Report on partner-sourced pipeline

You track partner deals by recording the partner on the deal itself, in one field that every rep fills in the same way. Kite gets you there by finding how your team records partners today and proposing a single consistent method.

In HubSpot, Kite reads your deals along with their properties, pipeline stages, and the companies and contacts linked to them. In Salesforce, it reads your opportunities and accounts and can run the reports your team already built. In either system, it looks for every place a partner might show up:

• Source fields. The lead source or original source is set to a value such as "Partner Referral."
• Custom fields. Someone added a partner name or partner type field in the past.
• Linked records. A partner's company is linked to the deal or account.
• Free text. The partner's name appears in the deal title, the description, or a note.

Say Kite finds 140 deals from the past year that mention a partner somewhere. Only 52 have a partner recorded in a field. Another 61 name a partner in the title or a note, and 27 have a lead source of "Partner" but no partner named. Kite shows you all three groups, matches the free-text names to your list of partners, and asks you about the deals it can't place with confidence.

If your CRM doesn't have a partner field yet, Kite can add one, such as a "Sourcing partner" dropdown that lists your current partners and a "Partner involvement" field for sourced or influenced. It shows you the fields and the deals it would update first. Once you approve, Kite creates the fields and fills them in on past deals. From then on, any deal missing a partner when one is mentioned shows up in the next report as something to fix.

Kite settles your definitions before it calculates anything, because the definitions decide whether this quarter's report can be compared with last quarter's. It proposes a rule for each choice that changes the number, explains why, and asks you to confirm or change it.

For a software company with a reseller and referral program, Kite might propose these rules:

• Partner-sourced means the partner introduced a customer your team wasn't already talking to. The deal counts in full toward that partner.
• Partner-influenced means a partner joined a deal your team already had, for example by running a demo or vouching for you. These deals are reported separately and never added to the sourced total.
• When two partners are involved, the partner who made the introduction gets the sourcing credit, and the other is recorded as influencing the deal.
• Pipeline is the value of open deals that have reached a stage you name, such as "Discovery completed," so early conversations don't inflate the number.
• Repeat business from a customer a partner sourced counts toward that partner for a period you choose, such as the first year.

Once you agree, Kite saves the rules in your team's knowledge base along with your partner list and program details, such as each partner's tier and region. If your team later decides that influenced deals should earn partial credit, you tell Kite once, and it records the change and the date it took effect.

Kite answers this with two numbers for each partner: the pipeline they created and the revenue that closed from it. It reads the amount, stage, close date, and outcome of every partner deal and adds them up for the period you chose.

Here's what that might look like for one quarter:

• Total partner-sourced pipeline. Partners sourced 38 new deals worth $612,000.
• Won revenue. 14 of those deals closed for $198,000.
• Partner-influenced deals. Partners helped on another 11 deals worth $240,000, which are reported on their own line.
• Top partner. One reseller sourced 16 of the 38 deals and $91,000 of the won revenue.
• Quiet partners. Five of your twelve partners sourced nothing this quarter.

The total matters, but the breakdown is what leadership acts on. A program where one partner brings in nearly half the revenue is a very different program from one where twelve partners each bring in a little. Kite also lists the deals behind each partner's number, so anyone who questions a figure can see exactly which deals produced it.

A partner program should report on how much pipeline partners create, how much of it closes, and how partner deals compare with deals from your other channels. Kite reports these for each partner and for the program as a whole:

• Pipeline created counts the number and value of new deals each partner sourced in the period.
• Won revenue is the value of partner-sourced deals that closed.
• Win rate is the share of partner deals that closed as won.
• Average deal size shows whether partner deals are bigger or smaller than your typical deal.
• Time to close measures how many days partner deals take from creation to close.
• Active partners counts the partners who sourced at least one deal and names the ones who have gone quiet.

The comparison with other channels is what makes these numbers persuasive. If partner deals close at 37% while deals from paid ads close at 18%, and they close three weeks faster, the program is easy to defend even if its total pipeline is smaller. Kite reads your other deals from the same CRM, so the comparison uses the same stages and the same definitions.

You show leadership a short report that ranks partners by the pipeline and revenue they sourced, compares the program with your other channels, and ends with a recommendation. Kite writes the summary in plain sentences first, then backs it with charts and the list of deals.

A typical summary might say that partner-sourced revenue grew 22% over last quarter and that two partners produced most of the growth. It might add that the partners who completed your certification sourced twice as many deals as the ones who didn't. Then it says what to do next, such as giving the top two partners a co-marketing budget or checking in with the five who went quiet.

Kite can deliver the report wherever your leadership reads it. In the Kite web app, it arrives as its own conversation with interactive charts and tables. If your team uses Slack, it can post to the channel you name. If not, Kite emails it to the person who set it up. Kite can also publish the report as a page with a link you can send to your board or your CEO, and you can limit that page to people at your company.

Kite can put the report on a schedule, so it arrives at the start of every month or quarter without anyone asking. Each run reads the latest deals from your CRM, applies the rules you agreed on, and compares the results with earlier periods. Kite keeps a dated record of each period's figures in your knowledge base, so a year from now you can ask how the program has grown and get an answer calculated the same way every time.

Each run also checks your records. When a new deal mentions a partner in its notes but has no partner in the field, Kite lists it so the owner can fix it, which keeps next month's report accurate.

Kite reads the report to plan partner marketing, not only to describe it. When a partner's deals dry up, Kite might draft a check-in email for your partner manager or a refreshed enablement kit with new talking points. When one partner's deals close unusually well, Kite might suggest a co-marketing campaign with them or a partner newsletter that shares what they're doing. Kite writes the work and asks for your approval before it sends or publishes anything, and the next report shows whether those partners started sending more deals.