Testing a Partner-Led Growth Model for Trackly
We’re testing a partner-led growth model for Trackly, a workforce management SaaS for attendance, payroll workflows, and remote or field teams.
The model is simple:
Refer Trackly to a relevant business. If they become a paying customer, you earn 20% recurring revenue every month for as long as they stay with Trackly.
We’re looking to collaborate with HR consultants, payroll providers, IT firms, agencies, BPOs, and business advisors.
The bigger challenge for us now is figuring out what turns an interested partner into an active one.
If you’ve built a partner channel before, what helped your first partners actually start referring?
The question you're asking - "what turns an interested partner into an active one" - is actually a measurement problem that most partnership programs skip. They assume interest is binary, but it's not. There's interested-in-concept, interested-enough-to-listen, and interested-enough-to-refer.
The friction lives between those layers. A 20% recurring revenue split is clear and generous, but it doesn't tell a partner whether referring customers will be easy or painful. They're measuring: Is this a referral that takes 30 seconds to mention? Or one that requires a full sales conversation? Do these customers self-onboard or do partners end up supporting them?
The partners who activate are likely the ones who solve for that friction early. They might ask: "If I refer a customer, what's my time cost?" The measurement system that matters isn't the commission structure - it's the activation friction. Your first active partners probably found a natural way to weave Trackly into their existing workflow. The measurement test is whether you can identify that pathway and repeat it.
This is a really good way of looking at it. I think the “time cost” point is especially important, 20% recurring revenue sounds attractive, but if referring someone means the partner has to spend hours explaining or supporting the product, the incentive loses its value.
That’s something we’re actively thinking about with Trackly: making the referral process as simple as possible and keeping the heavy lifting on our side. I really like the idea of measuring activation friction rather than just partner interest.