Using Deal submission

Who is this article for?

This article will be useful to you if you are running your partner program on PartnerStack and want to enable your partners to register deals.

What are deals?

Deals are prospective customers submitted by partners. Partners can then either work independently or with a company representative to close the deal. Enabling deals allows you, the company, to monitor and interact with deals partners have registered.

Your partners can register deals, make updates to the deal that can sync back to your CSM, and ultimately own your customers' entire experience.

The deals feature also allows you to push/assign leads and opportunities to your partner channels and assign deals to partners to own.

Deals are enabled depending on your plan. If you are currently not using deals contact your Customer Success Manager for more information on the plan that includes these features.

Creating deal forms

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

To create a deal form:

1. Navigate to the Groups tab in your left-hand menu
2. Select your desired group
3. Click Deal Registration
   1. If you do not see the Deal Registration tab, the deals feature has not been enabled on your account, please reach out to your CSM for more information
4. Select "Create a new deal registration form" or "Copy a deal registration form from another group". If copying a deal registration form, select the group from the drop-down
   
5. Click Continue
6. Enable deal registration for this group by clicking the right-hand toggle
   
7. Give your deal form a title and description, this will be visible to partners
   1. These fields are optional but will provide more description to your partners when registering a deal
8. Follow the steps below to customize your deal form fields to gather specific information from your partners

Customizing deal forms

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

A newly created Deal form will have pre-populated fields to help get you started. Of these pre-populated fields, Stage, Close date, and amount are mandatory for PartnerStack to properly register the input. These may be relabeled, but cannot be removed.

To add an additional deal form field:

1. In the Deal 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 12 different field types that can be used to collect information on deal forms:

1. Input: a small text field
2. Email: the lead's email address
3. Text area: 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. File Attachment: a 25 mb or less file
    
    1. Multiple files can be attached. File attachment fields must be at the bottom of the deal registration form. 
12. URL: a valid URL entry field 

Editing a deal form field:

1. Click on the field type to open an "Edit form field" window
2. Change the field, type, or label 
3. Click "Update field"

To delete an existing field click the bin icon on the right-hand side. Stage, Close date, and Amount are mandatory fields. These fields may be relabeled, but cannot be removed.

Disabling deal submission

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

Adding custom deal stages

The standard deal stages are: Working, Closed Won, and Closed Lost. 

If you have additional deal stages you would like your partners to use, click "+ Add deal stage" in the Deal stages section of the Deal registration page. In the drawer view that opens enter your desired additional deal stage names and click "Save". 

Both the standard deal stages and custom deal stages can be used to trigger commissions, group moves, or to apply a partner tag. For more information on triggers, and deal-stage-based offer creation reach out to your CSM.

Reviewing submitted deals

In your Referrals > Deals tab you can search active deals, filter deals by stage or source, and select deals to archive. 

Note: Deal submission can be integrated with your CRM so relevant information can sync bi-directionally. To see if your CRM is supported, and to request integrating deal submission, reach out to your CSM.

To update a deal's status:

1. In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
2. In the left-hand deal stage box select an updated deal stage (i.e. Closed Won, Closed Lost)
3. Click "Update stage"

Note: different deal stages will be available based on the current deal stage, and if you have added custom deal stages.

Partners will be able to update the deal stage from their dashboard. For more information on how partners view deals see our Register and Track a Deal support guide.

To update a deal's details:

1. In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
2. Update the stage, close date, amount, or custom field
3. Click "Update details"

To delete a deal:

1. In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
2. Click "Delete deal"

Deleting a deal will remove the deal from the partner dashboard as well. If the deal was Closed Won, and a customer has been created from the deal, deleting the deal will not automatically delete the customer. If you would like to delete the customer this can be done from your Referrals > Customers tab.

Using Manual Approval

If you would like to team to manually sign off on all deals submitted by partners as "Closed Won" turn on manual approval in your group Deal registration tab.

Deals marked as "Closed Won" by partners will be held in a "Closed Won - Pending" until manually approved. "Closed Won - Pending" deals can be updated to "Closed Won", "Closed Lost", or set back to "Working" in your Referrals > Deals tab.

Issuing commissions for deals

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

• Commission generated on deal stage (i.e. Closed Won stage = $x commission)
• Manually creating a one-off commission for the deal 
• 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 deals reach out to your CSM. 

One-time commissions for deals

To issue a manual one-time commission for a deal:

1. In your Referrals > Deals tab click on a deal to open the detailed deal 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 deal:

Note: this may be automatically done through your integration with PartnerStack. For more information on how you are integrated with deals 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 > Deals tab click the deal 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 deals

To move deals out of your active view, you can archive deals. This will not delete the deal but will move the deal to the "Archived" tab to clean up your main view. 

1. In your Deals tab select the deals you would like to archive
2. Click "Archived selected"

To unarchive a deal, click on your "Archived" tab, select the desired deals and click "Restore selected" to restore deals to the main "Active" view. 

Deleting deals

If a deal must be permanently deleted, i.e. the deal was submitted by the wrong partner team member and you need to free up the deal key, the deal can be deleted using the Deal API.

If you need assistance permanently deleting a deal reach out to the PartnerStack support team at support@partnerstack.com. Once a deal has been permanently deleted, you can recreate the deal if desired using the same deal key, and attributing the deal to the correct partner team member.

Assigning deals to partners

Assigning deals to partners, also known as "Lead Sharing" enables you to push leads to your partners through an integration with your own CRM to PartnerStack. Once you have identified a lead or opportunity in your CRM you can send relevant fields to create a corresponding deal in PartnerStack. The deal can then be assigned to a partner in PartnerStack.

Lead sharing is only possible if you have "Deals" enabled, and must be set up with a custom integration. For more information, reach out to your Customer Success Manager. 

Key benefits of lead sharing:

• Share contacts and bring business to their partners
• Scale your sales strategy and make more sales through your partners, especially across international regions
• Increase the number of working deals
• Increased partner engagement, incentivizing them to continue and strengthen their partnership

Assigning and unassigning a deal