Let Them Do It Themself or What Is a Partner Portal?

The Competition

It was a really nice autumn day—warm and beautiful. The phone rang on my desk. We used old-school wired phones because we needed to blend in with the locals, even though we were using internet telephony.

The guy on the other end of the line was one of our distributors who sold windows and doors. He called to inform us about another customer they had recently acquired from their showroom.

I carefully noted the address of the site, the name of the project, and other relevant details. After hanging up, I went to the estimator to hand over the project. She glanced at the project and silently opened a screen on her computer, only to show me that she already had that project from another salesman and another distributor.

This wasn’t the first time we faced this issue. Many of our distributors would come across the same clients and expect the best quote from us. It was a huge headache, and we didn’t know how to cope with it—until I stumbled across a customer portal solution.

The Solution

While I stood there at the estimator’s desk, I thought, “Why don’t we simply implement a Partner Portal where every distributor can file their project, and we would serve them on a first-in, first-out basis?”

The company that registered the lead first would be the only one granted the possibility to sell on that site. Period. That would be a simple answer.

What we didn’t have was a technical solution for that situation. I started researching the topic and even spoke to a few web developers until I contacted one of the local CRM solution providers.

They gave me a demo of a portal with a feature called “lead distribution,” which was exactly what we were looking for. Apparently, we weren’t the first company to face this issue, and the solutions were already out there—ready to be used.

What Is a Partner Portal?

When I still worked in sales before transitioning to a consultant role, I faced a lot of trouble working with partners, managing relationships, providing support, and ensuring partner engagement and compliance.

Discovering the partner portal saved us so many headaches. But it took a lot of time and effort to find those partner management solutions and even more time to implement them.

Thankfully, it’s much easier nowadays.

A partner portal is a tool specifically designed to handle all aspects of partner relationship management. Whether it’s lead distribution, support, product information, catalog and pricing updates, sales, or other business functions, the partner portal can manage it.

A partner portal brings a lot of self-service tools to your partners. Imagine getting the same question twice from two different partners—now you can simply answer it publicly in your partner portal so that all your partners can see the response.

Technically, it’s a website secured by a login and password unique to each partner. Partner relationship management tools give you granular control over what your partners see and even allow you to share specific vital information with certain groups of partners.

Partner Portal vs. Customer Portal

People often confuse partner portals with customer portals. The difference is subtle, but once you notice it, you’ll see that it’s significant.

A partner portal allows your partners to access confidential information that you wouldn’t want to share with your clients. Often, partners must register end customers in their portal to get insights, additional support, and extra discounts.

That kind of functionality draws a clear line between partner and customer portals.

A customer portal, on the other hand, is typically used to help serve end clients better. In a B2C business, that might include invoicing, warranties, and value-added services like product insurance. In a B2B business, it could involve reorder functionality, invoicing, or service inquiries. For a deeper understanding of customer portals and how they can streamline customer interactions, check out our comprehensive guide on how to create a customer portal. I’ve seen so many different variations of customer portals that the list of possibilities could fill another few pages.

In any case, partner and customer portals often go hand in hand, yet they are distinct.

Cutting Costs

Reflecting back on my time in sales, when we served our partners, we had a few people always on the phone. We developed templates to send out quotes, and our partners would follow up if a quote was delayed for some reason.

We basically kept three people busy answering questions that were already in our CRM system.

When I discovered the existence of partner portals, I realized that we could focus our team’s efforts on providing better customer service and faster quotes by simply removing people from the phones.

After implementing the partner portal, we only left one person on the phone to handle urgent inquiries. The rest was digitalized. Quote statuses, rebates, discounts, technical documentation, leaflets, photos, and other marketing materials all migrated to the partner portal.

Of course, it took a while—a shockingly long time, actually—to gather everything in one place and publish it on a password-protected website.

One discovery we made was that the images we shared over email were of really poor quality. We had to hire a photographer to take new images because we had somehow lost the originals.

Anyway, after the partner portal went live, we noticed that it got quieter in the office. Our hands were freed up, and the stress level decreased. Oh, and our branch’s P&L improved since we no longer needed those extra hands—however harsh that might sound.

A Place of Truth

Before we got the partner portal, a distributor would often call us to confirm quotes that were long past their expiration dates.

One day, a dealer called asking to purchase something we quoted a year ago. He claimed that he had “extended” the quote by phone with a salesman who had since left the company. We had to agree, of course, because we didn’t want to damage our relationship with that partner over a small project.

With the introduction of the partner portal, that became history. We now had a very clear status of each quote and its deadline. If a quote’s deadline was approaching, a distributor could click a button to extend its time, subject to our approval.

This brought discipline and reduced conflicts. It introduced rules to the game that everyone agreed to. For the dealers, it felt like it wasn’t us setting the quote expiration dates, but rather some sort of impartial “big brother” overseeing the business processes.

The partner portal software brings all your mission-critical data exchanged with existing partners into one place. It objectifies it, reducing the potential for misunderstandings. While it’s hard to measure this in monetary terms, it certainly makes relationships more transparent and sustainable.

Industry Standard

One of the best examples of a successful partner portal that grew into something big is Salesforce’s Trailhead, an educational platform and knowledge base for its partners. This is an example of a huge company with almost infinite resources, but bear with me—there’s an interesting story behind it.

In 2014, Salesforce launched a self-service educational platform for its partners. The idea behind the platform was to share the knowledge that Salesforce had accumulated over the years with its vast community of developers.

It started small, with only a few people joining. However, ten years later, 1.5 million people are actively participating in the community.

After Salesforce launched that platform, other market players followed, triggering a chain reaction. Now, in most industries, customers expect their partners to have some sort of self-service platform for educating their employees.

More and more industries are making self-service their standard.

Just look at the chemicals industry. Companies like Brenntag, which merely 10-15 years ago would trade traditionally over the phone and email, are switching their channels to self-service.

Or consider the mobile operators. I can’t name a single one that doesn’t have a self-service tool to change plans or at least view an invoice online. What was once a luxury only a decade ago is now the norm.

Use Cases

However, many still think partner portals don’t apply to their industry or use case. Let me quickly run through a few scenarios where a partner portal software could be extremely useful:

• Lead or Deal Distribution
• Custom or Complex Pricing
• Tracking of Projects or Opportunities
• Training and Certification
• Partner Onboarding
• Marketing Collateral Distribution
• Sales Performance Monitoring
• Incentive or Reward Programs
• Partner Support and Ticketing
• Order Management
• Co-Marketing Campaigns
• Partner Communications and Updates
• Access to Product Roadmaps
• Renewal and Upsell Tracking
• Partner Tier Management
• Resource Library Access
• Event Registration and Management
• Collaboration and Networking

The list goes on and on. You name it.

Partner Loyalty

Finally, I want to touch on a sensitive topic that I heard discussed in the corridors of a large consultancy firm.

A major construction supplier from France was losing around 3-5% of its revenue to a smaller competitor. The company was involved in construction site supplies, and its business model was based on leasing equipment to general contractors.

At some point, they started noticing a steady decline in their revenue and margins. Management attributed this to a general market decline, but that wasn’t true. What had actually happened was that a new player with a highly digitalized service had entered the market. General contractors realized how much easier it was to hire equipment through self-service.

You didn’t have to explain anything, you didn’t have to wait on the line, and you always knew when the delivery was happening in real time. Most importantly, you always knew who was delivering the gear that day and could give them a call.

A partner portal can easily become a massive competitive advantage in a developing market and could be your business’s Achilles’ heel if someone else does it faster or better.

Scalability

Before I wrap up, I want to share one case study we recently created.

A manufacturing company faced a massive issue: it had a huge and complex product catalog that only a few people knew how to operate. There were three sales engineers who knew how to calculate certain solutions, and this was a massive bottleneck for the company’s scalability.

What we did was implement a solution that guided partners through a set of questions on the portal and allowed them to choose from multiple options. Each option was carefully described and supplemented by a video.

While complex projects still went to experienced estimators, we were able to capture smaller projects that might otherwise have fallen through the cracks and gone to the competition.

The partner portal enabled the company to enter a completely new market segment without needing additional sales team resources. It helped achieve higher margin rates, streamline business processes, and provided a competitive advantage over rivals who were hesitant to embrace this new technology.

But most importantly, the company began offering more sustainable materials to the community. Before implementing their partner portal, only larger projects were considered for quotation, limiting their ability to promote sustainability.

Choose Wisely

So, now you know what is a partner portal. If you’re considering creating a partner portal, evaluating solutions, or simply need a pair of understanding ears, don’t hesitate to reach out. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, our small but mighty team is here to provide state-of-the-art support. We’re like a close-knit sports team—dedicated, agile, and ready to help you achieve your goals. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates and insights.

Cheers,
J.