Article · 14 min read

Building a B2B SaaS Partner Program: Our 8-Step Process

Amy Copadis · Close Free Beginner

A small company showing its own numbers: their partner manager took the program from under 4% to 10% of revenue in a year on 20% of his time, which is a realistic target to plan against.

  • Close grew partner revenue from under 4 percent to 10 percent in under a year with one manager spending 20 percent of his time on it.
  • Close pays 10 to 20 percent recurring commission per new paying customer; Teamwork's tiers scale to 40 percent past 50 referrals.
  • Suggests a healthy SaaS partner program eventually drives around 30 percent of revenue.
  • Start with an application form and a payout tracking process before recruiting at any volume.
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It answers 5 questions

  1. I have just been handed partnerships as my job. What do I do in the first 90 days?
  2. A reseller has signed. How do I make them actually productive?
  3. What margin should we give partners, and how do we stop channel conflict?
  4. How do I design a partner program from scratch: tiers, margins and enablement?
  5. What operations do I need behind channel: deal registration, PRM, attribution?

Read with it

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