Using Lead submission

Who is this article for?

This article will be useful to you if are using PartnerStack to accept leads submitted by your partners.

Lead forms are a great tool that allow your partners to submit potential leads for your business.

Lead forms can be enabled and customized on a group-by-group basis allowing you to customize your partner experience to suit your program needs.

What are lead forms?

Leads are prospective customers submitted by partners. Partners provide you with a prospective customer's details allowing your internal team to work to close the lead. Enabling leads allows you, the company, to interact with and action leads submitted by your partners. 

Lead forms are only available on certain plans. If you are unsure if you have access to lead forms or would like to discuss enabling them, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or email Support@PartnerStack.com.

Creating lead forms

Lead submission is enabled on a group-by-group basis. This allows you to personalize your lead forms to best match your and your partners' needs.

To create a lead form:

1. Log in to your PartnerStack account
2. Select "Groups" in the menu on the left
3. Navigate to the group you wish to enable lead forms for, and click on it to open it up
4. Select "Lead submission" from the tabs along the top
   1. If you do not see the Lead submission tab, the leads feature has not been enabled for your account. Please reach out to your CSM for more information
5. Select "Create a new lead registration form" or "Copy a lead registration form from another group". If copying a lead registration form, select the group from the drop-down
6. Click "Continue"
7. Enable lead registration for this group by clicking the right-hand toggle
   
8. Optional: Give your lead form a title and description to give your partners more information
9. Follow the steps below to customize your lead form fields and gather specific information from your partners

Customizing lead forms

Once you have created or copied a lead form for your group, you can customize the form to meet your group's specific needs.

A newly created Lead form will have pre-populated fields to help you get started. Of these pre-populated fields First name, last name, email address, and company are required to be on the form and cannot be removed but can be re-labeled by editing the field. 

You can add any amount of additional fields. You'll notice that you can select if the field is "required" or "hidden".

• Required: The application form cannot be submitted without being filled out.
• Hidden: The field is not visible on the partner side of the lead form, but it is visible when reviewing leads and can be filled out then. Hidden fields can be used to pass information into your CRM if you are integrated with one.

To add an additional field:

1. In the Lead form fields section click "Add form field" 
   
2. In the drawer view that opens select the field type
3. Enter the field's Label, this will be visible to the partner and describes the information you are looking for
   1. If using drop-down or checkboxes, enter the various options partners can choose
   2. Select field types will also allow you to "Set a default value" if you would like a default value to be visible to the partner
4. Under Additional Settings select if the field is required, or hidden (hidden fields will not be shown to partners) 
5. Click "Add field"

There are 11 different input types that can be used to collect information on lead forms:

1. Input: a small text field
2. Email: the lead's email address
3. Textarea: a larger text field
4. Dropdown: create a list of options the partner can choose from
5. Checkbox: a toggle option
6. Country: creates a dropdown list of all countries to be selected from
7. Region: a small text field that can be used to collect state/province/city information
   1. Only available if "country" field is used
8. Date: a date entry field
9. Currency: the currency of the lead
10. Number: a number entry field
11. URL: a valid URL entry field

Editing an existing field:

1. In your group's Lead Submission tab, scroll down to view your Lead form fields 
2. Click on the Type of the field you would like to edit
3. In the Edit form filed window that opens, change the field type, or label
4. Click "Update field"

Disable lead submission

Once you have created your lead form you can click the toggle on the right-hand side to disable or re-enable lead submission for your group. Clicking "Reset lead form" will delete your current lead form settings and bring you back to the start of the lead form creation process.  

Creating leads on behalf of partners

To help partners succeed you may want to submit leads on their behalf. This can be done in bulk using the lead importer, or in-app in your Referrals > Leads tab.

The importer best practices support guide and importer technical docs have more information on bulk importing leads.

To create a lead in-app:

1. Navigate to your Referrals > Leads tab
2. Click "Create lead"
3. Search for and select the partner or partner team member you would like to assign the lead to
   1. Note: Once you have created a lead, the lead cannot be reassigned to a different partner or partner team member
4. Enter your lead details
5. Select the "Notify this partner by email when the lead is created" check box if you would like to notify the partner upon lead creation
6. Click "Create lead"

If you choose to notify the partner, they will receive the following email when a lead has been created:

Partner lead importing

If enabled, partners can have the option to import a CSV of multiple leads to expedite the submission process. 

If you would like partners to be able to upload leads in bulk using a CSV instead of submitting leads individually through the in-app form, this can be enabled in your Settings > Features > Lead Settings. 

1. In your Settings tab, click on "Features" in the top menu bar
2. Next to "Lead Settings" click "Configure"
3. In the "Bulk import lead access" section click "Configure access"
4. Select the groups you would like to have access to the lead importer 
5. Click "Save changes"

Viewing leads and updating lead statuses

Once a partner has submitted a lead, you can then go through and move it through your pipeline by updating its status. 

To view the lead, log in to your PartnerStack account. Under "Performance & Commissions", select "Referrals", then navigate to "Leads" in the menu along the top.

When you click into the new referral (the status will reflect as "New" at that time), you'll be able to then update the status to either:

• Qualified - This referral is deemed qualified by your team. Your partner will receive any commissions that you have set up for qualified referrals
• Unqualified - This referral could not be qualified by your team.

If you've marked the referral as Qualified, you'll then be able to move through and update the status to either:

• Closed Won - The customer moved beyond a referral and is now a paying customer. The partner will receive any commissions that you have set up for closed referrals.
• Closed Lost - The customer moved beyond a referral but did not become a paying customer.

Partners will receive email notifications when a lead's status is updated to Qualified, and Closed Lost, or Won.

Issuing commissions for leads

Partners can earn commissions in a variety of ways for leads they submit: 

• Commissions generated on lead stage (i.e. Closed Won stage = $x commission)
• Manually creating a one-off commission for the lead 
• Creating a customer for reoccurring commissions on future transactions
  • This can be automated through your integrations with PartnerStack, or done manually following the steps below. 

For guidance on how to optimize your offer structure with leads reach out to your CSM. 

One-time commisisons:

To issue a manual one-time commission for a lead

1. In your Referrals > Leads tab click a lead to open the detailed legal view
2. Click "one time" at the bottom of the page
3. This will redirect you to the partner's detail view where you can click "Manual commission" to create a manual commission for the partner
   1. For more information on manual commissions see the Create a one-time commission or bonus for your partner support guide.

Creating a customer from a lead:

Note: this may be automatically done through your integration with PartnerStack. For more information on how you are integrated with leads reach out to your CSM.

If your program is not integrated to automatically create a customer on a "Closed Won" stage, you can create a customer manually.

1. In your Referrals > Leads tab click the lead you would like to turn into a customer
2. Under "Apply commissions" select "Recurring commissions"
3. Enter the email for the customer that will be created
4. Enter the customer key if applicable
   1. For more information on customer keys see our Adding a customer, recording a sale, and changing customer attribution support guide

Once the customer has been created, any future transactions that meet your offer criteria will trigger commissions.

Archiving leads

If there are leads in your list you no longer wish to view due to inactivity or other reasons, you can choose to remove them from your current leads view using the "Select leads to archive" option. Note that archiving a lead does not delete it entirely, but rather moves it to the "Archived" tab.

1. In your Referrals > Leads tab click "Select leads to archive"
2. Select the leads you would like to archive by clicking the checkbox next to their name
3. Click "Archive lead"

Archived leads can also be moved back to the "Active" view by using the "Select leads to restore" option.

To delete a lead

If a lead must be permanently deleted, i.e. the lead was submitted by the wrong partner team member and you need to free up the lead key, the lead can be deleted using the Lead API. If you need assistance permanently deleting a lead reach out to the PartnerStack support team at support@partnerstack.com. Once a lead has been permanently deleted, you can recreate the lead if desired using the same lead key, and attributing the lead to the correct partner team member.

Customizing lead submission statuses

If the stages Qualified, Unqualified, Closed won, and Closed lost don't make sense for your sales cycle, they can be customized. 

If custom lead stages are enabled for your account, they can be configured in your PartnerStack dashboard by navigating to Advanced Settings > Settings > Features > Lead statuses.

To customize a lead stage status, follow these steps:

1. Log into your PartnerStack account
2. Navigate to Settings > Features > Configure lead statuses
3. Select "Configure" to open up the feature page
4. Select the tab for the status you're wanting to update
5. Enter the new status name or description, and then select "Update lead status"