The founding team at Secret Chest has a lot of experience as partners, resellers, consultants, founders of Managed Service Providers (MSPs), and working with Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs). We want to make it as simple to buy, sell, integrate with, and automate Secret Chest as we can. In part, this is self-serving: we want you to sell more. But more importantly, we want to help delight customers and improve their security footprint. What's our vision for making a strong ecosystem of partner organizations?
API First
That vision began before we wrote a single line of code. We decided that from day 1, Secret Chest would be API first. This means that every feature, option, action, or button from Secret Chest is driven by API endpoints, which partners can then integrate with, provided they have the correct tokens to do so. We're multi-tenant, so there are a few things to consider there, but we're committed to working with you to make it easier to understand events that are happening in Secret Chest in a way that protects the privacy of our users and allows our partners to build robust ecosystems of tools that work together in new and exciting ways.
Resellers, MSPs, and MSSPs
A good reseller program is about helping those who have chosen to partner with you to give users a great experience and for the reseller to have a great experience. Most resellers have different motivators for working with specific products. Some are more interested in points, while others are looking for co-marketing, lead gen, deal registration, technical training, etc. The more a SaaS provider like us spends on one of those, the less we have to spend on the others. There's only so many duckets and hours in the day (a measure of duckets, really) to go around. So in the beginning, let's look at what we're doing (this page being subject to change as we scale, and all that):
Deal registration: Email dealreg@secretchest.io about the customer and if you're the first to send that specific logo, it's yours. No deal is too small. Every account, whether it's a customer who's paying us or not deserves commission. I mean, the percentage of 0 for freemium customers won't add up to more than 0, but if they convert to a paying customer it's still yours. To be transparent, we tag it with your reseller ID in the database, so we can run a monthly report to send funds once a month. Once there are enough for that to be unwieldy, we'll build a portal. We've done that at former employers but want to wait to incur the cost until it makes sense. Keeping it simple for now. The commission is 20 points for deals that are registered, 15 for those that aren't. Want more (or less), let us know why.
Co-marketing: We provide marketing materials, co-branded campaigns, and lead generation tools to empower resellers and amplify reach. We're also happy to talk about Marketing Development Funds (MDF) when the time is right with any given partner.
Sales and Technical Training: We want to equip resellers with comprehensive product knowledge and sales training to effectively present and close deals. That includes demo decks, product documentation, webinar participation, a channel partner onboarding deck, roadmaps, sales playbooks, objection handling documentation, sample sales plans, and customer journey maps. We also offer ongoing escalated technical support to ensure partners can address customer inquiries in pre and post-sales/support scenarios. We won't let a deployment go bad if we know what's up.
Clear Partner Communication: We maintain open communication channels with resellers through regular updates, webinars, and dedicated account managers to address needs and concerns. Especially in the early days our partners will have a heavy impact on shaping the finer points of the product itself.
Product Customization Options: We provide white-labeling opportunities of the web app (to be specific, color schemes and logos, but not yet URLs - we could easily build that it comes at a cost both in terms of cyclomatic complexity and SaaS hosting, so are waiting people to ask us to do so first) and full API options for custom integrations to differentiate our offering(s) and cater to niche markets.
In general, our goal is to:
Provide an Amazing User Experience: Many partners sell a bunch of adjacent software solutions to their customers. We want to provide the best experience to end users possible. Thus APIs, webhooks, and working with partners to help facilitate better integrations.
Focus on Mutual Growth: Partner with resellers who have a clear value proposition and align with our target audience. We want to invest in building long-term relationships and supporting their success.
Joint Sales and Marketing Initiatives: Collaborate with resellers on co-branded events, webinars, and marketing campaigns to generate leads and amplify brand awareness.
Regular Performance Reviews and Feedback: Conduct periodic reviews to evaluate program effectiveness, address reseller concerns, and adapt our program for continuous improvement (we're huge nerds about feedback loops).
Legal and Compliance: Clearly define reseller responsibilities, data privacy terms, and intellectual property rights within our program agreements.
Technology Integration: Ensure seamless integration between our platform and any reseller-specific tools or workflows to avoid technical bottlenecks. This means we provide webhooks for everything we do, to automate those MSP and MSSP flows, as well as APIs to reach back into our product and ask questions.
Measure Program Success: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track program effectiveness, such as lead generation, conversion rates, and reseller revenue contribution.
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