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:
- Navigate to the Groups tab in your left-hand menu
- Select your desired group
- Click Deal Registration
- 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
- 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
- Click Continue
- Enable deal registration for this group by clicking the right-hand toggle
- Give your deal form a title and description, this will be visible to partners
- These fields are optional but will provide more description to your partners when registering a deal
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 field:
-
In the Deal form fields section click "Add form field"
- In the drawer view that opens select the field type
-
Enter the field's Label, this will be visible to the partner and describes the information you are looking for
- If using drop-down or checkboxes, enter the various options partners can choose
- 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
- Under Additional Settings select if the field is required, or hidden (hidden fields will not be shown to partners)
- Click "Add field"
There are 12 different field types that can be used to collect information on deal forms:
- Input- a small text field
- Email - the lead's email address
- Textarea - a larger text field
- Dropdown- create a list of options the partner can choose from
- Checkbox- a toggle option
- Country - creates a dropdown list of all countries to be selected from
- Region - a small text field that can be used to collect state/province/city information
- Date - a date entry field
- Currency - the currency of the lead
- Number - a number entry field
-
File Attachment - a 25 mb or less file
- Multiple files can be attached. File attachment fields must be at the bottom of the deal registration form.
- URL - a valid URL entry field
Editing a field:
- Click on the field type to open an "Edit form field" window
- Change the field, type, or label
- 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.
Disable 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 rewards, 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:
- In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
- In the left-hand deal stage box select an updated deal stage (i.e. Closed Won, Closed Lost)
- 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:
- In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
- Update the stage, close date, amount, or custom field
- Click "Update details"
To delete a deal:
- In your Referrals > Deals tab click on the deal you would like to view
- 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.
Rewarding deals
Partners can be rewarded in a variety of ways for deals they submit:
- Reward generated on deal stage (i.e. Closed Won stage = x reward)
- Manually creating a one-off reward for the deal
- Creating a customer for reoccurring rewards 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 rewards:
To issue a manual one-time reward for a deal
- In your Referrals > Deals tab click the deal you would like to reward to open the detail deal view
- Click "one time" at the bottom of the page
- This will redirect you to the partner's detail view where you can click "Manual reward" to create a manual reward for the partner
- For more information on manual rewards see the Create a one-time reward 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.
- In your Referrals > Deals tab click the deal you would like to turn into a customer
- Under "Apply rewards" select "Recurring rewards"
- Enter the email for the customer that will be created
- Enter the customer key if applicable
- 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 be rewarded.
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.
- In your Deals tab select the deals you would like to archive
- 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.
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
When you push a lead or opportunity from your CRM to create a corresponding deal in PartnerStack, that deal can then be assigned to a specific partner, that deal is considered to be “Vendor sourced”.
When you have yet to assign a deal to a partner, that deal is considered to be unassigned.
Unassigned deals will appear in your full list of deals in the Referrals > Deals tab.
To assign an unassigned deal:
- Referrals > Deals tab click "Assign partner" in the "Primary partner" column
- In the drawer view that opens, search for and select the desired partner
- You can assign a deal to a single partner, or to a partner team member. Deals cannot be assigned to the partner team as a whole.
- Deals cannot be assigned to the finance member on a partner team. For more information on partner teams please see our Managing a partner team support guide.
You can also assign an unassigned deal by clicking directly into the deal and clicking on “Assign Partner”.
To unassign a deal:
- Referrals > Deals tab click into the deal you would like to unassign
- In the deal detail view that opens, click "Unassign deal"located in the top-right under the partner's name
How does this look to the partner?
Partners will be able to see the deals that are assigned to them in their dashboard. Partners will receive an email when they have been assigned a deal and will be able to see and update the deal in their dashboard. There are no visual changes to the partner experience in their dashboard.