A channel partner program your partners actually sell through
For B2B companies with complex products that sell through resellers, distributors and integrators. Your sales team can only be in so many meetings, so we design the roles, onboarding, training and partner portal that get signed partners bringing you deals.
- Red Dot Design Award
- 40+B2B companies
- 5ventures built
- MITDesign Lab background
Partners sign up. Then nothing happens.
The agreement is signed and their logo is on your website, but the partner still can't explain your product to their own customers. Nobody told them who to call, what to pitch or what they earn when they close.
A complex product doesn't sell itself. Through a partner, it rarely sells at all.
Everything a partner needs to sell for you
Roles and tiers
Reseller, integrator and referral roles, each owning a defined part of the sale. Tiers give your best partners a reason to do more.
Margins and deal registration
Margin bands, incentives and registration rules that pay partners properly without undercutting your direct team.
Onboarding modules
Step-by-step onboarding and training that get a new partner to their first qualified conversation, not just their welcome email.
Partner decks and pitch story
Presentations, a pitch story and website copy their salespeople can use without ringing your engineers.
Partner portal
One login for training, current decks and deal registration. We build it too.
From your business model to a working channel
- 01
Understand the business
Your offer, your market and where partners add to your sales strategy rather than dilute it.
- 02
Define the partner
Ideal profile, segments, tiers and where partners sit in your sales process and your customers' buying.
- 03
Write the blueprint
One model for roles, incentives, governance and communication, signed off by leadership, sales and marketing.
- 04
Build the assets
Onboarding modules, training, sales material and the partner portal.
- 05
Launch, then keep going
We train your team to run the channel and refine the program on real deal data. Launch is the halfway mark.
New countries, same pitch
Local partners bring relationships that would take you years to build, which makes them the quickest way into a new market. We design programs that travel, so every partner, in every region, pitches you the same way.
Viking AnalyticsFrom logos on a slide to partners who sell
Our channel partner methodology has been used by more than 150,000 people worldwide, including teams at Canon and Tele2 IoT.
Hard-to-explain products, partners who can explain them
The time and energy from Daniel and his team in designing and stress-testing the [partner] program over a number of months has helped us to grow internationally at pace, and our results in our first year are testament to the fantastic job they did.
Bruce AdamsCommercial Director, Spirit Health
Related work
What a partner program takes, in six answers
What is a channel partner program?
A channel partner program is the structure that lets resellers, distributors, integrators and referral partners sell your product: who each partner is, what they own in the sale, how they're paid, how they're onboarded and trained, and where they find material and support. Without it, partners sign up but rarely sell, especially when the product takes some explaining.
How long does it take to design a partner program?
Designing a partner program takes as long as there is to build. At Viking Analytics, the partner program ran as one of three workstreams in a nine-month engagement. Our published projects have run from one month to over a year. After a first call we can tell you what your program needs and roughly how long it should take.
Can you build the partner portal as well as the strategy?
Yes, we design and build partner portals as well as the program behind them. For CapillaryFlow we built a partner portal within a wider engagement that also covered a rename, one website for four verticals and a monitoring product. A portal typically holds training, current sales material and deal registration: the tools partners use day to day.
How do you train partners to sell a technical product?
Partner training for a technical product is written for the partner's salesperson, not your engineers. We produce onboarding modules, a pitch story, partner presentations and answers to the technical questions buyers actually ask, so a partner can run a first meeting without pulling in your team. We also train your internal team to activate and support partners after launch.
Do you stay involved after the partner program launches?
Yes. We work alongside your in-house team and stay through adoption after the partner program launches. We help you measure partner performance, set up feedback loops with partners and refine the program based on what is producing deals. CapillaryFlow describes working with us for four years.
How do we get started with a partner program?
Book a call and tell us where your partner channel is today: how many partners you have, what they sell and where it stalls. We'll tell you what a structured partner program would change and what we would do first. Up Strategy Lab is based in Gothenburg and works with clients across Europe, the US and Asia.
Tell us where your partners are stuck
Pick a time, bring your partner list and we'll go through what's getting in the way. You'll leave knowing what we would fix first.