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

Some things that have worked for us and generated one of the most powerful ecosystems in our space are: - Partner-specific support SLAs - Regular scalable communication (newsletter, quarterly partner update webinars with sr. leadership) and award ceremonies to celebrate successes and build more credibility around the expertise of your partners - Valuable certification training with badges that increase the person’s value and strengthen your partner’s credibility - Be partner-first and offer product extensibility so partners can build on top of your platform - Include partners in your company strategy (include them in thought-leadership pieces, make them part of your own events, co-present at conferences, invite them to your kick-off, run partner advisory boards… anything you do as a company, you should think, how do I include partners in this) - Offer powerful Marketing Development Funds that incentivize partners to reinvest the gained budget into very targeted GTM activities to grow the joint partnership even further

- 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.

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.

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.