As businesses strive to foster stronger partner relationships and expand their reach, the implementation of a robust partner portal becomes paramount. Salesforce Experience Cloud offers a powerful solution that empowers organizations to create customized and collaborative partner portals.
However, to maximize the potential of this platform and ensure a seamless implementation, it is essential to follow best practices that align with your specific business objectives. In this article, we will delve into the key strategies and recommendations for a successful Salesforce Experience Cloud partner portal implementation. So, let’s embark on this journey to unlock the full potential of partner portals in Salesforce!
Understanding Salesforce Experience Cloud Partner Portals
Within Salesforce Experience Cloud, partner portals (also known as Salesforce PRM portals) play a crucial role in facilitating collaboration and communication between companies and their external partners.
Partner portals serve as dedicated gateways that provide secure access to resources, information, and tools for partner organizations. They enable seamless sharing of data, streamlined processes, and efficient management of partner relationships.
Here’s how to use the Salesforce PRM portal:
- Share CRM data and information with partners
- Collaborate on prospects and deals
- Manage leads, opportunities, and accounts in real-time
- Forecast channel sales
- Track performance
- Streamline channel marketing
- Educate and onboard partners
Main Salesforce Partner Portal Features and Functionalities
Experience Cloud partner portals address all of the evolving changes happening in the partner ecosystem. They’re packed with great components, functionalities, and features designed to enhance collaboration, streamline processes, and optimize partner relationships.
Here are some of the essential standard features and out-of-the-box functionalities of the Salesforce PRM solution:
- Preconfigured Partner Portal Template: Save time, reduce development costs, and accelerate the deployment process by using the ready-to-use Experience Cloud Partner Central template to build your Salesforce partner community.
- Flexible Customization and Branding: Leverage the flexibility of Salesforce Experience Cloud’s drag-and-drop tool, Experience Builder, to effortlessly customize and brand your site. Create and personalize pages, incorporate drag-and-drop components, and deliver tailored experiences to various partner audiences.
- Deal Registration: Configure a deal registration feature on your Experience Cloud partner portal to allow resellers to register deals with you as a vendor. This feature automates the submission and approval process, provides early visibility into your pipeline, helps manage channel conflict, and allows you to monitor channel revenues.
- Lead Assignment & Distribution: You have the option to assign leads to partners, or allow partners to manage their own lead queue. Utilize the lead inbox component to pass leads directly to partners. Use lead assignment rules to automatically assign leads to partner users or queues based on specific lead properties.
- Market Development Funds: Leverage the capabilities of the Market Development Fund (MDF) to effectively create and oversee marketing budgets, allocate marketing or co-op funds to your channel partners, streamline the process of fund requests, and efficiently handle fund claims.
- Chatter Feed: Leverage the collaborative capabilities of Chatter within your Experience Cloud partner portal to empower partners and actively engage with your organization, seek expert guidance, and revisit valuable discussions.
- Partner Scorecard: Evaluate partner performance and set benchmarks for your channel programs by leveraging the Partner Scorecards feature within your Experience Cloud partner portal.
Note: To track performance with a Partner Scorecard, you must first enable “Manage Scorecards” in your org.
- Analytics: Empower partners with comprehensive dashboards, reports, in-depth analytics, and business intelligence tools necessary for effective selling and business growth.
5 Best Practices to Minimize Implementation Risks
1. Define Clear Goals and KPIs
A robust partner portal strategy begins by defining its primary objective and identifying the key use cases it will support. Ask yourself:
- Are you looking to attract new partners, or do you have an existing partner network that needs onboarding and enablement for product sales?
- Will you provide deal registration, lead distribution, or both?
By answering these questions, you can prioritize the areas to focus on during the implementation of your partner portal. It is also important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the partner portal, ensuring alignment with your business objectives.
2. Engage with Your Partners to Know What They Need on a Portal
It is recommended to engage in conversations with your partners to understand their specific needs and preferences for the portal. By actively seeking their input and incorporating their feedback, you can ensure that the partner portal is tailored to their requirements and enhances their overall experience. This collaborative approach helps mitigate potential implementation challenges and increases the chances of a successful partner portal deployment.
3. Start Small, Launch Early, and Continue to Build
Do not try to cover everything on your first attempt – adopt an iterative approach instead. Start with a focused scope, launch an initial version of the portal, and gather feedback from partners.
By starting early and obtaining valuable input, you can make improvements and iterate on the portal based on the specific needs and preferences of your partners. This incremental approach allows for a more effective and successful partner portal implementation, ensuring it evolves in alignment with partner requirements over time.
4. Less is Definitely More
Do not overwhelm your partners with content. Utilize the audience targeting feature in Experience Cloud to personalize the content you share. This ensures that different partners accessing the same portal see information tailored specifically to their needs.
Create different page variations and assign them to the appropriate audiences based on criteria like location, permission, profile, and more. Assign the relevant audience to the corresponding page on your Experience Cloud site.
5. Use AppExchange Apps to Accelerate the Project and Provide Additional Value
Instead of building everything from scratch, you can leverage existing AppExchange PRM solutions. They are specifically designed to enhance the functionality and capabilities of Salesforce CRM partner portals on Experience Cloud. This approach can save time, reduce development efforts, and ensure a more efficient and effective implementation process.
- Enhance the onboarding experience by implementing learning management tools – such as Learning Management System (LMS) with certification programs, and Knowledge management solutions to your Experience Cloud partner portal.
- Drive lead generation and expand your partner ecosystem by establishing a network of partners. Use an app to complement the out-of-the-box functionality of your Experience Cloud partner portal to promote and feature your partners on a partner directory, and promote their apps, solutions, and service on the app directory.
- Implement a co-branding strategy with your partners to increase awareness of your brand and facilitate collaboration on promotional materials. Find an app to provide co-branded marketing assets for your partners, as well as allow them to develop their own marketing materials – including their logo, name, contact details, and other important elements, while aligning with your brand guidelines.
- Organize a clear onboarding for your partners and make new partner journeys more streamlined by utilizing an onboarding app Community Member Onboarding from Salesforce Labs. This app allows you to use role-specific onboarding tasks and timelines for specific partner users. Link resources such as videos, documents, or custom images if needed.
Summary
Building an effective partner portal is a crucial task for suppliers and vendors – especially in the world of technology. The trick is to balance a high-quality experience with empowerment at scale.
Leveraging both CRM and PRM, Salesforce is the ideal platform to build an effective portal but start small and start with a plan!
