Orientation: Lesson 5 – Portal

Demo of the Reseller Portal

As part of a new partner orientation, you will be giving the reseller a brief overview of the portal and its content. There is always trepidation whenever we are asked to use software or enter a portal that we don’t know. As a result, a lot of resellers never review a vendor’s portal site. Instead, they call their channel manager (who sometimes e-mails the requested content–NOT a good idea or you end up being their secretary and they never have to log in).

We want to scale the program and the portal is accessible 24/7 so the reseller needs to be able to quickly find what they need and get back to work. Besides, most folks that enter these portals are salespeople–and they are supposed to be tactical, impatient, and move quickly. This is why we should always give the reseller an overview of the portal including the layout, and the main policies (leads, MDF/Co-Op, Deal Registration, NFR & Eval (if hardware), etc.). You must know these policies since you will be explaining them.

Materials

  • Below is a sample Portal Overview that is concise (7 minutes) and shows what should be covered in a portal overview.  It was first produced as a script and then practiced and recorded.
  • Click HERE to download the Portal Overview Script –it will be good for you to have and will be referred to again later).
  • Download the entire Channel Kit (if you have not already done so). It contains over 70 documents and templates that you can use to set up your partner program.
  • As part of this course, you can access the site (branded “SaaSMAX – demo site”) as an example of how a portal is set up and how all the pieces fit together. Please do not complete and submit the forms (so I don’t have to erase the data afterward ;-). Your guest login is similar to what a reseller would see, so it does not show the backend or the admin section which contains instructions to run every aspect of a partner program, with samples, instructions, and videos.

You will be tested on the elements listed above (not the Kit–contains too much information).

Open Mic – LIVE help every Thursday

There is a live session where you can ask any questions or get any type of help every Thursday from 2-3 pm CST (Austin, TX) – holidays excluded. Sometimes it is filled with visitors, other times it is empty (so you get individual help). If nobody shows up after 15 minutes, then it is closed–otherwise, it is live for the entire hour.  Go to www.GoToMeet.me/TedFinch (no password is needed–give it a minute if not open yet (often coming off consulting calls)).

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