Can someone share some insiders on what a basic program for tech partners should entail?

A basic program for tech partners: 1. Agreement: don't make enemies with your legal team! Have a basic agreement in place that governs your tech partner program. 2. Documentation: Publish high-quality API documentation and help articles to guide tech partners as they build with your product. 3. Enablement: Share training materials customized to your partners on your product and partner program. 4. Support: Create an open line of communication to provide ongoing support to partners, via email, office hours, or recurring syncs. Once you have these basics, you may consider evolving your program to include additional support, tiers/perks, and more. Also consider why your company and customers need tech partners and how that might inform the non-negotiables of a basic program for you.

From my experience, you want to make sure you have great documentation and support for potential integration partners. At SmartSuite, we create a Slack channel with every company that is working on an integration with our product and they have direct access to our product teams and CTO. For the go-to-market aspect of integrations, we have a repeatable playbook on how we market new integrations to our existing customers, and what we expect the integrating company to do to introduce the integration to their users. Typical go-to-market motions for integrations are blog, email newsletter, social posts, help articles, webinar on how to get started, posts in the community and partner slack channel, etc.

Some basic building blocks are: -API documentation -Partner signup page -Dev Ecosystem [sandbox, docs, dev support channel] -Marketing, revenue share expectations upfront. -Streamlined legal process Don't sleep on the value of a really smooth legal process. Partner contracts can be time-consuming and painful, but if you set expectations upfront, on things like redlining, non-negotiable terms, and turnaround time, you will maintain good partnership velocity.

Is there an easy way to categorize your partners (type/ region/ integration/ size)? If so, do so and build a program around that but always remember to tie it back to the original goal of your partnership organization. The vast majority of your partners are not going to be sending you business every day, and that is okay. Building out a program allows you to satisfy the needs of the majority while also focusing the majority of your efforts on strengthening the relationship of a handful of key partners that are driving the results you are being evaluated on.