"Our distributors are emailing us for spec sheets. That can't be the system."
You sell through a network. That network is a competitive advantage — but only if you support it well. When partners have to call or email for resources they should be able to access themselves, you're turning a channel strength into an operational drag.
Does any of this sound familiar?
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Distributors and dealers are regularly contacting your team for resources that should be self-serve
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Partner-facing materials are scattered across email threads, shared drives, and your public website
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You have no visibility into how channel partners are actually using your marketing materials or product information
Ready to move things forward?
Your channel partners are a reflection of your brand. If working with you is complicated, that shows up in how they represent you.
In distribution, the easiest brands to work with tend to win, even ahead of the ones with the best product. They give partners immediate access to current specs, pricing, order forms, and marketing materials without adding to your internal team's workload.
A well-built partner portal reduces friction, improves how your brand shows up in the field, speeds partner onboarding, and gives you visibility into channel activity you don't have today.
Every time a distributor has to call you for a spec sheet, you've made working with you slightly harder than it needs to be. At scale, that friction adds up.
How we approach this.
It starts with an honest look at what's actually happening across your channel, well before any portal gets built.
Mapping the partner workflow before designing the solution
What does a distributor actually need to do their job well? We interview partners, audit your current support process, and document real requirements before writing a line of code.
Designed around the partner experience, not internal convenience
A portal organized around how you store information is only marginally better than no portal at all. We design around how partners need to find and use resources.
Self-service at the core
The goal is to eliminate inbound requests for information and tasks that don't require human involvement. We scope and build the self-service capabilities that actually reduce the load on your team.
Integrate with the systems you already run
Partner pricing, inventory, and product information should come from the source of truth — your ERP, product catalog, or CRM — not a manually maintained portal page.
Visibility your team can act on
A portal that partners use is also a source of intelligence — what resources are being accessed, what products are being explored, where partners are stuck. We build the reporting that makes that visible.
It’s important to find partners that can handle your needs in the short term, but also take you into the future. Lightburn continues to hit the mark in both areas.
A situation like yours.
Douglas Dynamics sells through a dealer network, and those dealers were navigating five separate brand sites to find products, parts, and sales support. The channel that drives their business had no system built for it.
We rebuilt the dealer locator with Salesforce as the single source of truth, so listings stay accurate without manual upkeep, then added a Request a Quote flow that routes buyer leads directly to the right dealer. Self-service tools are now among the most-visited experiences across all five brands — dealers get leads, and buyers get answers without waiting on an email.