Why You Need Partner Training: How Leading Companies Do It Well

Partner training is about equipping your partners to evangelize your product, bring in leads, and generate revenue.

But more often than not, partner training feels a whole lot like your boring annual compliance training (sorry, security teams).

Most people “watch” videos on 2x speed, click through modules while they’re multitasking, and guess their way through quizzes just to move on. That doesn’t scream knowledge retention, does it?

Yet that knowledge is something partners desperately need. Without it, they can’t market and sell your product — let alone implement it. So, how do you build training that sticks?

To find out, we asked seasoned channel leaders how they’ve approached the challenge. Below, you’ll learn why partner training is more critical than ever, and how to design programs that are more than a hoop to jump through. But first, let’s refresh your memory on what partner training is.

Partner Training & Certification, Partner Enablement, Partner Onboarding: What’s the Difference?

As with anything in B2B SaaS, these terms get thrown around interchangeably. But they aren’t quite the same:

• Partner Onboarding happens first — right when partners join your program. Think of it like the welcome stage: partners sign agreements, get introduced to a partner manager, log into your PRM for the first time, and start building business plans.
• Partner Enablement is broader and ongoing. It covers the tools, updates, and support that give partners the ability (and motivation) to sell and deliver your product, whether that’s through new sales playbooks and co-branded collateral, new tiering rules, or new product feature updates.
• Partner Training & Certification is a more structured, formal training program. Think courses, exams, and credentials that validate a partner’s knowledge. Often, training and certification are required for partners to sell specific products, and it can also unlock access to exclusive events or other perks like MDF.

While training and certification sit under the enablement umbrella, they deserve their own attention. Onboarding sets the foundation and enablement keeps momentum — but training is what builds partner competence.

Why Have a Partner Training Program?

A strong partner training program isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about preparing your partners to represent your product the right way.

Skip it (or do it poorly), and partners might misrepresent features or overpromise on features you don’t have or use cases your product can’t tackle.

This has lasting ripple effects, from confusing and frustrating customers to losing trust with internal teams to uneven performance across your partner base. Yehor Melnykov at Loio (a legal platform) put it bluntly: “Legal work is sensitive, and we couldn’t risk partners giving clients the wrong impression of how Loio should be used. Certification gives us that control.”

On the flip side, great training programs:

• Help partners pitch effectively (and close more deals)
• Decrease support tickets from partner-led deployments
• Ensure consistent messaging across every customer interaction
• Create better alignment among internal teams — everyone has to decide what’s important for partners to know

Dirk Alshuth at emma (cloud management) saw the difference when his team introduced partner training: “Without standardized training, implementation quality varied too much from one partner to another. Partner training brings consistency, trust, and efficiency — certified partners deliver smoother deployments, which means fewer escalations for us to deal with.”

9 Steps to Building a Robust Partner Training Program

So how do you create a program that delivers great results? Especially if you’re starting from scratch?

Here are ten steps to help you get your partner training off the ground — and avoid the pitfalls that cause most programs to stall.

1. Put Training on Internal Teams’ Radar 

Yes, this seems like an odd first step, but you can’t build a partner training program in a silo. Marketing, product, and customer success teams all hold critical knowledge and skills that you’ll need when putting your learning program together.

Daniel Shapiro at Red Points (brand protection software) leaned on the customer success team at first. “They already had the product knowledge, so we shaped that into training modules,” he shares.

Justin Wheeler at Funraise (nonprofit software) worked closely with product. “Our product team and a few power users collaborated to design the first version. That gave it a practical, real-world angle from day one,” he says.

“We started with mission critical areas like donation processing, campaign setup, and reporting, because if partners got those wrong, it directly impacted nonprofit outcomes.”

The problem is, these folks are incredibly busy, and helping the partner team isn’t at the top of their priority list. That means you’ll need a compelling pitch to get on it.

As Stacy Desrosiers told us in a different article, “There are so many things the channel can give. They have a pulse on larger market dynamics, customer requirements, intel on pricing and licensing. They just have a much broader view.”

Training can create value for every internal stakeholder:

• Product gets visibility into how partners use the solution in the wild, which can highlight feature gaps and even uncover bugs.
• Customer Success sees where partners tend to get stuck, which helps them plan better onboarding and support.
• Marketing gains insight into which messages resonate in the field, sharpening campaigns and collateral.

Whatever you do, involve these teams early and keep them in the loop. Their contributions will shape a stronger program.

2. Decide Where Your Training Will Live

You need to know where your training will live before you create your content because the way the platform is set up can impact your design. For example, if they don’t support SCORM files, you may not be able to reuse content that your internal teams have created.

The two most common places to put your training include:

1. Your Partner Portal

A PRM with built-in training functionality keeps everything in one place. Channeltivity, for example, lets you set up Courses and Certifications with online learning content in any format (including rich text, video, PDF, SCORM, AICC, cmi5, or xAPI) and dictate which partners can see and interact with the content. It also comes with the ability to honor in-person training credits, distribute certificates, and post digital badges on LinkedIn.

That last feature might matter more than you think — particularly if you’re working with enterprise partners and customers.

Peter Barnett at Action1 (patch management) emphasizes, “We underestimated how much partners valued recognition. At first, certification was just a PDF. Once we added digital badges, adoption skyrocketed.”

2. An LMS

LMSs are designed specifically for online learning, and you may already have one with most of the necessary content in place.

However, you’ll need to figure out a way to connect it to your partner portal, or at least make it easy for partners to access it (and that may mean buying more pricey user licenses). And if you host any live trainings, you’ll need to figure out a way to track them.

If partners have to jump through hoops or manage multiple logins, completion rates will drop. Keep the entry point simple and tied to tools they already use.

3. Take a Close Look at Your Partner Base

If you have a small program and most of your partners look the same, it may make sense to have just one sales training program and one implementation program.

But if you’ve got a huge channel program with all types of partners, you’re going to need a lot more variations in your coursework — a VAR managing complex deployments requires far deeper training than a referral partner who just needs to know your value prop.

This is where your partner managers are invaluable. They spend the most time with your partners and can tell you where partners are struggling and need guidance. Once you’ve got a handle on what kinds of coursework you’ll need to develop, set goals by partner type. Here’s an example:

• Referral partners
  • Goal: ensure accurate messaging so partners know who to refer.
  • Track: certification rates and qualified lead volume.
• VARs and integrators 
  • Goal: shorten time to deployment and increase customer satisfaction scores.
  • Track: Time to deploy, CSAT, reduced escalations.

4. Create a Rough Outline

The next step is to sketch out your curriculum. At this stage, it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should cover the essentials.

At minimum, include:

• Product knowledge: the features, use cases, and limitations of your product. For partners who implement it, this has to be really thorough, from high-level architecture to configuration considerations to integrations.
• Positioning: who it’s for, what problems it solves, and how to differentiate against competitors
• Sales methodology: how to run discovery, build proposals, and close deals
• Objection handling: the tough questions partners will hear in the field and how to answer them

Creating this content takes time and resources. Even if you have a healthy budget, it pays to design materials that can be used to train channel partners and internal staff. Multi-purpose content also reinforces a shared language. When your staff and partners talk about your product the same way, it reduces confusion for customers and keeps messaging consistent.

Once your outline is drafted, validate it with your peers. This step is critical. You don’t want partners spreading the wrong marketing message. You don’t want your customer success team fielding angry calls because a partner promised a feature that doesn’t exist. And you certainly don’t want to have to explain to your product team why a partner misconfigured a customer’s instance.

5. Put Together the Training

Now it’s time to turn your outline into content. Before you get to work, think carefully about format. Some modules work best as video walkthroughs, others as roleplays or hands-on labs. Remember, you’re not trying to flood partners with information. You’re trying to help them retain and apply it.

Partners will check out if you force them to sit through an hour-long video. Bite-sized, scenario-based learning can be far more effective. Daniel highlights: “We underestimated how important engagement was. Our early materials felt too much like lectures, and completion rates were low. Adding interactive elements resolved the issue.”

If you have the budget, it might make sense to hire some help. A third party can help you brainstorm new and fun ways to engage partners that you hadn’t thought of. Bogdan Condurache at Brizy (website builder), brought in a training consultant “to help us structure the first courses and make sure they were engaging and not just technical PDFs.”

A Note for Global Partner Programs

If you run a global partner program, localization is a non-negotiable. Start with a core curriculum in your primary language, then adapt as needed. Per Bogdan, “We built a core curriculum in English, then localized it step by step, adapting for legal requirements, regional use cases, and translating into key partner languages.”

If you have a presence in some of those regions, it might make sense to at least introduce the training program (if not give the training) in person.

Peter shares, “We focused on a mix of self-paced e-learning and regional partner webinars. That allowed us to keep a unified global curriculum but still address things like data residency laws in specific regions.”

6. Pilot With Trusted Partners

After you have a draft of your training content, test it out with a small group of partners. Pick ones who will give honest feedback so you can catch errors and refine confusing sections before your official launch.

It’ll also give you an opportunity to track engagement and see whether the content aligns with how partners actually sell and implement your product. Consider sending them a gift card or early access to new resources to thank them for their time and input.

7. Market the Training (and Incentives)

Treat your training like any other launch — you need to build buzz and make participation rewarding (not just mandatory). A good way to do this is to emphasize recognition opportunities. 

Digital badges on LinkedIn or listings in a public partner directory give partners credibility and visibility. You might also tie certifications to tiering so they see a direct link between training and benefits.

Redditor PartnerManaged points out, “Comp is king. If your partners can make money selling your solution (ideally paired with additional alliance or service attachments), they’ll be asking YOU for more enablement.”

Lean on others for support. Marketing, for instance, can help you edit your copy, design visuals, or even make suggestions for how to roll out your announcements. Partner managers can bring up training during partner check-ins and QBRs.

8. Survey Partners

The best way to find gaps in your training is to talk to partners. Post-launch, use analytics in your PRM or LMS to see which partners are dropping off and when. Form a list of questions for them, and ask to speak with them so you can gather more detailed context. Then, actually make changes based on their feedback. Doing so will garner a lot of goodwill.

Redditor Happy_Hippo48 posted great advice in r/techsales: “I’ve worked both in a OEM channel role and at a partner. Be responsive to them and own any issue they have when they bring it to you. If they trust you and your company and you solve a real problem for their customers, the business and the certifications will follow.”

That said, don’t exclusively focus on the partners who didn’t resonate with training. Talk to partners who rave about your training, too. You might even be able to create mini case studies about their success that will help you promote training to other partners.

9. Set a Recurring Update

Your product will change, your brand will change, and partner expectations will change — and your partner training needs to keep up.

Plan refresh cycles at least once a year. Better yet, tie updates directly to your product release schedule. That way, every new feature launch or messaging change is automatically paired with updated training material.

“The biggest mistake we made early on was underestimating how fast the product evolved. Certifications went stale quickly,” says Adil Advani at Securiti (data security). “We solved this by tying training updates directly to release cycles, so every feature launch triggered a content refresh.”

Don’t forget to point partners toward ongoing enablement, too. Refresher courses, new collateral, or exclusive sessions with your product team help keep them engaged and ensure they always have access to the latest information.

Make Partner Training a Competitive Advantage

Strong partner training creates alignment, reduces risk, and turns partners into confident advocates for your brand. The challenge is keeping it consistent and measurable, particularly at the enterprise level.

That’s where Channeltivity shines. Admins can:

• Deliver training directly in the partner portal your teams already use in virtually any format,
• Track who is taking courses, what questions they’re getting right and wrong, and whether they’ve gotten a certification.
• Issue digital badges that partners can display on LinkedIn.
• Keep content fresh with simple updates and adjustable permissions.

Ready to see how it works? Schedule a demo today.