Partner Programs

In our Agency-Partners Collective, we try to get new members to share their relevant experience with tech partners to get an idea of their perception. About 2 in 10 will actually give us an answer in text, but that has been enough to give you this interesting and (in my opinion) extremely important information on where other programs are doing well, or how they have dropped the ball.

We can learn more from the mistakes than from the successes when studying any business or operation. Partnerships are no different. Here are some of the over 200 comments we have received this year when we ask agencies about their experiences with tech partnerships so your team can avoid making them.

Bad experiences agencies had with their tech partners

* For their privacy, we hyperlink to their profiles in our agency community so you have to be another agency to connect with them. To display your partner program to these agencies, apply to be listed in Parnerhub.

Things to note:

Commissions is mentioned as a point of contention several times.
Tech companies named in a negative light: Keap, HubSpot,
Communication is the biggest reason for upset partners, followed closely by commission-related disagreements.

COMMUNICATION and MISALIGNMENT :

“Not saying who this partner is but I recently had a tech partner cc multiple clients in the same email with each other's billing info in the email.. Quite a fun experience.” - Mark R.

“Unfortunately, I recently had a bad experience where I had a deal registered to me and the tech partner sold the deal without involving us as an agency. This isn't standard protocol for this tech partner and we lost the onboarding option because the tech partner sold it for their team to do it.” - Staci C.

“We had a partner we were going to white label under us and in the final stages of bringing on the client ($250K deal) their PM sent a picture of their whole team with headshots via email. We were supposed to be a unified front with all communication appearing as white label as per the client's request. It ended horribly.” - Cliff S.

“Long-term value add has always been tough with partners, especially whitelabel that don't have the shared vision or similar processes for customer experience we've put in place.” - Dhruv M.

“Overall, the best experiences I have had with SAAS partners are the ones where said partner is genuinely interested in my success. It seems obvious to me that all (healthy) partnerships should be based on mutual success.” - Kase D.

“My last partnership with a tech company ended with a half-finished project, on my part, because the partner ended up dealing directly with my client on my blind side…” - Kofi A.

“SaaS companies that want us to share about their tool to sell more into the market vs. help us to use their tool efficiently to sell more of their tool. SaaS tools can either be market-facing, or agency facing. They are often terrible at doing both.” - Mike M.

“The worst experiences I've had from tech partners tend to relate to one area: poor communication. This leads to a wide array of issues such as missing deadlines, over-developing in unneeded areas or a scope of work being poorly defined. I have also had clients abandon projects before they even start, due to tech partners not replying or being able to provide initials quotes in timely manners.” - Eric L.

“I had a terrible experience ending our relationship with a reputation management / local SEO SaaS company. They wouldn't let me self-service downgrade/cancel - I had to email them to request it. Then they gave me incorrect contract & billing information and I had to call them out on it. Then they overcharged me after they downgraded me. I complained and they gave me a "credit" (not a refund). Then they overcharged me for the next month as well. Needless to say, we ended our relationship with them altogether after that.” - Chris S.

“It was like living in a comedy movie, whatever we discussed one day, got reinterpreted the next. I think it all sums up to great communication and expectation management.” - Ovidiu C.

“The worst experiences I've had from tech partners tend to relate to one area: poor communication. This leads to a wide array of issues such as missing deadlines, over-developing in unneeded areas or a scope of work being poorly defined. I have also had clients abandon projects before they even start, due to tech partners not replying or being able to provide initials quotes in timely manners. On the flip-side, the best tech partners I've had the pleasure of working with are timely, fantastic communicators, and care about the client instead of just the the project deliverable. I love those who become invested!” - Eric L.

“A bad experience is almost always a false promise or claim about the tech product.” - Masood A.

ON COMMISSIONS OR REFERRALS:

“Bad experience - their commission structure wasn't built well so we had to follow up multiple times over the course of many months on when we'd receive the commission payment. It finally showed up, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have if we wouldn't have been on top of it!” - Nikole R.

“Out of the three I've worked with, they don't pay referral commissions, even when they say they will. Super shady…” - Greg S.

“All take and no give. I'll not name the partner, but the expectation really was that we'd bring in the steady flow of new biz, and the promise of a reciprocal relationship never transpired. The % of mostly recurring revenue was not enough to stick around on the giving front.“ - JP H.

“I had a very bad experience regarding payments from one tech partner.” - Naeem M.

“One thing most agencies (and tech companies really) don't realize is that tech partners are not incentivized by money, giving them a referral commission typically doesn't go into the pocket of your partner manager, but to the company, so instead, try to give them a warm intro, a lead, or exposure at an event, in exchange for the lead they sent you. It's more cost-effective and more effective in general. Other than that, staying top of mind with tech partners and making it easy for their sales and success teams to find key moments where that might trigger a referral, that's all key to being the first recommendation.” - Derric H.

CONTRACTS, CHANNEL CONFLICT or COMPETITION:

“Terrible experience with Keap CRM. I think it is a great tool, but their sales model with a rigid 1 year contract made them feel like an old accountant service who fights for money even if you want out. I never used it (my bad) but those guys made me pay for the whole year no matter the pandemic or anything.” - Elias M.

“Channel conflict in the early days of HubSpot partner program between direct reps and partners. It's gotten a lot better though.” - Charles E.

“We've had one SAAS partner who asked us for advice on how to build a white-label service into their platform (which we did for free) and then they took our advice and built a competitor to us without even giving us the opportunity to fulfill the service. Not cool.” - Rob W.

API & INTEGRATIONS:

“Our experiences have been mostly good, as we are very careful with the SaaS products we choose to use. The only thing we have a problem with is when SaaS products don't connect well, or are hard to get to match up data.” - Jamar R.

“Sharing a little story of a tech partner of a client. They promised a two way API for sending them and checking new signups to their system, but even after 3 months, they slowly revealed they didn't and it was all custom single requests and then ask for more money. So we had to adapt to more manual solution.” - Tristan B.

“Bad experiences happen often when other tech companies in our field make API changes with notifications to us.” - Steve M.

TOO PUSHY:

“Major turnoff was Hubspot's end-of-year sales push with relentless call/meeting requests up until the 31st the year.” - Devon V.

Positive experiences agencies had with their tech partners:

Things to note:

No one mentions commissions as a part of the reason why they had a good experience.
The programs mentioned by name (not surprisingly) have been: HubSpot, Shopify, Databox, Vidyard and SquareSpace, CallRail, and ActiveCampaign.
Great communication, training, and co-marketing seem to be the reasons for these companies were mentioned by name.

“Incredible collaboration and great alignment. It "just flowed" when it came to how we solved problems. Sometimes it just works and with this partner it did!” - Jordan K.

“I recently did a series of educational webinars for the clients of a tech partner. They also did webinars for our clients and followers. We were able to bring their clients high value, while at the same time introducing our services. We picked up a handful of clients doing this, and they did the same.” - Jim A.

“Callrail.com is a call tracking vendor we've used for years. They invited me to participate in 2 webinars. It has been very helpful to my business.” - David C.

“We've built a very strong relationship with Hubspot over the years. On occasion, someone from senior management drops into our events. For marketers, it's like a celebrity appearance.” - David Y.

“I guess HubSpot qualifies as a tech partner? It has been a good experience with deciding to establish their take on inbound methodology and some relevant tools such as CRM and some of their suites.” - Daniel G.

“A good experience is clear communication and being open to constructive criticism and feedback.” - Masood A.

“I love working with Databox on their content strategy. They've done a great job of building a program that benefits themselves as well as the contributors.” - Tanya W.

“Amazing marketing support and education material to grow my network.” - Chantal C.

“HubSpot back in 2013. Agency partner program felt like a genuine partnership. On-boarding was great, deals were worked collaboratively, and co-marketing materials made it a relative breeze to to generate leads.” - Martin B.

“Shopify is awesome. We have been very happy with this partnership as partners/affiliates, as developers, and as an agency supporting a wide range of clients.” - Ray S.

“Partnering with HubSpot made me fundamentally assess the way in which we do business and how we apply process to what we do. Beyond services related to HubSpot, it made me consider our whole ecosystem and has been a huge benefit.” - Nathaniel C.

“Good experience - Hubspot's partner program is the best there is - not perfect but you can really grow with it. The main issue is that once you've worked with them, it's hard to find a decent partner program. I keep getting disappointed.” - Amit L.

“Great experiences with the crew at VidYard. What made them great was how much of a true partnership it felt like. Collaboration in go to market planning, lots of opportunities for co-marketing, all the resources we need to train our team on the technology and more.” - Ryan R.

“Activecampaign is our primary partner and has been for several years. They have provided us with amazing service since day one and we enjoy their constant wave of new upgrades and integrations.” - Joey B.

“The only real experience I have had with a tech partner was years ago when I was doing web design and I aligned with Squarespace right as they took off. I become one of the top Squarespace Web Designers and they sent me over $80k of work as a freelance web designer. I had a Youtube channel with Squarespace courses, and eventually they even paid me to create a Squarespace training course for them. It was a pretty great experience but also from back when I was a freelancer before I started building my own companies. I'm curious in partnerships to see how I can replicate that but at a larger scale with my current podcast production agency.” - Jake J.

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