Service partner

Great question! I recommend you spend time meeting with individual team members - the CSMs and support agents actually working with your customers - to get a better understanding of their day to day before trying to get them to leverage service partners. It's important to recognize how busy these teammates are already just trying to ensure customers are happy and they may not have immediate capacity to take on something new like leveraging a service partner. Once you do find teammates that have capacity, be sure to work with them to educate other teammates on the benefits they experienced while working with you to leverage said service partner.

Facts and data will help you prove the case. Showing a business case that supports reducing the costs to the business by off-loading services the partners can provide. Most internal support teams are limited with their resources so share how partners can take on those services to help them achieve their goals (retention, resolutions, call time etc). Also showing either in-house or industry data around retention of customers through partners. Normally better retention rates are possible through partners which means (in SaaS) billings continue longer and the CLV is more valuable to the company. Share how specific partners are driving value for your competition.  

I’ll answer this question with a question (annoying, I know.) What value does the customer success and support team get from service partners? This is a question that my team has been working on with our customer success team, all year. We’ve created workflows to incorporate partners into renewal and upsell conversations, or to help smooth out friction with customers experiencing challenges. But until you know how your CS/Support team perceives Partnerships, as well as what their needs are, it will be hard to drive adoption of service partners.

Good enablement is essential for anybody in your organisation to be able to leverage service partners.  The main objective of the enablement sessions should be that the teams have a good understanding of the value that partner will drive to their clients/prospects, are confident in how your teams would work together, and ultimately trust those partner to make them look good. 

Three things that can be done to help support this and build trust are; 

1. A strong joint value proposition
2. Multiple case studies with mutual clients 
3. identify the key signals that indicate that client or prospect could benefit from your services partners offering. 


1. Start by creating a customer success plan. This will help outline the goals and objectives of your customer success team, as well as how they can work with service partners to achieve these goals.

2. Make sure your customer success team is properly trained on how to work with service partners. They should understand the role these partners play in achieving customer success, and be able to effectively communicate with them.

3. Work with your service partners to create a strategy for customer success. This should include the services they offer, as well as how they can help support your customers’ success.

4. Cooperate with your service partners to measure customer success. This will help you track progress and ensure that both your team and your service partners are meeting the needs of your customers.

This is a bit tough to answer without more context. It depends if your CS team is designed to service accounts or not, and if that is an additional revenue stream for your company or not. 

Basically, you have to find an angle that a service partner either saves them time/work and improves the end product/experience for your users.

Figure out what their goals are and what challenges they experience. Then try and solve for those with your service partners.

Additionally, what data can you find to support how beneficial your service partners are? Do they have a higher Avg Sales Price (ASP)? Do they retain longer? Do they use more features? Give them quantitative data on top of qualitative data to build your biz case.

This can be tricky, but very doable. There are many ways to accomplish this, and one of the easiest is leveraging community. If your support uses a specific tool to chat with customers, for example, you could leverage AI to try to answer questions that the community has already answered. 

Also, usually service partners are usually the first line of defense for your customers and their questions. You can relieve support if you create special levels of support for your partners so they can better support their clients. Enable the partners to field their client's questions where possible. 


I'm assuming this question is asking about internal teams referring customers to service partners for services you don't offer directly (aka outbound referrals). In the spirit of the old adage "People will do what you pay them to do," pay them! Even small spiffs like $50 per qualified referral can go a long way toward creating momentum.

What's more, your service partners want those leads more than any other partner incentive, including cash, and they should be willing to pay you a commission just like you pay your partners commission for referrals they send to you. Those commissions should offset the cost of the spiffs, and then some, creating an additional incremental revenue stream that didn't exist previously. 

In addition to spiffs, proper enablement is key as well. Your internal teams need to know who the service partners, something about the services they offer, and the referral motion should be simple and easy so as not to create additional cognitive overhead in an already chaotic business environment. 

Treat your internal teams as you do your service partners – after all, they are your partners internally. What’s in it for them? How does working with a partner help them to achieve their objectives? If you don’t have clear answers to those two questions, then it won’t be clear to your CX org why they should leverage service partners either. 

Think about the types of partners you work with; what problems do they help you to solve? Service partners are generally filling a gap your CX org can’t provide for your customers. Lean into that.

For example, at PandaDoc our key integration partners are CRMs, so we rely on service partners that are experts in those CRMs to help our customers better adopt PandaDoc in their sales processes. We can’t expect our CX org to be experts in every CRM on the market, so leveraging service partners directly helps the CX org when it comes to customer product adoption, which in turn impacts retention. 

Enablement is also key here. If adding a service provider into your CX processes requires more manual work on the CX side, thereby causing friction and slowing down systems, then they will never work with your partners. You need to embed your partners directly into your existing processes, not add more work for your CX org. Creating enablement programs for both your internal teams and service partners allows you to define clear swim lanes for each party, enabling them to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Championing your CS team is key! The approach to all functions within an organisation is to drive value for customers and prospects. So service partners should always be thought of as an extension of our team. Defining a service package is something you should work with CS on, so there's full buy-in from the get go. 

There’s a few ways I like to work with CS:
1. Listening to their customer calls and understanding pain points so I know where service partners can fit in
2. Using partner marketing events to drive customer attendance and start to conversations with service partners
3. Introducing service partners before the deal closes, so they can support with any implementation or onboarding services


First of all, I recommend building a clear framework that defines the use cases for bringing service partners. Have an answer to the following questions: when to engage a service partner? How can a service partner bring value to the client? How can brining a service partner bring value to the CS team?

Second, make sure there's an easy process for CS teams to make partner referrals clear and easy. Having a "refer a partner" button that triggers the process from any tool your CS team uses can be helpful

Lastly, create incentives and recognition for the CS team. That's the only way you'll get them all onboard!

How can I get the customer success and support teams in my company to leverage service partners?

The best way to activate newly recruited partners is to have a pre-made 30-60-90 day plan with the partner, and to present the plan with them on the initial partner kickoff call. The beauty of having a solid 30-60-90 day plans is that it not only lays out the specific actions that are expected from both you and the partner during the first 3 months of the partnership; but it also puts DATES on these actions. When you put dates on actions, you avoid the risk of "things coming up" or "being put on the backburner" on both the partner's side and your side.

When I started to implement this with our partners, we saw partners start to bring on clients to our platform in a much shorter time than before. And, not only that, we were able to give the partner exactly what they needed in the timeframe that was best for them too.

Some things we include in our 30-60-90 day plans is putting a joint webinar on the calendar to promote Trainual to the partner's audience, creating custom content that shows affiliation of our partnership and helps to empower the partner's audience to make an easy decision about moving forward from our software, and having the partner think about the optimal way they can offer Trainual in their service offerings.

This is a fundamental question because you want to be sure that the Integrations work to getting a new partner up and running is bolstered by your commercial conversation. My advice here would be to focus on getting new partners excited about your company, the shared value your services will bring to your mutual clients, and ultimately, the commercial benefits they will receive by being and growing within your partner program. 

What we do @ Adjust is that the moment the PM qualifies the partner as worthy of an integration, simultaneously when Integrations is doing their work, we have the partner onboard onto PartnerPage (our Partner Marketplace). This provides them control over how they are presented to our client base about the brand exposure they hoped to achieve by partnering with us. Once the integration is live, we push the partner’s listing to public, and the PM managing the relationship will add them to our client-mapping tools to begin account mapping. 

For me, it's critical to provide newly recruited partners with a clear to do list, and a clear set of performance KPIs to work against. If you fail to provide clarity out of the gate on what is expected within your program, you may lose the opportunity to build any momentum causing the partnership to drop in priority for both sides.

Typically I would have categorised them into different tiers/groups. Some partners are more relevant for marketing, others for retention whereas some are all-round. Below an example for a top tier tech partner that is relevant for all departments of my organisation (not in order):

- Landing Page on Marketplace
- LinkedIn/Social Announcement
- Add into our monthly customer newsletter
- Setup an enablement session (both ways)
- Partner referral agreement (but this financial add shouldn’t be the primary driver!)
- Account mapping on both a macro level (partner manager to partner manager) but also a micro level (pairing of regions/vertical reps) when appropriate
- Mutual customer success story (this is of course dependant on if we have mutual customer at start or not - as you want months of joint value to display)
- Where possible but is prioritised.. giving introductions and intel to new tech partner :)

Once you have gone through the discovery phase and you have indicated a mutual partnership fit. The onboarding and enablement phases are extremely important. These phases will be different for all partners depending on your partnership goals. 

During the onboarding phase identify metrics to measure your success. This can be done through creating some kind of mutual success plan. Here you can share all enablement materials (one pagers, sales decks, case studies, stats) in one central hub. Include information on your ICP for them to refer back to. As well as indicate next steps to keep us on track. Setting a communication cadence as well as outlining communications methods will be critical as well. 

In a sales role, think about the attention to detail and level of dedication we provide our customers with during onboarding. We want to ensure these customers are set up for success from the beginning and a partner should be no different. 


I love working with new partners, when the excitement is high, and possibilities are endless. But you must have a plan to get partners to a predictable level of success, and that requires both plans and planning. 

I am a strong advocate of setting up joint success plans with partners, and creating a joint action plan that tracks your goals and the actions needed to achieve them. 

A joint success plan aka JSP can be part of partner software, or tracked on Box note so don't worry about the technical details, it's more important to connect and document both your partner goals, and your goals and the activities needed to achieve them. 

For example, if a partner wants to achieve 100K installs of your integrated solution, or driving $1M in revenue, document those goals and start to peel back the actions that each party will need to take to start to work towards achieving those goals. 

First, the starting point is to share information on how our product is used and what our strategic priorities are to make sure there is alignment while learning the same from the partner. The overlap is the most important part and dictates everything from the design of the technology underlying the partnership, the terms of the partnership, and the timeline. 

From there, issue instances of your product for the partner to get comfortable with our technology. In some instances at LaunchDarkly, we have had customers look to become a tech partner which helps knowing they are familiar with the product. In parallel, look at the overlapping customer base to see if you can learn about how customers are leveraging the two products together. At this stage there are a few questions worth looking into: is there a large number of overlapping customers? If not, are there significant customers that overlap or customers with sophisticated use of our product? Are customers using your products in ways that have overlapping capabilities or are the two products being used in very separate ways? 

From there, be responsive to the partner as they look to develop the technology. It's important to have humility and respect for partners - every team is resource-constrained and being responsive and easy to work with is important in moving things along even though deadlines may be missed. 

Once the partner is ready, have resources to collaborate around what a launch might look like and, depending on where the tech lies in your strategy, see what additional things you can do for more strategically important tech partners. Remember: prioritization of your ecosystem is key and not all partners are equal. 

From there, it's really up to the customers to decide the fate of the partnership and getting their feedback dictates what the next steps are. 

I like to break new activation into 3 phases: discovery, onboarding, enablement. 

During discovery your focus is gathering information needed to evaluate the partnership (and set rough targets), understand the partner’s goal, find overlaps in those goals with your own, and identify the correct point of contact/decision makers for partnerships activity. There may or may not be NDAs that need to be executed. Once initial conversations conclude, and you confirm the partner is a “good-fit”, agreements are typically signed.

Now we head into onboarding. This is when you will begin to set communication cadences, educate the partner on your platform/service/tool, and begin to share brand assets and resources. Partners are also typically provided access to portals and or slack channels (where applicable). Setting up an autoresponder can be extremely helpful in streamlining this process, but only use this method to deliver resources and walk the partner through basic onboarding steps. With anything else I would lean on making the communication more personalized — remember you are building a relationship with this partner. 

A sample sequence can look like this: 

Welcome message: Introduction to the program, share support contact information, reminder of benefits & expectations (aka goals)
Resources: How to access to access the portal, training materials, and partner resources available
Activity 1: Reminder to schedule training sessions
Activity 2: Booking a kickoff meeting
Resources: Samples of best practices (to reach agreed upon goals) and relevant resources

Most PRMs will have some functionality to help with this, but you can also always use an ESP like AWeber too.

Last, but not least, you will move the partner into the enablement phase. During this phase you will begin your normal outreach cadence. Activities typically include:  
Bi-weekly to Monthly check in calls (these should be more frequent earlier in the relationship or when a GTM activity is underway). You can also substitute calls for async emails or slack communications. I also recommend including partners on some sort of newsletter to provide feature updates, new opportunities, etc.
Announce the partnership (where appropriate)  
Plan and execute initial partner activity (this varies based on the type of partnership but blog swaps or webinars are a great place to start)
Revisiting partner goals and tracking progress against those goals (goals can range from completing training to new customer acquisition or a set number of connections to an integration.
Discuss areas for improvement, roadblocks, and any upcoming initiatives (from both your end as well as the partner’s)

I think it all starts with one mutual customer. If we can find one mutual customer and find a way to make their process more efficient using both of our technologies, and then find a way to document this in the form of a case study, we can use that story to build our mutual customer base up.

I think this depends on the partner type, but activation is a very important part of the partner journey just as it is with customers. This stage is great for aligning around technical plans, business objectives, and GTM launch plans. 

For managed partners, I would have a standard template to align on business objectives and GTM launches. This would include what the cadence of touchpoints is and KPIs for each side of the partnerships. Ensuring partner enablement content around the product and marketing side is strong also helps to kick off the partnership on the right foot.

For low touch/scaled partners, setting up automations and GTM enablement content can increase activation rates as can a well-designed partner portal.

For all partners, make sure to track inactivity or low performance of partners out of the gate, and put in place automation or direct contact that discovers and helps to fix the problem.    

When starting from scratch, target smaller partners with similar ICPs (ideal customer profile). You'll start getting a sense of what your IPP (ideal-partner-profile) then, you can rinse and repeat. 

A lot of times, referrals will be your best partners to work with or individuals that you meet in person (e.g., happy hours, dinner, conferences) 

Most people assume that a tiered partner approach works best: hold a carrot on a stick (e.g. the next tier of your partner program) and make the partner work for it. 

Assuming you done your diligence and the partner is relevant and capable to serve your customers, try to invert this approach:

Ask not what your partner can do for you. Ask what you can do for your partner.

Give first. Prove to them that your program is not all hype, but you can provide value to their business. Send them leads or make relevant intros.

It'll be much easier for your champion in the partner org to unlock resources for your partnership if they have the numbers to back up this investment.   

Getting to action and their first deal quickly will get that partner activated quickly. Depending on resources I like to have an “onboarding” guide or person to get them through the first hurdle of understanding your product. Make sure the program is spelled out simply and can be easily accessed so they know what they are getting/giving becoming a partner. Share best practices of your most successful partners. First you have to educate them and they have to commit to some education. You can make it light, in short snippets, and interesting (think video!). Once they educate, agree to help them get their first deal - perhaps give them one as a gift. You can also send them some cool swag for becoming a partner and taking the first education event. Create an incentive for that partner to sell their first deal or their first few deals. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Consistent touch points - stay in front of them with interesting industry information. Invite them to your communities. Again, give them exposure i.e. linkedin post welcoming them to the program with a little shout out to something they excel at in their space. 

The best thing a partner manager can do to activate newly recruited partners is to spend time with them.

I do my best to get on a 30-minute call with every partner I feel can have an impact on our program. Other methods we use, are making sure partners get certified so we are confident they know the product well, and making sure they have all the information. Another thing we’ve seen to be very successful is making sure they all end up in a Slack channel with our team and talking to each other. This gives them a sense of community and a place to go when they are unsure about something. 

For activating newly recruited partners: 
1. Define what "activation" is meaningful to you. 
2. Establish a checklist of how they can get there. 
3. Reward the partner at every step along the way: both completing the checklist and achieving activation. 

Let's use an example: 
1. A partner is considered activated when their integration has 10 users. 
2. To attract new users, partners should a) announce the new integration to their email list and b) make the integration discoverable in their product UI
3. Once the partner completes the email and in-product messaging, they get a lightweight co-marketing perk, a social media tweet about our partnership. Once they "activate", i.e. reach 10 users, they advance to the next tier of the partner program. 

It should come as no surprise that there is not a single go-to playbook for activating new partners. It's one of the most challenging--and arguably most important--motions for partner programs and every program I've worked with has wrestled with it.

It's very important to dial in your Ideal Partner Profile (IPP) and your Joint Value Proposition (JVP) for prospective partners, so you're not just standing on a street corner shouting "WHO WANTS REFERRAL COMMISSION?" to anyone who walks by.

Once you're confident you're talking to the right prospective partners and both parties are clear about the value they're both providing and receiving, then the next most important aspect is managing expectations. Be very clear with each other about the immediate next steps once the partnership agreement has been signed. Ideally there is existing partnership business that can be executed right away. If there isn't, be very clear about how you expect the partnership to function, and then follow up and address it if those expectations aren't met by either side. 

Kickoff & Alignment: Host a welcome call to align on goals, expectations, and success metrics. Share a clear partner enablement plan and resources.

Understand their business and how it functions: This is arguably the most important part of the initial conversations. The three main things I want to know is how they acquire, retain and upsell customers. This will help you understand what placements you'll be asking for (in-product, SPIFFs for sales, lifecycle email drips etc) in order to position yourself seamlessly within their normal operational processes. 

Training & Enablement: Provide a partner toolkit (guides, FAQs, use cases).
Deliver tailored training on your product, integrations, and value props.

Joint Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy: Collaborate on a GTM plan, including target segments, messaging, and co-marketing opportunities. Set up co-branded assets and campaigns.

Technical Setup: Ensure seamless onboarding for any integrations or APIs.
Offer support for technical alignment and testing. 

Incentives & Milestones: Establish clear incentives (revenue share, leads, bonuses). Define early activation goals and track progress.

Launch Support: Promote the partnership via announcements, webinars, or PR. Conduct joint customer outreach to drive adoption.

Ongoing Collaboration: Schedule regular check-ins to assess performance and address challenges. Share performance metrics, success stories, and feedback loops. 

Recognition & Advocacy: Highlight partner successes through case studies and testimonials. Foster loyalty through exclusive opportunities or events.

My recruitment playbook has been different for every company i have worked at but i do follow a basic structure. 
I try to draft out what a Partner journey looks like and start with these four stages: Attract, Recruit, Enable, Co-sell. I think about all the touch points that would be needed to successfully move a Partner along this process and also overlay any stakeholders required to make that happen.
This is a great session to run with a wider team from different departments that have a touchpoint with the ecosystem.

There will be some activities that are pretty standard such as onboarding, paperwork, access to resources, etc. but then there will be specific activities related to your solution and the type of partners you are recruiting. For example, a technology partner will likely require a number of steps across integration and validation of any connectivity and need a different type of enablement to a services based partner who will require more standard training and sales positioning material. Your co-sell steps will also be driven by how you position and sell directly. You can look at your new hire onboarding (in particular for SE's and Sales) for a framework of the sales enablement required to activate a Partner.

Activating newly recruited partners isn’t about onboarding them and hoping for the best, it’s about guiding them to their first win fast. A structured activation plan builds confidence, drives early revenue, and sets the tone for long-term performance.

Here’s the go-to activation playbook I rely on to get partners producing within their first 90 days:


1. 30-60-90 Day Activation Plan
Every new partner gets a time-bound plan with clear milestones—enablement, GTM alignment, and first deal execution.

2. Fast Start Training
Role-specific onboarding tracks for AEs, SEs, and CSMs. Training is concise, practical, and certification-driven.

3. Joint Value Prop + ICP Alignment
We sit down early to align on who we’re selling to, what problems we’re solving, and how to position it.

4. Partner Portal Walkthrough
Live session showing exactly how to use sales plays, register deals, request support, and access content.

5. Co-Sell Kickoff
We map accounts, build a target list, and launch a co-selling motion that gets pipeline flowing fast.

6. Success Criteria Defined Early
Partners know what success looks like # of registered deals, pipeline targets, and revenue goals right from day one.

7. Weekly Enablement Touchpoints
Regular check-ins, office hours, and deal coaching to keep momentum and build muscle.

8. First Win Recognition
We make the first closed-won a big deal. Public recognition builds internal momentum and motivates next steps.

When partners activate with structure and support, they become revenue producers—not just names in a portal. This playbook ensures speed, alignment, and repeatable success.

A strong go-to playbook should focus on engagement, enablement, and early wins to drive long-term success.

Phase 1: Onboarding & Enablement

Objective: Ensure partners understand your platform, see value, and start engaging with clients.

✅ 1. Welcome & Kickoff 

• Send a personalized welcome email with:

• A quick-start guide

• Access to the partner portal (if it exists)

• Host a 1:1 or group onboarding session

• Assign a Partner Success Manager (PSM)

🎓 2. Training & Certification 

• Self-paced learning paths (product knowledge, use cases)

• Technical certifications for key team members

• Sales & positioning training (pitch decks, objection handling)

• Host a live product demo and Q&A session

If the partner is actively engaged in this phase and you have an aligned ICP around the deals of focus that matter for you, it’s appropriate to invest more resources and time into hardening opportunities!

Phase 2: First Wins & Engagement

Objective: Help partners generate quick wins and become self-sufficient.

🔥 4. Hands-on Support for First Deals 

• Assign solution engineers to help with:

• First client demos & POCs

• Proposal & pricing guidance

• Offer deal registration incentives (discounts, bonuses)

📢 5. Co-Marketing & Lead Generation 

• Feature partners in your partner directory

• Provide MDF (Market Development Funds) for events or ads

🏆 6. Partner Recognition & Feedback Loop 

• Share success stories internally & externally

• Launch a joint marketing campaign (case study, webinar, blog, social posts)

• Invite them to a partner roundtable for feedback

• Offer badges & incentives for engagement (e.g., “Gold Partner”)

By now you have an engaged partner with experience on a client. This is so important, make sure you're getting to a deal with a partner and not keeping them on a roster with no experience for too long.

Phase 3: Scaling & Retention 

Objective: Deepen engagement and make them long-term advocates.

📈 7. Ongoing Support & Expansion

• Provide exclusive partner-only content & roadmaps

• Hold quarterly business reviews (QBRs)

• Introduce new service opportunities (custom integrations, managed services)

💡 8. Community & Thought Leadership

• Invite partners to speak at events

• Run a partner referral program

• Recognize top performers in a Partner of the Year Awards

🔑 Success Metrics to Track

1. Activation Rate – % of partners completing onboarding

2. Time to First Deal – How fast they close their first sale

3. Partner Engagement – Training completion, co-marketing participation

4. Revenue Contribution – Deals & upsells influenced by partners

5. Retention & Growth – Repeat projects and account expansion
The goal is to have partners with high engagement, fast adoption, and revenue growth. You can measure a lot of other measures of success, but those three will lead you to your best partners.

What is your go-to playbook for activating newly recruited partners?

I love this question mainly because this is an underserved area.

Partnerships at a PLG company are challenging, because customers can self-sign up without any touch point from Sales or partners, and there isn’t true visibility into the impact partners have on the revenue of the business. 

Ideally a PLG company should be able to show which partners have impact on which customer referrals and which partners are currently working with which customers. You need to be able to prove the impact Partnerships has on net new business as well as on retained revenue.

Here are some metrics you can rely on:

1. CSAT - basic but effective and easy to measure
2. Account health - harder to measure, but if you manage to prove that accounts that work with service partners are healthier and driving expansions or retention, everyone will be bough in
3. Influence in revenue - attribute a portion of the revenue when a service partner was involved in closing a lead

What metrics matter the most for PLG SaaS companies that are working with partners and trying to show the impact of their ecosystem of service partners?

You need to give partners materials that can easily show the results that their clients/customers can get by using their product. 

That could be slide decks, demo accounts (if you are a SaaS company), case studies, ROI calculators, etc.

For example, at Trainual, we give all of our partners access to a fully built out demo account that they can use to show their clients what their Trainual account could look like when its all built out. This has been super helpful because when leads can SEE the benefit that they can get from the software, they are more likely to purchase. And you want to make sure your partners can do that on their own without having to always pass it on to your sales team.

With that said, it raises this point: give your partners the same amount of sales enablement material that your sales team gets. Why? It makes it easier for the partner to sell the software for you, saves your team a ton of time from working leads, and you have a WARMER sell by a partner on your software. You almost have to think of your service partners as an extension of your sales team. And you wouldn't leave your sales team with less collateral than they need to do their job right.

Basically your sales training + implementation training docs. 
Not an exhaustive list... but here are some good tools: 

- Product feature deep dive
- Customer Case studies with the Value of your product front and center
- Competitor Battle Cards
- Implementation SOPs 
- Incentive plans for the partner
- Point of contact list for escalations with the right purpose and department



This really depends on what you are trying to achieve with these partners. However usually it is important to highlight an overview of your product / service, but remember to speak to that “better together story”. Really think about showcasing what your value is together to customers. You should also include information on how to communicate with each partner and any relevant resources they can use. 


 An overview of your product that shows value to your partner's customers, what to do when a customer needs support, and how to communicate with one another. 



Offer creation. Design pre-built offerings that your technology is at the center of that service partners can repackage to their customers with their services included.

This can be achieved in many ways. Here are some for you:
-Co-branded assets that enables them to sell as a partner (certification badge, branded pitch decks for your product, a page that lists them as partners, etc).
-Blogs that promote WHAT your partners are doing to make your customers successful. https://www.glideapps.com/blog/no-code-experts
-Social campaigns around what your partners are doing and how it’s impactful! Successful use cases can be really powerful here.
-Build something with your partners to close the gap of customers that aren’t converting. Be creative here. Example: We are testing a way to build for our enterprise customers directly with some of our partners. At Glide, we found that some inbound traffic of businesses fall off because they don’t want to build for themselves, but they want our product. This is a perfect example of creating a motion that speeds up the delivery of what the business wants: a custom software solution. 

Hope these help :)


To successfully go-to-market with service partners, here’s what you need to provide:

1. Onboarding training: clear training materials, an easy to follow onboarding guide, and certification programs to ensure they’re equipped for success.
2. Sales enablement: give partners the tools they need to confidently sell your solution (sales playbooks, pitch decks, and competitive insights).
3. Marketing collateral: offer co-branded assets, compelling case studies, and authentic customer testimonials that they can use to build credibility and engage prospects.
4. Partner Portal: create a resource hub with everything they need, including deal registration, support options, and more. 
5. Incentive programs: motivate with clear, attractive commission structures and tiered rewards to fuel their drive.
6. Co marketing plans: set them up for success with joint marketing templates and lead-generation campaigns that align with your goals.
7. Customer success support: equip partners with optimization kits and defined escalation paths to ensure smooth customer journeys.

By arming your service partners with these resources, you're setting them up for long-term success while creating a foundation for strong, effective partnerships.

To build a strong go-to-market (GTM) strategy with a service partner (design agencies, development firms, or solution integrators), you need comprehensive enablement materials that empower them to sell, implement, and support your SaaS product effectively. Start with partner onboarding guides that outline program benefits, engagement expectations, and success metrics. Next, provide training materials, including product deep dives, use cases, industry positioning, and a certification program to ensure technical and sales readiness. A sales playbook is crucial, detailing ideal customer profiles (ICPs), pain points, pricing models, objection handling, competitive differentiation, and proven sales scripts. Additionally, co-branded marketing assets—such as landing pages, case studies, email templates, social media toolkits, and webinar decks—help partners generate demand. To support deal execution, offer demo environments, proof-of-concept (POC) guides, and integration documentation, ensuring partners can showcase your product effectively. A deal registration process and incentives guide ensures partners are motivated to prioritize your solution, while contract templates and pricing calculators streamline proposals. Ongoing enablement webinars, office hours, and a self-service partner portal provide continuous learning and access to updated content. To track success, equip partners with performance dashboards and quarterly business review (QBR) templates to align on metrics and improvements. Ultimately, a well-structured partner GTM kit ensures service partners can confidently market, sell, and deploy your solution, driving mutual revenue growth.

What partnership enablement material do you need to build to go-to-market with service partners?

Winning over top-tier SaaS partners requires a program that stands out with undeniable value, seamless collaboration, and a distinct competitive edge. 

1. Unique Financial/Economic Benefits.
- Offer a higher recurring revenue share with possibly a longer payout. 
- Tiered incentives. 
- Make your payouts fast and transparent. Are monthly payouts possible? 
- Spiffs/bonuses for expediting deal flow. 

2. Superior enablement and support. 
- Frictionless onboarding and training. 
- Dedicated partner success team. 
- Personalized marketing and sales assets. 

3. Exclusive access and VIP perks. 
- Early bird access to new features and functionality. 
- Partner only community and networking. 
- Access to APIs and opportunity for integrations. 
- Slack channels? Direct access to PM cell phone? 

Always engage with partners to understand what they value most and how competitor offerings stack up. Tailor your offerings accordingly. 


I do not have a perfect answer for this but i do think that one of the most important factors when designing a Partner program is to think about it from the perspective of a Customer. 
If your customers find it really easy to differentiate between your Partners, find the right Partner to meet the challenge that they have and they have confidence in how you are categorising your Partners then that is usually the type of program that Partners want to be a part of. 
Making the program relevant to the wider industry and not just your ecosystem also helps make the program something that a Partner will promoter being a part of, an example would be to use industry terminology over your product terminology or make it clear how the two are the same.

- Any partner program should be seen as an offering to which the partner is a customer. Hence a clearly defined value propostion and articulation of that is a critical first step.
- Provide simple and easy to udnerstand growth path. Partners should be able to understand how to grow from a tier to another. And it's easy to operationalize too.
- Design and provide enablement that stays. Byte sinze information, access to it whenever they want, access to sandbox environments and demos as necessary. This all makes the life easier for the partners as they may have 10s of other platforms to work with as well.
- Partner Portal is a key tool to provide one window experience to all the partners. Layer it up with access to lead registration, MDF workflows along with dashboards for sales/renewals, marketing, learning and certifications, etc. Important templates and announcements could go in there too.
- Think of interactions between all your partners. Community for partners could be a strong platform for gaining and keeping the mindshare with them. Very important! Also, do manage the interactions and curate as necessary.
- Always check what the success metrics for the partners are and how you have been and will continue to contribute to those. Business environments evolve rapidly and it's important to stay relevant to the partner's success. Stay maniacally focused on delivering a simple, consistent, and remarkable partner experience.
- Evolve your partner program as your offerings, GTM approaches, partner's expectations, etc. evolve. Partner programs are never launch once and forget.

How do we differentiate our partner program from competitors to attract top-tier partners?

In SaaS partnerships, you'll typically want a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives to drive activation, engagement, and referrals. 

Monetary incentives: 
1. Rev share/commission. Offer partners a percentage of revenue from referred customers. 20% for year one and 10% for year two is currently what Opensend is offering partners. 
2. One-time bounties: payouts for actions like helping your team book a demo. 
3. Performance Bonuses: Increasing rewards based on volume or performance (e.g., higher commission rates after X referrals or extra bonuses for hitting revenue milestones).
3. Discounted or Free SaaS – Offering free or discounted access to your software as a benefit for active partners. Opensend provides referring partners with a free B2B account. 
4. Exclusive promotions for their clients. Enabling partners to offer unique discounts to their customers as a selling point.

Non monetary incentives: 
1. Dedicated Partner Support & Account Management – Offering VIP support, direct access to an account manager, or a dedicated Slack channel.
2. Early Access to New Features: giving partners a first look at new features before public release.
3. Co-Branding Opportunities: featuring partners on your website, case studies, or allowing them to co-host webinars and content.
4. Tech Integrations & API Access: supporting deep technical integrations that give partners more opportunities to offer more comprehensive solutions.

Best practices for incentivizing activation and ongoing engagement: 
- Make the process as easy as possible to start. 
- Gamify engagement. 
- Frequent check ins and ongoing enablement. 
- Continuous feedback loops. 


Motivating partners isn’t just about throwing money at the problem. The best channel programs blend monetary and non-monetary incentives that drive behavior, build loyalty, and scale partner-led growth.

Here’s the incentive structure we use to activate new partners and keep them engaged over time:

Monetary Incentives

1. Fast Start SPIFFs
We offer bonus payouts for the first 1–3 deals closed within the first 90 days. This accelerates time to first win and creates urgency post-onboarding.

2. Tiered Referral Bonuses
Not all partner contributions are equal. We reward sourced deals at a higher rate than influenced or co-sell deals to reinforce outbound partner motion.

3. Performance-Based Rebates
Quarterly accelerators tied to pipeline creation, deal volume, or revenue thresholds help drive sustained performance beyond one-time wins.

4. MDF (Marketing Development Funds)
Partners who hit activation or performance thresholds earn MDF to run co-branded campaigns. This reinforces partnership and funds scalable pipeline growth.

Non-Monetary Incentives

1. Exclusive Leads or Co-Sell Privileges
Top-performing or certified partners get early access to qualified leads or participate in co-sell motions—clear value in exchange for engagement.

2. Recognition & Badging
We highlight high-performing partners across newsletters, webinars, and our portal. “Top Partner” badges build credibility and FOMO in the ecosystem.

3. Executive Access
Strategic partners earn access to roadmap briefings, planning sessions, and feedback loops with our leadership team. It deepens alignment and trust.

4. Certification Rewards
We gamify enablement. Partners who complete certifications earn swag, event invites, or featured directory placement—turning learning into leverage.

Why This Works:
Short-term SPIFFs create urgency. Long-term incentives build momentum. Recognition builds community. And executive access deepens strategic alignment.

This layered approach ensures partners stay motivated from activation through to sustained success.

What kind of incentives (monetary and non-monetary) do you offer partners to get them to activate (as well as to motivate them to engage with the program/refer new business on an ongoing basis)?



- Get important info from your prospective partners in advance -- even using a tool like "Calendly" you can ask prospective partners to answer a series of questions before they can book a first conversation with your team. Their answers to these questions should help you pre-evaluate their fit for your partner program, and help you get right into the nitty gritty in the first call.

- Fast-track "legal" process: depending on your organization, there can be ways to speed up partner program contracting by encouraging partners to sign a pre-signed and unedited version of your contract.

- Incentivize partners to leverage self-service onboarding resources: when necessary, you can withhold access (i.e. direct account team interlocks, access to resources like partner funding) to partners until or unless they complete certain onboarding steps or meet minimum requirements

- Spin up a dedicated Slack / Teams channel on day one, and let bots push automations on reminders, surface FAQs, and routine updates.

- +1 on the legal pack: deliver every required document in a single drop the moment contracting begins (if possible) - no slow drip of paperwork.

- Might sound obvious, but not often thought through: You could enlist veteran partners as “onboarding sponsors.” as they already know your playbook, and can ramp newcomers for a fee as well as deepen their own value in your ecosystem.

Contentful Director, Partnerships EMEA & Asia, Kristin Montag Brownon Partner Program Strategy

What is your go-to playbook for activating newly recruited partners?

How can I get the customer success and support teams in my company to leverage service partners?

What partnership enablement material do you need to build to go-to-market with service partners?

How do we differentiate our partner program from competitors to attract top-tier partners?

What are some non-obvious ways to speed up partner onboarding?

What metrics matter the most for PLG SaaS companies that are working with partners and trying to show the impact of their ecosystem of service partners?

What kind of incentives (monetary and non-monetary) do you offer partners to get them to activate (as well as to motivate them to engage with the program/refer new business on an ongoing basis)?

What’s the number one thing you look for in a partner when you're recruiting? What are your non-negotiables?

How do you handle a once high-flying partner, who is no longer performing at the same levels ?