Partnerships are important to any business. At Salesforce, our partners help us grow and scale as a conduit for new customer business. We value our partners – and work hard every day to provide just as much value to them as they bring to our business.

That's why we launched the Salesforce Partner Community in April 2014. The community provides a modern experience where partners can collaborate, learn, and find the tools they need to grow their businesses. Since then, the Partner Community transformed our partner relationships with a focus on collaboration and engagement as key drivers for participation.

That said, here are the three most important things behind our community’s long-term success:

1. Collaboration 

We encourage partners to collaborate with us and with each other in the community. Truth be told, some partners were a bit hesitant at first; they were weary about giving insights to competitors. However, over time, the community grew to be an open and cooperative space where partners are eager and willing to learn from each other.

For example, questions about our processes and programs have been a big topic of conversation. Often, they trickle down to our internal Salesforce team and, in many cases, lead to improvements. Since partners have a space to communicate and collaborate, we’ve been able to create an environment that helps address important questions and trending discussions in a productive way.

2. Onboarding

This is a critical to build strong partner relationships, as it's the first touchpoint.

It's a guiding principle that a seamless, effective partner experience provides a clear path to success.

Here's how we do that:

Education: Trailhead, our online training portal, makes it fun and convenient to learn about all things Salesforce.

Enablement: Every part of the experience outlines the steps partners must take to learn processes and find essential resources.

Engagement: The community facilitates collaboration between Salesforce, our partners, and between partners themselves.

We built our Partner Community with functionality, and content, to provide the most robust and thorough experience possible. For example, we use webinars, videos, and playbooks to create consistent, seamless onboarding experiences at scale.

Additionally,  we segment our content by product, industry, role, and program to make it simple and fast for partners to find.

3. Tools

Partners will find the essential tools they need to guide them through the learning process, all in one place.

Also, we help our Consulting Partners understand where they stand in our channel programs and levels by giving them a Partnership Value Score (PVS). This measures their progress along a series of targets and helps them understand exactly what they need to do to reach the next level. The transparency PVS provides is critical to help us build trust.

Just like you manage new leads and opportunities with your current customers, we work hard to drive adoption and engagement within the  Salesforce Partner Community. Today, the Partner Community has garnered over 22 million page views, facilitated 60,000+ posts, and delivered 2,000+ assets across a variety of collaboration groups.

Check out this webinar to learn more about how Salesforce helps build strong relationships with our partners.