Partnership agreement

Noun

[part-nur net-work]

A partner network is a SaaS vendor's group of affiliates, referral partners, and/or reseller partners. These partners help to market and sell the vendor's product, receiving different commissions or cuts based on their partner type and agreement.

Some vendors will have only one kind of partner in their network (for example, if they only have an affiliate program), and some will run more than one kind of partnership within their network (for example, having both affiliate and referral partners). Vendors are responsible for providing their partner network with the required training, resources, certifications, and incentives required for the partners to market and sell their products.

Example: Lookwin runs an affiliate partner program and a referral partner program. Their partner network consists of every company involved in either program, whom they support with required education to sell their product and reward with commission payouts for sales and leads.

A partner relationship management (PRM) software is a tool designed to facilitate the partnership experience from end-to-end. It is primarily used by partners to drive traffic, leads and deals to a vendor, and by a partner manager and their team to manage their partner relationships as well as support their partners.

Most PRMs should be enable resources sharing between the two parties. It should also provide communication tools, relevant analytic dashboards, as well as link tracking and lead/deal submission tools.