Create partner certification training

A partner certification program should cover the jobs a partner does in a real deal, in the order they happen: recognizing a customer who needs your product, explaining it, quoting it correctly, setting it up, and supporting the customer afterward. Anything that doesn't help a partner do one of those jobs belongs in your documentation, not in the course.

Kite builds this list from two sources. The first is your knowledge base, which tells it who your customers are, what problems your product solves, how it compares with competitors, and how it's priced. The second is where partners go wrong today. With Gmail connected, Kite reads the threads where partners asked your team for help. With HubSpot or Salesforce connected, it looks at partner deals that stalled or customers who cancelled soon after a partner set them up. For anything it can't find, it asks the person on your team who handles partners a few short questions, such as "What do new partners most often get wrong on their first install?"

Each mistake becomes something the course teaches and the quiz checks. If partners keep quoting the monthly price without the setup fee, pricing gets its own lesson and two quiz questions. If they sell to companies too small to need your product, the course spends real time on how to tell a good customer from a poor one.

For example, suppose you sell security software through managed IT providers. Your feature list runs to forty items. Kite's outline might cover six things instead: which of a provider's clients need the product, how to explain it to an IT director in two sentences, how it differs from the two competitors providers already resell, how to quote it per device, how to roll it out without interrupting the client's staff, and what to do when an alert fires on the first day.

Structure the levels around the jobs different partners take on, so each level certifies that a partner can do a specific part of the work on their own. A partner who only refers customers needs to know far less than one who installs and supports your product, and a single long course wastes the first partner's time while undertraining the second.

A common structure has three levels:

• Sales certification. The partner can recognize a good customer, explain the product, answer common objections, and quote it correctly. Every partner takes this level.
• Implementation certification. The partner can set up the product for a new customer and confirm it works. Partners who install or onboard customers take this level.
• Expert certification. The partner can handle complex setups, troubleshoot problems, and train other people at their own company. Your top partners take this level.

Kite adapts this to your program. If your partner tiers already reward partners for doing more, Kite ties each level to a tier, so a partner knows what certification they need to move up. If all your partners are installers, Kite may combine the first two levels. If you only work with referral partners, one short level is enough.

Kite also decides what each level requires to pass, such as a minimum quiz score or a completed practice setup, and how often partners need to renew. Products that change quickly usually need a shorter renewal period than products that rarely change.

Outline a reseller course as a short series of modules, each one teaching a single job and ending with a check that the reseller can do it. Kite writes the outline first so you can approve the shape of the course before anyone writes lessons.

Each module in Kite's outline includes:

• What the partner will be able to do. One plain sentence, such as "Quote the product correctly for a client with 50 to 500 devices."
• The lesson. The few things a partner needs to know to do that job, in the order they'll use them.
• A worked example. A realistic customer situation and what a good partner says or does in it.
• The common mistake. What partners get wrong here and how to avoid it.
• The knowledge check. Two to five questions that test the job, not the vocabulary.

Once you approve the outline, Kite writes the full lessons. It writes for the partner's customer conversations rather than your internal ones, so an installer's course talks about what happens during a site visit and a reseller's course talks about the client review where your product would come up. Kite describes what your product does only from sources it can point to, such as your documentation, your website, or results you've supplied.

Kite can also write the material around the lessons. That includes a short welcome note explaining the program and its levels, a script for a recorded walkthrough of a setup if you want to film one, and a one-page summary partners can keep for reference after they pass.

The best way to check whether partners know your product is to give them realistic customer situations and ask what they would say or do. Questions like "Which plan includes single sign-on?" test memory. Questions like "A client with 300 employees says they already have antivirus software. What do you tell them?" test whether the partner can sell.

Kite writes the knowledge check for each module this way. It writes scenario questions with a model answer and a short list of what a passing answer must include. For pricing and setup, it adds questions with one right answer, such as working out a quote for a given number of seats. Every question comes with an answer key, so grading is consistent from one partner to the next.

With Google Forms connected, Kite creates the quiz as a form and writes the questions into it. It adds questions that take a typed answer. If you want multiple-choice questions, you add them in Google Forms, and Kite reads those answers just like the rest. Google starts new forms unpublished, so you publish the form before sending the link to partners.

When partners submit the quiz, Kite reads each response and grades it against the answer key. It explains why each answer passed or fell short, so a partner who missed the point gets feedback they can use. Then Kite reports the results to you: who passed each level, who needs another try, and which questions most partners missed. If half your partners can't quote a multi-site customer correctly, that shows up as a pattern in the report rather than as a surprise on a real deal.

A certification is only useful while it matches your product, so Kite updates the course whenever something it teaches changes. Tell Kite about a new feature, a price change, or a new setup step, and it revises the affected lessons and quiz questions and drafts a short note telling certified partners what changed. Because the course draws on your team's knowledge base, the prices and margins it teaches stay consistent with your partner program guide and your enablement kit.

The quiz results also feed back into the course. When most partners miss the same question, Kite rewrites the lesson behind it with a clearer explanation or a better example, and it checks whether the next group of partners does better. When partners keep emailing your team the same question after they've passed, Kite adds that answer to the course.

You can ask Kite to review the course on a schedule, such as once a quarter, and flag anything that no longer matches your product. When a partner's certification is due for renewal, Kite can draft the reminder email with a link to the current quiz and send it from your team's Kite address or your connected email account after you approve it.