As a Partnership Manager, you know how important it is to build and maintain strong relationships with your partners. You also know how challenging it can be to manage multiple partners, track their performance, and provide them with the support they need.
That’s why you need the right tools to help you streamline the partner management process and drive more impact for the business. In this blog post, I’ll share with you the tools that I use in my day to day job role, and why I use them.
LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, and a great place to find and connect with potential partners. I use LinkedIn to build my audience, to boost my personal brand, to research my partner prospects, see who they are connected with, and reach out to them with personalized messages.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool that enhances your LinkedIn experience and help me find and engage with the right partners. With Sales Navigator, you can:
- Use advanced search filters to find partners based on industry, location, company size, and more.
- Save and organize your partner leads in lists and get alerts when they post or change jobs.
- Get insights and recommendations on how to best approach your partner prospects.
- Send InMail messages to anyone on LinkedIn, even if you’re not connected.
- Track and measure your partner outreach activities and results.
CRM – HubSpot or Salesforce
A CRM (customer relationship management) tool is essential for managing contact pipeline and sales activities. A CRM helps you:
- Store and organize contact data, such as information, communication history, and deal status.
- Automate outreach and follow-up activities, such as sending emails, scheduling calls, and creating reminders.
- Monitor and analyze sales performance, such as revenue, conversion rate, and retention.
- Collaborate with your team and share your insights and feedback.
There are many CRM tools available, but two of my favorites are HubSpot and Salesforce. Both of them offer features and integrations that are tailored for partner management.
PRM – PartnerStack or Allbound
A PRM (partner relationship management) tool helps you manage your partner program and optimize your partner experience. A PRM helps you:
- Create and customize your partner program, such as defining your partner tiers, benefits, and requirements.
- Recruit and onboard your partners, such as creating landing pages, forms, and workflows.
- Train and enable your partners, such as providing them with content, tools, and certifications.
- Engage and motivate your partners, such as sending newsletters, surveys, and gamification.
- Track and reward your partners, such as generating reports, dashboards, and payouts.
Some of the best PRM tools in the market are PartnerStack and Allbound. Both of them offer features and integrations that are designed for partner management, such as Partner Marketplace and Playbooks.
Account Mapping tool – Crossbeam or Reveal
An account mapping tool is a tool that helps you identify and leverage the overlaps and opportunities between your partner accounts and your own accounts. An account mapping tool helps you:
- Connect and sync your CRM data with your partner’s CRM data, and see which accounts you have in common, and which ones are unique to each of you.
- Segment and prioritize your partner accounts, based on criteria such as deal size, stage, and potential.
- Coordinate and align your partner activities, such as co-selling, co-marketing, and referrals.
- Measure and improve your partner impact, such as revenue, pipeline, and customer satisfaction.
Some of the best account mapping tools in the market are Crossbeam and Reveal.
I personally use both because I work with some partners who use Crossbeam and others who use Reveal. Despite some differences they both work well, smooth and intuitive.
Visual suite for Content Marketing – Canva
Canva is the tool that I use to create engaging and attractive contents. With Canva I design and edit all my contents, such as logos, flyers, carousels, infographics, and presentations, using templates, icons, fonts, and images.
These contents are useful both for direct sharing with Partners, for internal use, and for posting on corporate and/or personal social channels.
Canva offers features and integrations that are suitable for partner management, such as Canva Pro, which allows you to create a brand kit, access premium contents, and collaborate with your team and partners.
Create video tutorials – Screencastify or Loom
These kind of tools helps you create and share video tutorials with your team and partners.
For example, you can:
- Record and edit your video, such as capturing your screen, webcam, and audio, and adding annotations, captions, and transitions.
- Share and embed your video, such as uploading to YouTube, Google Drive, or Dropbox, or sending via email, chat or link.
- Watch and interact with your video, such as playing, pausing, skipping, and commenting.
Of the ones I tried, I got along well with Screencastify and Loom.
Manage tasks and projects – Basecamp
Basecamp helps both at the level of work organization within the team and for the individual. It can be useful for managing activities and projects with the team and partners.
- Plan and organize your tasks and projects, such as creating lists, boards, and calendars, and assigning deadlines and responsibilities.
- Communicate and collaborate with your team and partners, such as chatting, commenting, and sharing files and documents.
- Track and report your progress and results, such as creating charts, graphs, and status updates.
Conclusion
This list of tools can be inspiring, but the value of the content lies in the activities I mentioned.
To summarize, there are many tools, try them out and make your own experiences, but try to be well organized to give the Partner a comprehensive, seamless and frictionless experience.