Creating a great partnership program takes a little more than first meets the eye. It involves nurturing trust and fostering a symbiotic relationship. In many ways, it mirrors the dynamics of a personal relationship—where trust and reliability is crucial.
Picture this: You loan your favorite sweater to someone, believing in their commitment to return it as promised. But then weeks go by, and your cherished possession is still nowhere to be seen. You ask about its whereabouts only to hear more unfulfilled promises or worse, complete silence. The frustration and disappointment are feelings anyone can relate to.
It’s a scenario that bears a striking resemblance to the challenges commonly met in developing business partnerships. When a partner extends a customer referral, they wait in anticipation to see how it will unfold, excited about the positive impact on their customer’s needs. Usually, Partner Managers dutifully initiate the process by documenting the referral in Salesforce and expressing gratitude to their partners. All appears well on the surface.
Yet, in practice, partners often find themselves let down. Maybe they don’t receive updates on the progress of the referral or the customer’s status. Partner Managers, grappling with the demands of managing multiple partners and identifying new opportunities, inadvertently neglect to maintain open lines of communication. But ideally, partnership endeavours should be highly collaborative in nature.
Fortunately, there is a solution at hand—a Partner Portal.
The Partner Portal
Here at Cognota, we value our partners and want them to be just as involved in the sales process as we are. After all, we’re in this together.
That’s why we implemented our very own Cognota-branded Partner Portal. We provide our partners with clear visibility into all of their referrals, so they can see for themselves if we’re able to solve the customer’s problem and what stage they are at in the process. Partners can log in at any time, submit a referral, use their very own tracking link and see where all of their other referrals stand.
Since we integrate everything with our internal sales systems, our Partner Managers don’t need to spend time jumping between spreadsheets and manually updating partners. Instead, they can focus on answering questions, and strategically important activities like co-marketing opportunities—win/win!
Rest assured, your sweater—in this case, your partnership—is in capable hands. Our Partner Portal ensures you can monitor the customer journey with us and trust that they will be handled with care.
Interested in partnering with Cognota? Join leading L&D providers like Bluewater, Schoox and Xyleme to drive value together with our Partnership Program.
