by both sides and enable more matches between the two. 
2. We built this version primarily for our agency users. We maintain a 3:1 ratio of agency users to SaaS users so the features reflect that. 
3. We are not an "affiliate" tracking or payout software. Solutions partners do not care about affiliate commissions, and usually won't use tracked affiliate links, so that is not a feature we have built yet. 

However, we have a Stripe Connect integration in progress so you can send partners commissions or set them up on a payout schedule. It's just not link-based. Affiliate marketing is very much a marketing endeavor and should be handled with ads attribution software.

I asked one of our new users how it was going inside Partnerhub®... He said: "I haven't started using it yet because I am focused on ISV / integration partnerships..."

I sent him the video below showing how we have built features and projects for finding and managing tech-to-tech partnerships using:

1. The Marketplace filters to find and reach out to other tech companies who sell to your same customer profile: https://app.partnerhub.app/mar...

2. The Integrations project to manage the roadmap with your tech partners.

3. The Strategic Alliances project to manage relationships with tech companies you are working with, but not yet integrated with.

4. And the GTM project to collaborate on everything after the fact to promote your new technology alliances.

https://app.partnerhub.app/pro...

Partnerhub enables your team to track all referral activity in the same place you are managing all of your other partner activities. You can both send and receive referrals and then keep the partner up to date as the referred lead moves through the sales process.

There are two places to track referrals in Partnerhub: the Referrals page and on a partner's profile. The Referrals page is used to track referrals related to all partners, while a partner's profile is used to track referrals related to that specific partner. 

Sending referrals

To send a referral to a partner

• from the Referrals page: click Submit Referrals and select the partner you are sending the referral to from the Partner dropdown menu
• from their profile: click the Referrals tab and then Submit Referrals

Complete the fields related to the company you are referring to your partner. Include instructions and notes for the partner.

Once the referral is submitted, the partner will receive a notification and can view and update the referral information.

Receiving referrals

When a partner sends your team a referral, you will receive a notification and an update in your activity log. Similar to sending referrals, you can view received referrals from both the Referrals page and the partner's profile.

To view, navigate to either the Referrals page or the Referrals tab of the partner's profile. Click the Received tab. Here you can view a table of all referrals or click into each line item to view more details about the referral.

In the details view, you can update the following information. The information is updated for the partner that sent the referral as well.

• Stage in your pipeline
• Add value
• Notes

Let us help you grow your partner program!
Start using premium features today for your entire team at a substantial discount.

Partner matchmaking concierge
You will have your own concierge in your dashboard (embedded chat) to call on during business hours who is there to help find you matches.

Request enriched datasets to prospect
After 3 years of profiling top digital agencies, we have accrued an enormous amount of data around who partners with who. You will be able to request data sets from your dashboard.

Be highlighted throughout the app
As we grow, we cannot serve all profiles to all users. Premium users will be highlighted at the top of the agency backlogs & featured in the marketplace.

Use of premium integrations
Tracking / paying out commissions. Mapping accounts. Use of a gift card system for spiffing partners, paying for lunch during lunch / learns, gifting...

Concierge plan includes:

• Access to "Concierge" for matchmaking
• Order enriched partner datasets
• Included in partner suggestions emails to other users
• Continued placement in agency-users backlogs
• "Featured Partners" placement in the directory
• Access to all of our gated training
• Send gift cards or charitable donations (coming soon)
• Account mapping integrations (coming soon)
• Track commissions / payout partners (coming soon)
  
  Upgrade now >
  
  

The free plan will always allow you to:

• Manage partners
• Be listed in the marketplace
• Submit live offers
• Chat, share documents
• Send and receive referrals
• Create tasks for partners
• Chat support

We have a feature we called "Interests".

Basically, as a tech user profile, you cannot see the agency users' names or logos. You can use the marketplace filters and then "Show interest" in the digital agency users of Partnerhub®.

Your profile is then added to a short list of companies who have shown interest in their agency. 

When the agency is ready to connect, they can reach out via a "Partner Request", or book a call. 

*Tech users are limited to 10 interest requests per week. 

*Agency users can request partnerships with other agencies or tech on an unlimited basis.

"Live offers" are ephemeral (expiring) valuable collaborations you want to invite top agencies in our ecosystem to.

What they do for you is allow you to get into conversations with top-tier experts you want to partner with.

Example: Michelle from Digitile:

Offer Objectives:
-Meet potential partners
-Drive relevant traffic to our blog offer.

Metrics:
-Asked for 8 contributors
-3 from PH
-2 sourced from eComm Slack channels

Content:
-See how I highlighted their contribution in the blog post.
-How I promoted their names and companies in a LinkedIn post.

Here's the explanation for your team:

There are typically 4 ways to source solutions partners:

1. Organically through your product users bringing in their agencies
2. Your marketing teams efforts drawing attention from partners
3. Integrations partners bringing you to their agencies
4. Cold outreach

(Just being in Partnerhub can be considered the 5th 😉)Where our Live Offers system comes in is to increase conversions of #4 - cold outreach.If you, me, or anyone reach out to a top-tier agency and say "Check out Syncari, it's killer, and they have a partner program.... and pay good commission..."We'd hear crickets. Or at least it wouldn't get a big response because these are very busy people.However, if we reach out and say:"We have a partner in the data space that integrates well with your stack and they are seeking experts in Revops to come into a featured article to share their experience with _____, and we believe you are a perfect fit. Would you mind if I introduced you to their partnerships team?" ^ That's what Live Offers provides us - a way to ensure we can connect you with top solutions partners in our network, or even outside our network.

Do they work to get partners?

Yes, on average, as of 8/2023, we see ~ 20-30 responses from solid offers. 

"Solid offers" are offers of true value to the agency - 

• Thought leadership content
• Backlinks
• Their answers to pain points their clients (your customers) have published in your blog
• Spots on panels or podcasts
• Inclusion in a new GTM campaign that brings market development funds...

Here's the best way to execute a Live Offer:

1. Post a “Live offer” in Partnerhub® (a feature on the free account) for a feature in an “expert roundup article” - feature under the free account. [IF you are not using Partnerhub® - create a target list to send this offer to on LinkedIn / email]
2. Mention the visibility that article will get - traffic, social following, newsletter.
3. Explain only new participants who meet the criteria qualify.
4. As a CTA, link to a form (Typeform, Airtable form, CRM form…) - just make sure you are able to redirect people to a custom URL after they fill out the form.
5. The form asks for the expert's responses to a few questions + their picture + backlink of choice.
6. Those forms go to your content manager to get rolled up into an “expert tips on ____” article.
7. Those who submit the form are redirected to a landing page that mentions they can continue to be involved in valuable co-marketing if they join the partner program - and a calendar embed on that page so they can book an intro call. *Do not link directly to your affiliate platform (another form), or embed another form on that page.
8. After it goes live, the partnerships manager reaches back out to the participants with links to view/share, posts to social, tagging all the experts, and has one more chance to get on a call with a thankful partner prospect.

Admin will deny these types of submissions:

1. Simply stating your partner program incentives.
2. Discounts on your product.
3. Event promotions.
4. Anything that requires the service provider to sign up before getting.

What we typically approve:

1. Offer to fund the creation of a virtual course that includes tutorial/rec of your product.
2. Offer to host an agency on a podcast or a webinar.
3. Invite them to an "Experts" feature on your blog with a do-follow backlink (this could include multiple experts).
4. Offer to exchange guest posts - one for their blog written by your team, and one for your blog written by their team (with the keyword focus guidelines).
5. ...more examples are below...

You can submit one for approval here: https://app.partnerhub.app/offers

Co-marketing is one of the easiest / best ways to (a) get new agencies to meet you, (b) establish instant value to encourage the agency to reciprocate, (c) align your brand with thought leaders in a space (top agency operators) so that others in the space see you as a trusted provider, and (d) get unbiased third party-sourced content into your blog.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

1. An article featuring "expert" opinions on a topic. Make sure to include a do-follow backlink and an image of the agency's choice next to their quote. Here's a perfect example of an agency expert highlight >
   
2. Help create and promote an agency-partners' use case of your product. Video, or, sometimes better, a documentation-style article with screenshots and real examples >
3. Enable the agency (financially or simply creating the assets and then promoting it) to create a course featuring your solution. Here are a few examples, one from Recart on how they enabled Socialite agency to create a course that features their app >>
4. Create a directory of use cases for your product, but each use case is developed with an agency partner. Here's an example from TextExpander where they allow partners to publish their snippet templates to this library >>
5. Expert webinar with an agency founder. Invite a thought leader from an agency to co-host a webinar for your audiences. Co-market that webinar, map accounts prior to its release, then convert that agency to a partnership track. Here's an example webinar landing page.
6. A column of your blog that is all agency-partner interviews that help your traffic understand a use case or overcome a pain point.
7. Create a library of ebooks or white papers on a topic that's relevant for your users, and allow agencies to submit their papers to it. Here's one from Hubspot as an example >>
8. Launch a directory using Airtable + Softr or APIdeck.com, then feature agency partners in that directory. Here's our APIdeck directory as an example >>
9. Launch a micro podcast - only 5-10 episodes, all on a specific topic (i.e. Website compliance or CRO for ecomm,...) and bring in agencies to each episode to chat about how they help their clients with that pain point. Here's an example of one on GDPR >>

And here are some straight out of Partnerhub (what the agencies see under their Live offers tab):

Partnerhub enables your team to keep all partner related documents in one place. You can access documents from partners as well as share documents with partners.

Use the Partners page to view documents uploaded by your team, share those documents with partners, and to view documents your team has saved from partners.

https://www.loom.com/share/f00...

Saving documents from partners

1. Navigate to the documents tab of a partner's profile
2. Click on the check box to left of the document name
3. Click Save

This will save the document to the Partner Assets tab Partners page where you can access all saved documents from partners.

Uploading documents

1. Go to the Partners page using the left navigation
2. Click Upload Documents to upload documents from your computer OR click Sync with Google Drive to import documents from a Google Drive account

Sharing Documents

1. Go to the Partners page using the left navigation
2. From the Team files tab, click on the check box to the left of the document title
3. Click Change Access and select the option to make visible to all partners

Video Overview

Create, assign, and set due dates for tasks for your team to complete. Tasks are internal to your team only and are not visible to partners.

https://www.loom.com/share/ede...

Assigning a new task

1. Navigate to the Tasks tab of a partner's profile
2. Click Add Task
3. Add a description, add a due date, and assign to a team mate

Editing tasks

1. Navigate to the task
2. Click the edit icon
3. Edit the description, the due date, and/or the assignee

Completing tasks

1. Navigate to the task
2. Click the circle item to the left of the tasks description to mark the task as complete

Add any of your current/trusted partners to Partnerhub so your team can add documents, assign tasks, and keep track of the partnership.

Adding Partners

1. Navigate to the Partners page
2. Click on the appropriate tab depending on the type of partner you are adding: Technology Partners or Agency Partners.
3. Click Add Partner (when on the Technology Partners tab) or Add Agency (when on the Agency Partners tab).
4. IF you have a lot of partners, use this CSV template - choose the one's you want to invite, and any you do not want to invite, simply mark column 2 as FALSE, and the template will only add their profile (without sending the invite).
5. Complete the contact details form and click Add.

**Note, the benefits of having your partners in Partnerhub® (inviting them) are: 

• You receive updates on referrals by stage (i.e. closed won).
• You can tag your partners in tasks. 
• They can update their own profile in your directory.
• They can join your Circles to GTM with you.
• Also, better reporting.

Once the form is submitted, Partnerhub® admin will check to see if that organization already has an account in Partnerhub®.

If there is a matching account, Partnerhub displays their profile so you can confirm the profile matches the organization you are adding. If so, click Yes, and the partner's profile is added. Since the partner already has an account within Partnerhub, their profile is enriched with the information they provided when creating an account and you can begin to interact with them directly in Partnerhub

Inviting Partners

If the partner you added does not have an account in Partnerhub, the organization's profile is created with the contact details you added. Your team can add internal documents, assign internal tasks and track the partner in any project.

Once you are ready to interact with the partner inside of Partnerhub, invite the partner to join by clicking Invite in their profile.

We ask you to include a note to partner you are inviting so the partner knows why they are receiving the invitations and so you can add a personal touch. This note is included in the email invite the partner receives once you click Invite.

We created the Opportunities to enable agencies to connect with more agencies as well as give you a place to:

• Fill a job
• Offload a project
• Earn some quick referral fees
• Create some co-marketing together
• Submit an open offer to do an ideation call and see what happens

Next steps:

1. Create Opportunities (to earn, co-market, or just meet other agencies).
2. Shop the Marketplace by numerous filters.
3. Send requests to partner.
4. Add to a project, share referrals, create tasks, chat, share docs...
   
   See you inside!

Book an onboarding call >

What is “Partnership Memorandum”?

It is a document, or product feature in the case below inside Partnerhub, you fill out with your partners once a year or month, or quarter, with the specific items you have agreed to work on as partners.

Your team can edit, add to, or refer back to the Memorandum for the expectations, timelines, objectives, and commitments between this partner and {{user_company_name}} for partner program success.

This is not meant to create a contract. It is an exercise that will create:

1. Alignment between you as true partners,
2. Who the partner is,
3. And what you both expect from each other.

LOGIN TO PARTNERHUB AND SEE THE FEATURE ON YOUR PARTNERS' PROFILES >

DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENT TEMPLATE HERE >

_{Here are the main components of a Partner Memorandum:}

~~<>~~

Partnership Memorandum between {{partner}} and {{company}}

This is our “Partnership Memorandum” - the document our teams can refer back to and modify to ensure we are both on track to generate ROI from our partnership. Store in a shared drive for your team to find/edit during our calls.

Date: ___ / ___ / ___

‍

Partner details:

{{Agency Partner}} details:

(name, URL, location, linkedin, phone….).

{{Tech Partner}} details:
(Partner manager name/email, partner page, resources, linkedin, slack….)

‍

Goals for both parties (year 1, unrelated to the partnership):

{{This month, quarter, year}}

{{Where to track those goals}}
‍

What each of you will be putting into this in year 1 (resources):

{{Agency}} {{Tech Partner}}

{{training time}}

{{onboarding time}}

{{co-selling time}}

{{content creation}}

‍

Where each of you will be highlighted on the others’ site:

{{Agency}}

{{Tech Partner}}

{{URL}}
‍

What target audiences you both are after:

{{Agency}}, {{Tech Partner}}

{{persona 1}}

{{persona 2}}

{{persona 3}}

‍

When credentials are going to be achieved, by when?

{{Credential}}

{{Date}}

When and how co-selling will be done:

{{description}}

{{link to your co-selling platform of choice i.e. Reveal}}

Exclusivity clause (for either party, if any: geo, client size, vertical):

**NOT recommended, but sometimes it's necessary...

{{Exclusivity}}

{{Expiration}}

Signatures:

Agency Representative:

By:

Signature

Name:

Title:

Tech Partner Representative:

By:

Signature

Name:

Title:

Partnerhub es nuestra plataforma gratuita para agencias donde puedes encontrar/administrar TODOS tus partners en un solo lugar. En este demo video podrás entender cómo funciona Partnerhub, todas susopciones y características. Además un breve intro a nuestro Agency Collective, una comunidad donde podrás presentar tu agencia, hacer networking y encontrareventos y cursos gratuitos.