Why are visits to my partner portal down?

Build it and they will come – if they have a reason to

A partner portal is built to make the life of the partner easier.  A lot of the time a Channel Manager or the person in charge will automatically think, “If I build it, they will come,” and this couldn’t be further from the truth!  Your partners have a life of their own, chances are you aren’t the only vendor they work with and they probably have more than one portal they have to remember logins and passwords to.  Getting your partners to log into your portal regularly isn’t a difficult task; you simply need to give them a reason to.

There are a number of reasons why partners may or may not login to your portal.  Maybe the portal isn’t user friendly, or your resources and materials are out dated.  The possibilities are endless, but the bottom line is you can’t physically make them login.  You want your partners to login and give you insight on the things they are doing to drive business, so require them to register deals and update them or download certain content and in return, reward them for things that positively affect your business (and theirs).  There is no better motivator to bring more deals than giving some extra marketing dollars (MDF) to a partner after registering and closing a reputable deal. Not only does this keep them coming back and logging in, but it also gives them a reason to register more deals and close more business.

At the end of the day, you can’t be your partner, so give them incentives to login and keep things up to date.  There are no better motivational techniques than incentive programs and items that reward your partners positively building your business.  Give them tools and workflows to be successful and you will see your channel business create a whole new stream of revenue that never existed before.