Nearly half of companies take 30+ days just to 👀 onboard a partner.
Here is an onboarding checklist to make the process repeatable, simple to follow and shared,
so your partners can easily update you as they progress.
💡 It's also included in 15+ templates from the best SaaS partnership teams that you’ll shortly find in Flows - partner workflow builder in Partner Insight. [screenshot attached]
💰 And now back to principles of successful partner onboarding
Engagement and speed are key to make #partnerships successful, and therefore the “time to the first value” in a partnership should be 90 days or less ideally.
You don’t need to start generating revenue from the get go necessarily, but it’s essential to show to both companies first signs that this will work and has potential to create great results.
The best partnerships are done in many tiny steps, but they keep momentum growing.
Without momentum, excitement fizzles out and everyone starts to think “okay, this is actually a partnership for our press release” or “another nice logo for our investor deck.”
🚩 I’m sure you’re not in a group that takes more than a month to onboard a partner, but you still might consider partner onboarding more seriously, as the average time is 23 days.
✔️ A few high level ideas:
Turn every repeatable process in a template.
Treat every partnership like a micro startup.
Start simple, move fast and add details as you see signs of success.
✔️ Agree on a high level KPI, rev share and roadmap with key milestones. You'll be adjusting your strategy of course, but you need to have one to begin with.
✔️ Connect both teams by sharing points of contacts from sales and marketing and engineering, so your partners get support if they need. Partnership team could be a gatekeeper on all things partnerships in the beginning, but as the program scales , your internal team typically starts engaging with partners directly more.
✔️ Share key marketing and sales enablement materials and templates they might need.
✔️ Keep both teams engaged by sharing success stories and small wins monthly.