Case studies
2025 Guide to Choosing Your Next PRM
What is a PRM?
Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is a software platform designed to help businesses streamline, optimize, and enhance their relationships with partners. These partners might include resellers, referral partners, strategic partners, integration partners, distributors, affiliates, or other entities in a company’s ecosystem. A PRM platform allows companies to centralize tools and processes to improve communication, collaboration, and performance within these partnerships.
Key functionalities often include deal registration, partner onboarding, content sharing, performance tracking, and communication tools. By integrating these capabilities, PRMs help organizations scale their partner programs efficiently, ensuring mutual growth and alignment.
Why Would You Need a PRM?
Businesses increasingly rely on partner ecosystems to scale their reach, reduce customer acquisition costs, and boost revenue. However, managing a network of partners using traditional tools like spreadsheets, emails, or disparate systems quickly becomes inefficient and error-prone. Apart from that Partner Deals Have a 32% bigger deal size and 2.8X higher win rate.
While some partner-related data may be housed in your CRM, inviting partners to access your CRM directly is not a viable option for reasons like security, data complexity, and usability. Instead, a PRM bridges this gap, providing partners with a user-friendly platform tailored to their needs while syncing seamlessly with your internal systems.
Here’s why investing in a PRM matters:
- Scalability: A PRM grows with your ecosystem, accommodating additional partners and ensuring smooth operations even as complexity increases.
- Transparency: Provides clear visibility into partner performance, deal status, and revenue contributions.
- Efficiency: Automates repetitive tasks like onboarding, reporting, and resource distribution, reducing administrative overhead.
- Partner Engagement: Enhances satisfaction and productivity by offering intuitive tools and resources that make it easier for partners to succeed.
- Data-Driven Insights: Empowers better decision-making with analytics that highlight high-performing partners and pinpoint areas for improvement.
For any organization aiming to maximize its partner strategy, a PRM is a crucial investment.
How to Start Looking for the Right PRM?
Choosing a PRM that aligns with your business goals and partner strategy requires careful planning. Here’s how to get started:
1. Define Must-Have Features
Look for essential features such as:
- Deal and/or Lead Registration: Transparency and management of partner-led sales and opportunities.
- Performance Tracking: Tools to monitor and analyze partner contributions and performance.
- Content Sharing: A central repository for marketing materials, pricing guides, and training documents.
- Communication Tools: Real-time collaboration and updates.
- Integrations: Ensure seamless integration with your CRM and other essential tools.
- Bonus: Look for PRMs like Introw that also integrate with partner-centric tools like Crossbeam, Slack, and Zapier.
2. Involve Stakeholders
- Collect input from sales, marketing, and partner management teams who will use or benefit from the PRM.
- Engage with current partners to understand their needs, challenges, and expectations.
3. Align on Timeline
- Some PRMs require significant implementation time, often taking 4–6 months or more. Align on your desired go-live date and evaluate vendors based on their ability to meet your timeline.
Key Differentiators to Look For in a PRM in 2025
Time to Value:
Traditional PRMs often require months for implementation, modern PRMs like Introw can be set up in minutes, minimizing delays and accelerating ROI.
- Opportunity Cost: Every day without a PRM is a lost chance to engage effectively with your partners.
- Development Costs: Long timelines often mean higher costs for IT resources.
- Business Changes: Extended implementations can result in outdated systems before they even go live.
- Usability: Complex implementations exclude partnership managers from co-creating the platform, making it less tailored to their needs.
CRM Integration at the Core:
There’s a clear shift happening. Modern companies have their partnership data in their CRM.
That’s why a PRM should use your CRM as the single source of truth.
- 2-Way Sync: Syncing data bidirectionally between your CRM and PRM. Mains use cases:
- Syncing partner data
- Syncing deal data
- Beyond Deals: Modern PRMs should support collaboration on leads, support tickets, and more.
- 1-Click CRM Integration: Avoid wasting development resources—choose a PRM with effortless, 1-click CRM integration.
- Bonus: CRM Copilot - look for PRM’s that support in-CRM functionalities.
Partner Engagement Beyond Portals
- Partners are not living in your PRM - they often have their own priorities. Make sure you can keep partners top of mind without needing to login to the PRM every single time.
- Updates via e-mail and/or Slack: Features like email or Slack notifications keep partners updated without requiring them to log into the portal.
- Off-Portal Collaboration: Look for PRMs that enable interaction from tools partners already use. For instance, Introw allows partners to reply to automated emails. These replies are captured in the Introw PRM & your CRM.
Free Trial Availability
- Don’t buy before your tr(u)y. Make sure you can properly test the solution before committing to it.
About Introw
Introw is revolutionizing Partner Relationship Management for the modern business landscape. Introw empowers companies to streamline and scale their partner ecosystems with cutting-edge tools that deliver immediate value.
What Sets Introw Apart?
- Short Time to Value: Go live in minutes, not months, minimizing delays and reducing opportunity costs.
- CRM Integration at the Core: Real-time, 2-way synchronization ensures that your CRM remains the single source of truth.
- Comprehensive PRM Features: From deal registration to content sharing, Introw offers all the essential tools to enhance partner engagement and productivity.
- Flexible Collaboration Options: Partners can engage with your program through email, Slack, or other tools they already use.
- Proven Success: Trusted by businesses worldwide, Introw helps organizations unlock the full potential of their partner ecosystems.
With Introw, managing partnerships is not just efficient—it’s transformative.
Conclusion
Selecting the right PRM in 2025 isn’t just about ticking feature boxes; it’s about finding a platform that aligns with your strategic goals and scales with your partner ecosystem. Modern PRMs like Introw, with their quick implementation, seamless CRM integration, and robust features, offer the agility needed to thrive in today’s dynamic business environment.
Investing in the right PRM is an investment in your partners—and your company’s growth.
Introw PRM and Crossbeam integration
Looking to integrate account mapping data into your PRM?
Introw leverages Crossbeam's overlap data to identify opportunities and share them with your partners instantly.
What is Crossbeam?
Crossbeam is a Partner Ecosystem Platform (PEP) that empowers SaaS companies to replace cumbersome spreadsheets with a streamlined system to identify overlapping customers and prospects in their partner networks. This approach is commonly known as "account mapping."
In simple: You connect your CRM, your partner connects their CRM. Crossbeam identifies overlapping data. Example: Your company has Acme Corp as a prospect, your integration partner has Acme Corp as a customer. Crossbeam will uncover this for you allowing you to ask for an introduction or intell about Acme Corp.
In 2024, Reveal and Crossbeam merged, creating a network that now connects over 30,000 companies, including Stripe, Intercom, HubSpot, and many others.
What is Introw?
Introw is an innovative Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform designed to make managing partnerships easy, efficient, and impactful. It allows businesses to create and manage a partner portal in just minutes, with features like:
- Automated Deal and Lead Registration: Streamline workflows for registering and tracking deals all integrated with your CRM.
- Tiering and Commission Management: Automate partner tiers and commission payouts to encourage better engagement.
- Partner Enablement: Keep partners up to date and top of mind by giving them access to the right sales material and sending them announcements on autopilot.
- CRM Integration: Introw integrates seamlessly with platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, keeping your CRM as the single source of truth.
- Real-Time Alerts and Nudges: Introw enables instant partner engagement via email and Slack, ensuring partners stay informed and motivated.
Unlike traditional PRMs, Introw starts from CRM data, and is set-up in literally minutes instead of months.
Why and How Does Introw Integrate with Crossbeam?
The integration between Introw and Crossbeam brings the best of both platforms together to enhance partnership collaboration and revenue potential. Here’s how it works:
- Seamless Connection: With just one click, Introw connects to Crossbeam, automatically matching your partners from both platforms.
- Streamlined Opportunity Sharing: Use Crossbeam's overlap data to identify opportunities and share them with your partners instantly through Introw.
- Automated Deal Attribution: Deals sourced through Crossbeam's overlap data are automatically attributed to the appropriate partner in your CRM.
- Real-Time Partner Engagement: Introw uses Slack and email to send timely updates on deal status or CRM changes, ensuring partners are always in the loop and engaged.
By combining Introw’s advanced partner management tools with Crossbeam’s powerful data-sharing capabilities, this integration creates a highly efficient system for driving partnership revenue and fostering collaboration.
Learn more and get started with the integration by creating an here.
Alternatively, schedule a 1:1 call to learn more through a personalized demo.
Introw becomes a HubSpot Certified App Partner 🏅
This milestone reinforces our mission: leveraging CRM-data as the single source of truth for partner collaboration.
Introw is helping over 1000 HubSpot users to launch a partner portal in minutes, all integrated with their CRM. This has resulted in an increased partner revenue & engagement for HubSpot customers (see Sandsiv case study).
Benefits of the HubSpot Integration
Certified integrations reflect a strong investment in product quality and customer experience, ensuring users can unlock greater value from their HubSpot workflows. Partners can collaborate in real-time on deals and get real-time updates, while resellers can even manage their own deals without needing a HubSpot account.
🪄By connecting HubSpot to Introw, all partner data sitting in HubSpot will come to life in no-time:
- You'll be aligned with your partners by collaborating on deals in your partner portal. Comments are being pushed as notes in your HubSpot.
- You'l be able to sync partners from HubSpot directly to Introw
- You'll be able to push form submissions (become a partner, support request, lead form & deal form) directly to HubSpot.
- Add other dynamic CRM-views based on HubSpot objects to your shared space (contacts, companies, leads or tickets)
Next to this, Introw integrates with contacts, product, quotes and more in order to keep HubSpot as the single source of truth for data management.
Introw Copilot in HubSpot
The HubSpot Copilot enables the partnership, sales, and marketing teams to seamlessly collaborate with their B2B partners directly within their CRM. Watch this short video to see how the Copilot workflow operates.
Laurens Lavaert, CTO at Introw, adds, “HubSpot has been an exceptional partner. Achieving certification on their marketplace reinforces our dedication to helping businesses streamline partner collaboration. With Introw, nearly 1000 HubSpot users are already simplifying their partner collaboration, and we’re excited to help thousands more maximize their success.”
HubSpot’s App Partner Program continues to grow its ecosystem of top-tier integrations, offering users powerful tools to expand their reach and streamline their operations.
Connect HubSpot to Introw now
- Create an account via: https://rooms.introw.io/signup
- Connect your CRM
- See the magic in action 🪄
About Introw
Introw is a partner relationship platform (PRM) that lets you launch a personalized partner portal in minutes—fully integrated with HubSpot (& Salesforce). Whether you work with resellers, referral partners, distributors, or implementation partners, Introw streamlines collaboration and boosts engagement without the hassle of traditional portals.
How Data is Transforming Partnerships
The world of partnerships is evolving—and for the better! Data has become the cornerstone of modern partnership management, transforming how partner managers make decisions, build relationships, and drive growth. Today’s partner managers don’t just maintain connections—they leverage data to uncover insights, optimise processes, and unlock new opportunities. When I started, I was navigating spreadsheets and tracking relationships through CRMs like Pipedrive and HubSpot. Today, the focus is on integrating those systems into a single source of truth, creating transparent, frictionless experiences for partners that foster long-term success.
This shift is a game-changer for managing and scaling partnerships. I’m Eva Fayemi, Co-Founder & CEO of Bond Agency, and I’m excited to share how data is reshaping partnership management.
1. Companies start with CRM Data
For most companies, CRM systems are the starting point for managing partnerships. These systems provide key data on sales interactions and performance, but integrating partner-sourced data can be a challenge. While it's better than nothing, simply tracking data isn't enough—it's crucial to define a partnership strategy first.
At Bond Agency, we help clients identify their partnership goals and align them with broader business objectives before optimising their CRM or introducing tools like Introw. A common challenge we see is companies not tracking which partnerships contribute most to the bottom line. We guide them in mapping partner journeys, attributing engagement, and tracking conversions in the CRM. This clarity leads to improved decision-making, better tracking, and growth.
Protip: Ensure your sales team is aligned on reporting partner-sourced leads. Create internal documentation and calls to keep everyone on the same page for seamless reporting across teams.
2. Increasing Revenue and Engagement
Growing revenue and boosting partner engagement are top priorities, but these goals can be time-consuming and difficult to track. Modern partner managers balance engagement and tracking more efficiently through technology, automating key processes and logging communication touchpoints with partners.
For example, one of our clients used to spend hours tracking partner engagement manually. After integrating their CRM with automation tools, they gained a dynamic, real-time view of partner contributions. Automated alerts and insights allowed their team to respond quickly, increasing partner engagement and revenue from key accounts.
Protip: Track whether partners open onboarding materials like sales brochures or marketing resources. This helps identify where additional support is needed for smoother, more effective onboarding.
3. More Transparency Through Data Means Better Collaboration
A common issue partners face is a lack of transparency. Without it, trust erodes, and partnerships can’t thrive. Tools like Introw are changing this dynamic by providing greater transparency. It connects CRM data with partnership management, offering a platform that tracks key metrics, aligns partners on pipeline progress, provides content, and monitors engagement.
This transparency empowers partner managers to track the entire partnership ecosystem while giving partners visibility into their performance. When everyone is aligned with clear data, collaboration becomes more efficient and impactful.
The future of partnership management is data-driven. With tools like Introw, partner managers can unlock new insights, improve collaboration, and drive faster, more efficient growth. Companies that embrace this will lead the next era of partnership management.
About Bond Agency: Since 2020, Bond Agency has been helping B2B tech and SaaS startups accelerate growth through strategic partnerships. We specialise in strategy development, execution, and providing fractional partner teams, focusing on scaling businesses in the EMEA and USA. With a diverse network of affiliates, tech integrations, and B2B influencers, we’ve delivered impactful results across industries including hospitality tech (e.g., Unicorn Mews), MarTech (e.g., Hotjar), and SaaS (e.g., Revenue Hero).
Join the conversation in our Slack community, The Nearbound Club, where tech founders and partnership leaders drive innovation in the partnerships space.
Visit: www.bond-agency.io
How SANDSIV increased partner adoption by 30% with Introw
SANDSIV, an AI-driven leader in Customer Experience Management (CXM), faced challenges with partner communication and collaboration. Referral partners were frustrated by the lack of updates on their leads, while reselling partners struggled with pipeline alignment and deal collaboration. By implementing Introw’s personalized partner portal integrated with their CRM (HubSpot), SANDSIV achieved a 30% increase in partner adoption and improved collaboration within weeks.
What were their challenges?
To keep referral partners informed about the status of leads, SANDSIV relied on manual updates & outdated spreadsheets, causing significant time loss. For solution partners and resellers, there was a lack of alignment on the sales pipeline and no opportunities for collaboration on deals.
In general, partners did not have a central place to collaborate on deals, pipeline & strategy.
How did Introw help overcome these challenges?
SANDSIV evaluated numerous PRM solutions and chose Introw for its emphasis on partner experience. Within a single day, SANDSIV set up a personalized partner portal. This provided their partners with instant access to the deals they had influenced or sourced.
Introw's partner portal transformed the experience for referral partners, providing real-time updates on deal statuses. This inspired partners to send more leads, knowing they were always in the loop. For solution partners, Introw brought pipeline alignment and the ability to collaborate on deals. With Introw’s 1-click HubSpot integration, Sandsiv is able to keep HubSpot as their single source of truth, while improving the partner collaboration.
How to become a SANDSIV partner?
SANDSIV is an innovation leader in Customer Experience Management (CXM) enterprise solutions. With its cutting-edge end-to-end CXM software solution, SANDSIV empowers businesses worldwide to deliver differentiated customer experiences and foster long-lasting customer loyalty. The company’s commitment to excellence and innovation has enabled it to expand its partner program and establish a world presence that is constantly growing.
Go to https://sandsiv.com/partner-program/flex-partnership/ or send an e-mail to partner@sandsiv.com to join their partner program.
About Introw
Introw enables companies to launch a personalized partner portal in minutes, fully integrated with your CRM. This ensures alignment on pipeline, content, and strategy. Key features include deal collaboration, deal and lead registration workflows, asset sharing, mutual action plan creation, automatic deal updates, and more.
The 3 ways to manage your partners in HubSpot and attribute revenue
We’ve seen that there are 3 potential ways to manage your partners within HubSpot: custom properties, company association & custom object association. Before implementing a partner portal like Introw we advise to map your partners in your HubSpot.
In this blogpost we’re going to focus on revenue attribution so we’re looking at the object “Deal” in HubSpot. If you also want to attribute contacts, leads, companies,… to partners, you can use the same approach.
Custom properties
How does it work?
- Create a custom deal property
- Step 1: Go to settings —> data management —> properties
- Step 2: Create property:
- Object type: Deal
- Group: Deal information
- Label: This is up to you to decide, we've gone for "Partner". Click "Next"
- Field type: If you’re sometimes working with multiple partners on a deal, we advise going for “Multiple checkboxes.” If there is always a maximum of one partner per deal, go for “Dropdown select.”
- Add your custom property to your view or your teams view (this will allow you to easily select the right partners from the left side panel)
- Attribute the right partner(s) to the right deals
What are the pros?
✅ Easy and fast set-up
✅ Possible with all HubSpot plans
✅ Easy to create revenue reports
What are the cons?
❌ Every sales person should have this custom property in their view
❌ Not possible to navigate directly to the partner company
Company association (with association label)
How does it work?
- Create a custom association label between deal and company
- Step 1: Go to settings —> data management —> objects —> deals —> associations
- Step 2: Create association label:
- Objects you’re associating: Deals-to-companies
- How many labels do you need? A single label
- Create one called: partner sourced (for deals that partners have sourced)
- 💡 Optional: You can create another label called: partner influenced (for deals that partners have influenced)
- Associate the partner company to a deal and select the label “partner sourced” (or partner influenced)
- You can do this by associating an (additional) company to the deal; add company
What are the pros?
✅ Easy and fast set-up
✅ Scalable
What are the cons?
❌ Not possible with all HubSpot plans
❌ Not easy to report on in HubSpot
Custom object association
How does it work?
- Create a custom object
- Step 1: Go to settings —> data management —> objects —> custom objects
- Step 2: Create custom object:
- Object name - singular: “Partner”
- Object name - plural: “Partner”
- Primary display property: “Partner Name”
- Property type: Single-line text
- Associate the right company object to the partner object in order to have all the right data connected
- Associate the partner object to a deal
💡 Optional: Create association labels on this custom object to differentiate between for example partner influenced and partner sourced
What are the pros?
✅ Good for organisations with larger amounts of partners
✅ Scalable
What are the cons?
❌ Not possible with all HubSpot plans
❌ Not so easy
Conclusion
To wrap up, there are 3 ways to manage your partners in HubSpot: via custom properties, via company association and via a custom object.
Introw supports all methods :).
What is Introw?
Working with resellers, referral partners, distributors,...? Keep on reading! Introw is a partner relationship management (PRM) platform allowing you to collaborate with your B2B partners in shared spaces integrated with HubSpot.
One space to be aligned on pipeline, enable partners with content and track engagement.
✅ Partners don't need to login to a portal
✅ Simplifying B2B partnership collaborations
Partnership data lives in the CRM, so we’re leveraging that to the fullest with our native and 1-click HubSpot and Salesforce integration.
With that, we’re not only elevating your B2B partnership experience, we’re elevating the experience of your entire partnership team.
Introw raises €1M to launch Digital Partnership Rooms
The Ghent-based tech start-up Introw, already helping dozens of companies to unlock partnership sales, raises €1M to create "Digital Partnership Rooms"
Early-stage fund Pitchdrive leads the €1 million round in Introw, joined by vetted angels such as Pieterjan Bouten (Showpad), Ewout Meyns (Hubspot) & Dieter De Mesmaeker (DataCamp).
Young entrepreneurs Andreas Geamanu (CEO), Laurens Lavaert (CTO) and Simon Van Den Hende (AI Engineer) founded the company in early 2023 together with “Netlog-maffia” serial entrepreneurs Lorenz Bogaert, Toon Coppens, Nicolas Van Eenaeme and Vincent Verlee.
They are on a mission to make partnership collaboration easy by allowing partners to collaborate in shared spaces.
"There is only 25% adoption on current partner relationship management (PRM) solutions. With Introw partners don't need an account which results in up to 80% partner adoption," says co-founder Andreas Geamanu.
The founders saw the challenges sales teams faced when trying to collaborate with B2B partners. Driven by these challenges, the founders set out to bridge the gap and forge a new path for B2B ecosystem sales.
”We saw a huge drive in the founders to solve a pain they had experienced personally. Combining the technical (AI) expertise with B2B sales expertise will be a magical potion that can lead to a huge shift in the way companies work with partners today” Wim Derkinderen at Pitchdrive.
With the help and expertise of these experienced angel investors and Pitchdrive, Introw will use this funding to convert warm leads into deals worldwide. Introw is onboarding new users every day.
Sign ups are open at introw.io
Partner Deals Have a 32% bigger deal size and 2.8X higher win rate
Introw conducted a research on 2024 comparing the partner-attributed deals with non partner attributed deals.
In today's hyper-competitive business landscape, partnerships are becoming increasingly vital for driving revenue growth and scaling operations. Recent research on 2024 deals reveals compelling insights into the impact of partner-attributed deals compared to non-partner deals, shedding light on why partnerships are more crucial than ever.
Key Findings from Our Research
Introw detected that partner-attributed deals significantly outperform direct sales (non-partner) deals in two critical areas:
- Higher Deal Size: Partner-attributed deals boast an average deal size that is 32% higher compared to non-partner deals.
- Higher Win Rate: The win rate for partner-attributed deals is 2.8 times higher than for non-partner deals.
Interestingly, our research showed no significant difference in the sales cycle length between partner and non-partner deals.
What These Numbers Mean for Your Business
These findings underline a fundamental truth: partner ecosystems are revenue multipliers. Here's why:
- Increased Credibility: Partners bring an added layer of trust and credibility to the sales process, which can be crucial in closing larger deals. Customers are more likely to trust recommendations from partners they already have a relationship with.
- Access to New Markets: Partners can open doors to new opportunities and markets that may have been difficult to penetrate independently.
- Improved Win Rates: With a win rate that is nearly three times higher for partner-attributed deals, it's clear that partnerships are a critical factor in improving sales outcomes.
How to Leverage Partners for Maximum Impact
Based on our findings, here are three actionable steps your business can take to maximize the impact of partner-attributed deals:
- Invest in Partner Enablement: Equip your partners with the right tools and resources to succeed. This includes training, co-marketing initiatives, and providing them with access to your sales collateral.
- Leverage Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Software: Platforms like Introw can help streamline partner collaboration, track deal attribution, and measure partner performance.
- Align Incentives: Ensure your partners are motivated to bring deals to the table by offering competitive incentives and fostering a mutually beneficial relationship.
Conclusion
The numbers don’t lie: Partner-attributed deals are larger, more successful, and just as fast to close. Companies that prioritize building and nurturing their partner ecosystems stand to gain a significant competitive advantage.
If you want to see similar results in 2025, now is the time to invest in your partner strategy. Platforms like Introw can help you get there by simplifying the way you collaborate with partners and driving better outcomes. Schedule a demo here or get started for free.
What is Introw?
Introw unlocks partner revenue by eliminating the friction of partner collaboration. Companies working with resellers, referral partners, distributors, or implementation partners use Introw to seamlessly share sales materials, collaborate on customer data, and drive partner engagement—all integrated with their CRM.