Glossary

Wondering how all of this connects together? Take a walkthrough of the PartnerStack object model

Term	Explanation
Company	A company represents your entire organization at the highest level. A company can have one or multiple programs for partners to join. Vendors typically have a single company.
CoSell motion	The coSelling motion refers to the act of a partner selling alongside a sales rep or partner manager at the vendor's business. In this motion, the opportunity is a shared responsibility between the two parties.
Customer referral motion	The customer referral motion involves an existing customer of a vendor referring someone they know to purchase the product. Typically this referral is done via a referral widget within a product.
Customers	A customer is a PartnerStack object that represents an end user of your product or service.
Deal	A deal is a PartnerStack object that represents a sales opportunity that is driven by a partner (partner sells or cosells prospect and updates the Deal status). Typically maps to an opportunity in CRM.
Group	A group is the highest level of channel organization in PartnerStack. Groups can be configured with emails, offers, and other experiences to provide partners with distinct experiences. Partners can be in a single group at one time. Typically groups are used to organize partners into programs, geographies, or tiers.
Lead	A lead is a PartnerStack object that represents a potential customer that the partner expects the Vendor's sales team to own and drive to closed. Typically maps to a lead in CRM. In the case of a 'lead pass'
Lead pass	The lead pass sales motion generally refers to the act of a vendor passing an inbound lead down to their partners to follow up with. This is commonly done during joint marketing initiatives, or if the prospect has unique needs that the partner is better equipped to solve rather than the Vendor's internal team.
Link	A PartnerStack Link is a unique link given to each partner and partner contact that attributes all traffic through the link back to the partner. Core method of attribution used for Link-based referral motion.
Link-based referral motion	A type of channel sales motion where partners share a link with their network to push traffic to a landing page. When traffic converts, PartnerStack attributes the conversion to the Partner.
Managed Service Provider (MPS)	Managed Services Providers are a persona of partner who actively sells, manages and supports customers throughout their lifecycle pre and post sale.
Marketing partner (Affiliate)	Marketing partners are partners who primarily share PartnerStack links in paid (AdWords) or organic (blogs, social) content to drive traffic and new customers to a product for a commission.
Offer	Offers represent the incentive a partner can receive for achieving a certain business objective (referring a new customer, a deal moving to closed/won, etc). Offers can be a flat value ($5), or scale as a percentage of a transaction (10% of $4000 =$400)
Partner (partnership)	Partnerships represent the connection an individual or organization has with your company. A partner can be an individual contact, or an organization of multiple contacts within a partnership.
Partner contact	A partner contact represents a human user that is partnered with your company. Can be acting as a lone individual, or as a part of a collective team with other contacts.
Partner Manager	Partner managers are employees of your company who help manage your partner program. Partner managers can be assigned to specific partners.
Partner contact role	A partner contact role is a permissions-set given to a partner contact within their partner team. Different roles can determine which data and actions a contact can take within team.
Partner team	Partner teams allows partner contacts to organize under a single partner identity. For instance, Agency XYZ has 50 sales people actively referring clients to ABC marketing software on PartnerStack. Each sales rep has a unique partner contact account allowing them to login and register their own leads under Agency XYZ.
PartnerStackJS	PartnerStackJS is a snippet of Javascript installed in Vendor web applications that serves as a core integration component for link based tracking. PartnerStackJS identifies referred traffic, confirms attribution, and communicates signups back to PartnerStack.
Payout	Payouts are verified rewards that partners are able to cash out of PartnerStack. Once cashed out the Partner's payout returns to $0 and begins to collect new rewards.
Program	A partner program is a strategy used by Vendors to motivate and engage individuals and organizations outside of their company to create more value for the end users. Vendors use PartnerStack to manage one or multiple programs.
Resell Motion	While the definition can vary, traditionally the resell sales motion is defined a partner purchasing software on behalf of the end user. Typically reseller partners register a deal with a vendor, invoice the end user for services and softwares costs, and then purchases the software from a vendor (usually at a discount).
Reseller	Resellers are a type of partner who is actively selling or coselling a vendor's product to an end user. Resellers are often described as 'putting the deal on their own paper' which refers to the act of the enduser paying the reseller, who then pays the vendor.
Reward	Rewards are a financial object in PartnerStack that represents a financial value payable to a Partner. Rewards are created manually in app by a program manager, or programatically by an Offer and a trigger event.
Sales motion	A term used to describe a sales business process to get a prospect to be a customer. Partners are often described as a 'channel sales motion', and then subdivided in to more specific motions such as 'lead pass motion', 'cosell motion', 'referral motion', etc.
Segment	A segment is a list of partners defined by rules (or filters) that you set. Partners are automatically added to the segment when they meet segment criteria.
Tag	Tags are labels added to partners. You can use tags to give partners unique experiences like emails or offers, reporting, or other needs.
Teammate	Teammates are employees of the vendor who are invited to a company to help manage partner operations. Teammates can be partner managers, technical roles, or financial roles.
Tier	Tiers are a program structure that incentivizes partners to reach business goals such as a sales quote in order to progressively unlock incentives available in high tiers.
Transaction	The transaction object in PartnerStack represents a purchase made by an end customer. Typically, when an end customer pays a vendor for their product, the resulting transaction object on PartnerStack will trigger an offer to generate a reward for the referring partner.
Trigger	Triggers are an if-this-then-that automation feature in PartnerStack. Triggers can be used to generate rewards, send emails, add tags, and other actions.
Vendor	Vendors are customers of PartnerStack who pay PartnerStack a fee to host and manage their partner program on PartnerStack.