Partner Tech Stacks: When to Use CRM, PRM, Crossbeam, Slack, and More

Published on November 14, 2024
Expert advice from Marco De Paulis (Partnership Director, Loop), Amanda Neilsen (Partner Sales Mngr, Box), Kelly Sarabyn (Partnership Director, HubSpot) and Jessie Shipman (Founder, Fluincy).

Snapshot

This hits home: You are scaling a partner program and every tool choice feels high stakes. Choose wrong and you waste budget, confuse partners, and add friction to deals. Choose right and you remove friction, scale relationships, and unlock predictable partner-driven pipeline and retention. The difference between manual hacks and a thoughtfully designed stack is time, trust, and measurable ROI across sales, success, and finance.

This article is designed to help you understand how to overcome these challenges and choose a partner technology stack that actually works for your partners and your internal teams. Keeping reading to learn how these experts have overcome these challenges.

Pick tools that remove friction — lean on your CRM first and only add systems when they actually reduce partner work. -Marco De Paulis

Table of Contents

Why partner technology matters now

You are likely juggling multiple priorities: discovering mutual customers, tracking partner influence on opportunities and churn, enabling partners with timely content, and handling payouts. Tools exist to make each of these easier, but the wrong stack just adds noise. The key is to treat technology as a way to remove friction where partners actually work—where they get things done day to day—rather than forcing them into another login that rarely gets used.

Leaders you trust—like Marco—emphasize maximizing what you already have in a CRM before adding more systems. At the same time, tools like Crossbeam and Gong can yield early, high-leverage insights that help you build the case for resourcing and scale faster.

Between those three tools, that’s everything I’m using on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. -Marco De Paulis

Core tools every partner leader should consider

Your baseline stack will usually include a CRM, a method for account mapping, and reliable communication channels. From there you can expand into PRM, partner payments, and call-transcription intelligence as needed.

CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot): the truth layer

You should treat the CRM as the single source of truth for partner activity. Track inbound and outbound referrals, partner influence on pipeline and closed-won, and partner-led renewals or churn. If you lean heavily into automation, you can connect these signals to partner scorecards and revenue attribution models.

Use your CRM to:

  • Record every partner-sourced or partner-influenced opportunity with clear metadata
  • Associate contacts and companies to partner accounts
  • Automate notifications to Partner Managers and Sales when a partner impact is detected
  • Feed reporting that measures retention and churn attributable to partner motion

Crossbeam / Reveal: account mapping and overlap

Crossbeam or similar account-mapping tools should be an early addition. They are free or low-cost to start and give you instant visibility into mutual accounts and territory overlap. That insight helps you prioritize partner outreach, find co-sell motion opportunities, and spot misalignment early.

Right now we leverage Allbound for our PRM and then we use Reveal for account mapping. -Amanda Nielsen

Gong and conversation intelligence

Gong does more than coach reps. Use it as a partner intelligence engine. Transcripts reveal where partners are being mentioned in deals, what customers want, and where partners could add value. Those search results become playbook inputs for co-selling motions and enablement.

We do use Gong to find opportunities and for co-selling, co-servicing, also to do partner research. -Kelly

Slack and business texting (SMS): where partners live

Slack is where much partner work happens. Instead of driving partners to a third portal, integrate and push content into Slack, where partners already communicate. For higher-intensity, rapid-response relationships, business texting (SMS integrated through your CRM) can be business-critical. Use texting sparingly and intelligently—only for partners with whom you have a close, permissioned relationship.

It allows me to have one-to-one messaging, keep my own phone number separate. -Justin Zimmerman

CRM as the truth layer: what to track and why

You should instrument your CRM to capture partner attribution. Without this you can’t forecast partner-driven revenue or justify tooling budgets. Consider the following fields and workflows:

  • Partner Referral Source field on Opportunities
  • Partner Influence checkbox and Influence % weighting
  • Partner Contact records linked to partner companies
  • Automated workflows that notify partners and internal stakeholders when an opportunity is created or moves stages
  • Lifecycle stage enrichment to indicate co-sell, co-service, or partner-led deals

These small additions let you answer big questions later: which partners influence renewals? Which partners shorten the sales cycle? Which partners produce the highest LTV customers?

Crossbeam and account mapping: how to find overlap and motion

Crossbeam-style tools solve a deceptively hard problem: who shares accounts with you and your partners? When you know overlap, you can proactively reach out and build co-selling or referral plays instead of waiting for inbound interest.

Start by:

  • Seeding Crossbeam with your high-value accounts and a subset of key partners
  • Setting up automated exports or alerts for new overlaps
  • Using overlap data to prioritize partner enablement and co-marketing campaigns

Communication channels: Slack, SMS, and the power of personal outreach

You need layered channels. Email is broad and low touch. LinkedIn is personal but asynchronous. Slack is real-time and collaborative. SMS is intimate and powerful for high-priority tasks. Use the right channel for the right intent.

Channel guidance:

  • Email: documentation, monthly newsletters, formal announcements
  • Slack: deal coordination, daily co-sell workspaces, short task updates
  • SMS: urgent deadlines, event reminders, permission-based nudges
  • Calls: relationship building and escalation

Maintain etiquette: ask permission before texting and use a business number that you can reassign when on vacation. If you do SMS at scale, integrate it with your CRM so messages are logged and compliant.

Bring relevant, useful information into Slack — it’s where partners live, but it’s an art: don’t blow up channels or DMs. -Jessie Shipman

Using Gong as a partner intelligence engine

Gong’s transcripts are treasure troves for partner ops. You can program searches to find mentions of partner names, “partner,” “implementation partner,” or specific services. Those hits reveal where partners could have been engaged earlier, where they are already influencing conversations, and where you can offer support.

Operational ideas:

  • Set Gong alerts for partner mentions in high-value deals
  • Feed those alerts to Slack channels or partner managers
  • Compile transcript-based insights into partner enablement content

The PRM debate: when to adopt a partner portal

You will be tempted by PRMs because they promise a single place for content, deal registration, and payouts. But adoption matters. Partners often resist yet another login unless the PRM delivers direct revenue or removes friction in a way that partners can feel immediately.

Ask yourself before buying a PRM:

  • Are partners generating revenue from working with us directly?
  • Will partners use a separate portal or prefer tools where they already work?
  • Are there payment, registration, or compliance needs the PRM uniquely solves?

Marco’s perspective is clear: lean into your CRM and existing workflows before adding a PRM. Kelly points out that when you reach scale—when partner managers cannot maintain high-touch relationships across their book—you should consider partner-specific technology.

Use your CRM as the truth layer for partnerships — manage partner activity there before introducing extra systems. -Kelly Sarabyn

Partner payouts and PartnerStack: solving finance headaches

Payouts are a practical barrier. Processing individual partner payouts monthly creates a heavy lift for finance. Tools like PartnerStack put payments on autopilot by paying partners on your behalf and billing you a single lump sum.

When to consider PartnerStack or similar:

  • Your payout volume is creating recurring, time-consuming work for finance
  • You need clear, automated reporting for partner commissions
  • You want partner self-service for payout history and deal details

Amanda Nielsen highlighted PartnerStack’s biggest advantage: it simplifies payments and removes an internal accounting burden, which can be the most immediate justification to secure budget.

PartnerStack paid all of our partners and then billed us one lump sum every month. It removed a ton of accounting friction. -Amanda Nielsen

Automation patterns for Slack and partner messaging

You want to push the right content into Slack without overwhelming channels. This takes strategy and automation design.

Design patterns:

  • Channel segmentation: keep partner channels targeted by region or partner tier
  • Automated workflows for deal registration and status updates using Slack workflows or integrated forms
  • Scheduled broadcasts for releases and marketing collateral using throttled push schedules
  • Notification routing so partner managers receive only their partners’ activities

Practical automations to build:

  1. Deal registration form that creates a CRM opportunity and posts a summary to a partner-specific Slack channel
  2. Post-close onboarding note that triggers a welcome packet to the partner channel
  3. Monthly payout summary pushed to partner channels with a link to detailed statements

Give them the exact link to the exact thing with the right specifics. Remove friction and they will act. -Justin Zimmerman

How to justify budget and estimate ROI

Budget conversations boil down to an equation: time + cost saved versus potential revenue unlocked. Translate tool benefits into clear financial or time-based metrics for finance and the C-suite.

Sample ROI framework:

  1. Identify the bottleneck (for example, payouts take 72 hours of finance time per month)
  2. Quantify time and cost saved (72 hours multiplied by finance hourly rate)
  3. Estimate revenue upside from faster partner enablement or reduced partner churn
  4. Combine the savings and revenue upside to present a payback period

Examples of easy wins to justify spend:

  • Automating payouts to save X hours per month and reduce errors
  • Using Crossbeam to find Y mutual accounts that create Z pipeline in the next quarter
  • Using Gong to identify partner mentions in top deals and converting those into co-sell plays

Implementation checklist and governance

When you decide to adopt new tools, follow a disciplined rollout plan to avoid clutter and ensure adoption.

Implementation checklist:

  • Define success metrics up front (adoption rate, deals registered, payouts processed)
  • Start with a pilot group of partners and internal power users
  • Integrate with your CRM and single-sign-on if possible
  • Document workflows and create short playbooks for partners
  • Train Partner Managers and Sales on how to use the tool
  • Establish a governance loop: monthly review of metrics and feedback

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Beware of three recurring traps:

  • Buying a PRM before partners are ready to use it. Avoid forcing partners into another login; instead, meet them where they already work.
  • Ignoring finance complexity around payouts. Get finance aligned early and model the true cost of manual payments.
  • Over-notifying via Slack or email. Respect partners’ channels and limit messages to high-value, targeted content.

Close the loop with partner feedback regularly. If partners aren’t using a feature, ask why and iterate rapidly.

We have over 500 partners and we are still in CRM migration. Cleaning data is just as important as picking tools. -Marco De Paulis

Real-world examples and tactical scripts

Here are concrete scripts and templates you can use when you roll out new processes.

Deal registration Slack workflow example

Trigger: partner posts a form in Slack or fills external form.

Automations:

  • Create opportunity in CRM with Partner attribution
  • Post summary in partner-specific Slack channel: account, expected close date, next steps
  • Notify assigned Partner Manager and AE

SMS outreach template for high-touch partners

Always get permission before initiating SMS. Use a business number that logs messages.

Template:

Hey [Name], Justin here. Quick check-in on [Account]. Are you available for a 10-minute sync today to align on next steps? If yes, drop your preferred time. -Justin Zimmerman

Gong search alerts to create

  • Partner name mentions in Top 50 deals
  • Mentions of “implementation partner” or “SI” in closed-lost analysis
  • Keywords like “painful integration,” “partner can help,” or “need a consultant”

FAQs

When should I add Crossbeam to my stack?

Add Crossbeam early. It is low friction to start and provides quick visibility into mutual accounts and overlaps. Even if you have only a handful of partners, Crossbeam helps you prioritize co-selling opportunities and validate partner-market fit.

Do partners actually use PRMs?

Some partners do, especially when the PRM provides clear revenue or operational value like deal registration and payout transparency. The best approach is to only introduce a PRM when partners will clearly benefit and when it reduces friction rather than adding another login hurdle.

How do I justify the cost of PartnerStack or a payout tool?

Model the time your finance team spends processing payouts and the errors that create follow-on cost. Calculate monthly hours saved plus the risk reduction. Add any expected revenue lift from faster payouts or better partner adoption. Present a payback period to justify the expense.

What level of partner coverage requires partner-specific tech?

When partner managers can no longer provide high-touch relationships to every account in their book—typically when you scale into dozens or hundreds of partners—you should evaluate PRM and automation tools. Before that, focus on CRM, Slack, and targeted automations.

Is SMS appropriate for partner outreach?

SMS can be highly effective but should be permission-based and limited to high-value relationships. Use a business texting tool integrated with your CRM so messages are compliant and logged. Ask partners how they prefer to be contacted and respect boundaries.

How do I use Gong to find partner opportunities?

Create Gong searches for partner mentions, specific partner names, and phrases that indicate an implementation need. Set alerts and route those hits to Partner Managers to act quickly. Use transcripts to build enablement content and co-sell playbooks.

Conclusion

You will not find a one-size-fits-all stack. The right approach is deliberate: start with a CRM as your truth layer, add Crossbeam for mapping overlap, use Gong to surface opportunities, and meet partners where they work—Slack and SMS—before asking them to adopt a new portal. When finance burden from payouts becomes real, evaluate PartnerStack or similar tools that remove operational friction. Focus on adoption, measurable ROI, and the principle of removing friction for partners rather than adding more gates.

Choose tools that support the relationships you want to scale: remove manual toil, automate repetitive tasks, and push information where partners already collaborate. Do that, and you turn partners from a hopeful channel into a reliable growth engine.

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