Glide Apps Head of Experts, Brett Haralsonon Partner Program Strategy

This is a good question! There is a difference between marketing with your partners to win together and marketing your partners to increase revenue. It’s very important to never treat your partners as a revenue source. They are your partners - that word is there for a reason. I have seen some programs fall apart when partners begin to feel used. Always remember: They don’t work for you. They have chosen to use you, and they can choose not to use you, too.

TLDR: Ask them, listen, and build what they need. I love this question, but there is no simple answer here because the answer will be different for every organization. The method to discovering this, however, is pretty standard. You need to ask them what they need. They will tell you exactly what they need from your platform to be more successful. The key is to listen and build (within reason) what they are asking for - and also listen to their business workflows. Building what they ask for and gating it behind “joining” the program will give you the best results. Example: The #1 thing that Glide Experts asked for when I first joined Glide was a way to receive revenue sharing for existing Glide users. To give a little context, when I first joined the only way to get revenue was if someone used a sign-up affiliate link. There wasn’t any real way to have revenue sharing for teams that already had a Glide account. So - I built this into Glide, and now if you join the Experts Program you get automatic revenue sharing on teams you join. Long answer - but I hope it helped. ;)

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.

This is a fantastic question - and I love this. Start your Partner Program, and detail what they get for joining. What’s in it for them? Remember: all of this can be inspired by them! You can see how I structured Glide’s Expert Program here: https://www.glideapps.com/experts-program “Certified” will require some level of education and a pass/fail test. The easiest way for this is to build education around your SAAS with learning components. I would also add one more condition here - something that requires your partners to have "skin in the game". For example, to become a Glide Certified Expert you need: -Pass the highest level of certification from Glide University -Upgrade 3 clients to a paid team OR purchase the Agency plan You can see here how I made it clear on how to be a Certified Expert here: https://www.glideapps.com/docs/reference/account/experts One side note: The design of a whole and complete partner program takes time. You DO NOT have to build it to completion for a launch. Build it as you go, and always test to see if they are adopting and make adjustments on the fly. The more they are asking for more features and perks - these become your roadmap for level 2. I’ve been at Glide for a year now - and I only have 2 levels to the Experts Program. Level 3 will probably come this year.

I couldn't just list 3! Sorry! :D 1: Ask what they want. It’s great to have some ideas, but validate with your partners. Ask them what would be interesting, what do they need to grow their business? What can you do to help them grow? Where are they struggling? If you could change one thing with a magic wand, what would it be? 2: Find your stars. Find your IDEAL partners and create a very close relationship with them. Involve them with everything and start EVERYTHING with them. This is needed for the next one. 3: Create an online community. This is so valuable - I cannot stress this enough. We could have an AMA by itself on how to do it - but this could be the main source of value for your company in the coming years if done correctly. This is important because you want them to connect with each other and provide a feedback loop to you. This is how you guage interest in ideas, have discussions about what you might implement, and a great place to celebrate feature releases to an audience that is as excited about it as you are. 4: Build what they need. I answered this in another question - but this is critical. When you ask what they want, listen. When you announce a feature request that was inspired by them - tell them it was their requests that kicked this into production. Their feedback should be your roadmap - and they NEED to know it. 5: Don’t over-promise. It’s really hard to take a perk away once you’ve given it. Start small - and if you want to increase a perk you can always add it later to a higher tier.

There are a lot of different tools for a partner program and it depends on which aspect or perk of your program you need to enable. There are many tools to provide revenue sharing, like PartnerStack. PartnerPage is a tool you can use to create a marketplace for your partners to get matched with users, for example. You need: -A way to communicate with them. Could be email, could be community, could be both. -A way to execute what you offer them. If you say you are giving a benefit make sure you deliver here and have a way to do it. -A way to track the growth of your partners to measure your success. What are your metrics? What are you looking to accomplish, and what does the finish line look like?

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 :)