A partner submits a prospect, such as company, contact and opportunity, before the sale. You approve or decline it. If approved, that partner is the recorded source when the deal closes, so a long sales cycle cannot erase their credit. Registration replaces cookies with an explicit claim your team reviews.
Cookies assume a buyer who clicks, browses, and signs up on their own. A sales-led product does not work that way. A partner has lunch with a prospect, introduces your product, and the contract is signed 70 days later after three calls, a security review and a procurement email. No click happened anywhere near that sale.
Deal registration exists for that situation. The partner says, in writing and early, "this opportunity is mine," and you decide whether to agree.
How does the process work, step by step?
- The partner submits a registration: the prospect's company, a contact name and email, the product of interest, an estimated size and notes on where the relationship stands.
- Your system checks for duplicates, such as another registration, an existing customer, or a deal already in your pipeline.
- Someone on your team approves or declines it, with a reason if declined.
- If approved, the opportunity is tied to that partner. When a customer matching the company or email domain appears, the sale is attributed to the registered partner.
- When the deal closes and payment arrives, the commission is created from your normal rules.
The important part is step two and three. A registration is a claim, and a claim means nothing unless you review it. Without review, a partner could register your whole target list on day one.
Why not just use a cookie and a long window?
Because buyers in a sales process do not behave like web visitors. The first contact may be a phone call or a conference. The person who signs may differ from the person who first clicked. They may research on a work device that blocks tracking. A 365-day cookie cannot rescue that, and a partner who spent months on an account will not accept "we lost the click" as an answer.
Registration also protects against the opposite problem. A partner who sourced an account can see a late-arriving click from a coupon site steal the sale. If the registered deal is the stronger signal, the click does not override it. That is the same idea discussed in what happens when a customer clicks two partner links: an explicit claim outranks an accidental one.
A deal from registration to close
Say you sell a platform with a $24,000 annual contract and pay partners 10% of first-year payments. A consultant, Priya, registers Northfield Dental Group on March 1. Your team approves it on March 3.
- March 20: a different employee at Northfield clicks a link from a deal-site partner and requests a demo.
- Late May: Northfield signs. The buyer's email domain matches the registered company.
- The system sees a registered deal for Priya and a later click from the deal-site partner. Because the deal was explicit and approved, Priya is credited; the click is recorded as an influence, not the source.
- Priya earns $2,400 on the first-year payments, as they arrive.
The figures are illustrative. What matters is that the outcome followed a rule you wrote down before it came up.
How do you handle duplicates and disputes?
Write the rule before the first registration, not after the first argument. A common one: the first approved registration for a company holds the claim for a set period, and a second partner gets a clear decline with the reason and the date it expires. Matching on the company's email domain and on the contact email catches most duplicates. For ambiguous cases, such as a large company with several divisions, decide whether registration is per company or per division.
Be strict on what an acceptable registration is. Ask for a real contact and a short note on the relationship. A form with only a company name invites speculative claims.
Also decide what happens to a stale registration. If a partner registers a prospect and then does nothing for four months, you probably do not want them to hold the account indefinitely. Set an expiry, and allow renewal when the partner can show recent activity.
Where does Affiliate Tabs fit?
Deal registration is one of the program types in Affiliate Tabs, alongside affiliate, referral and lead pass, and a company can run several as separate groups with their own forms and terms. Your team approves or declines what partners submit, and the platform's duplicate matching on keys helps spot overlap. For how it compares with other program types, see affiliate vs. referral vs. lead pass vs. deal registration.
Whatever tool you use, a registration should lead somewhere concrete: a deal record your team can see, a partner who is told promptly yes or no, and a commission trigger that fires when the contract is paid. A registration that sits unanswered for two weeks does more damage than a quick decline, because the partner keeps working an account they may not own.
Which status should the partner see after registering?
Three things: a status (pending, approved, declined), the date the protection started and when it ends, and a reason on any decline. Partners in sales-led programs treat a registration as a promise. If the answer is slow or silent, they route their best accounts to a competitor's program, or they stop registering and just email your sales team directly, which defeats the point.
Set an internal response target and keep to it. Two business days is a reasonable promise for most teams. Then check the approved list monthly against closed deals so you can see which registrations turn into revenue and which only sit there. A partner with ten registrations and no closes is telling you something about the quality of their prospects, or about where your own team is dropping the ball.
Last, keep the registration record when a deal is lost. If the same company comes back eight months later, you will want to know who introduced it the first time, and the program terms should say whether that history still earns protection.
When is registration overkill?
If your product sells itself online in a single sitting, with signups that take minutes and payment on the same day, a link and a code cover nearly everything and registration adds friction. It earns its place when the sale involves a human on your side, a deal size large enough to argue about, and a cycle long enough that a cookie would expire first.
Common questions
- What is deal registration?
- It is a process where a partner tells you about a specific prospect before the sale closes. If you accept the registration, that partner is the recorded source for the deal and is paid when it closes, even if the buyer never clicks a link.
- How is deal registration different from a lead pass?
- A lead pass hands you a prospect for your team to work, usually paid per lead or per qualified lead. Deal registration protects a partner's claim on an opportunity they are working themselves, and pays on the close.
- What happens if two partners register the same prospect?
- You need a rule. Most programs honor the first approved registration and decline the second with a reason. Matching on company domain or contact email catches duplicates early, before anyone invests effort.
- How long should a registration last?
- Long enough to cover your typical sales cycle, with a way to renew if the deal is still active. A registration that expires after 30 days will not protect an opportunity that normally takes 90.