Resources · Guide · 7 min read

Premier Partners: building a network underneath you

What a Premier Business Partner is, when recruiting your own partners is worth it, how the commission divides, and the one rule that governs it.

What it is

A Premier Business Partner does everything an ordinary partner does — registers deals, gets paid on what they bring — and additionally recruits partners of their own. What those partners bring flows through the Premier's relationship with the vendor.

In practice it makes you a small distributor operating on someone else's rails. You keep the vendor relationship, you keep the commercial terms with the people you recruited, and you do not have to build any of the plumbing.

You are the vendor's counterparty. Your partners work through you, never instead of you.

When it is worth it

The tier pays off when you already have people around you who could sell what you sell, and the only thing stopping you is that tracking it would be a spreadsheet nightmare. That is the specific problem it removes.

  • You already subcontract, refer or co-deliver with other firms.
  • You cover a region or a segment larger than you can service alone.
  • You are turning work away that somebody in your network could take.
  • You want the vendor relationship to be yours rather than fragmenting across five small partners.

When it is not

If you have nobody to recruit, a network is an empty structure with your name on it. Being a standard Business Partner is not a lesser tier — most partners should stay there, and the economics are identical until a second person is actually selling.

It is also the wrong move if you want the vendor to know your people directly. A Premier network deliberately puts you in the middle.

How the commission divides

The split at step four is yours. MacroBP does not prescribe it and does not take a second cut of it. That is deliberate rather than generous: we want more volume through your network, and telling you how to pay the people you recruited would only make you recruit fewer of them.

StepWhoWhat happens
1The vendorSets one commission — say 20% of the sale, as for any partner
2MacroBPTakes a small fee on what flows through the network
3YouReceive the remainder, as the partner of record
4YouSplit it with the partner who brought the deal, on terms you set

Setting the split

Set a network default, then override it for individuals who earned better terms. Both are yours to change, and the same rule applies here as anywhere else in this product: never change a rate retroactively on work already done. A partner who discovers their share moved after the fact does not argue — they stop bringing you deals.

A useful sanity check before you commit to a number: at your default split, is the partner earning enough that this is worth their sales cycle? If the answer is no for the deals they actually work, the split is decorative.

The one rule

A partner you recruited cannot approach a vendor you already work with. Every other vendor on MacroBP stays open to them, including ones a different Premier has claimed.

It is narrow on purpose. A blanket restriction would protect you and destroy the discovery that makes the directory worth joining in the first place — which would, in the end, cost you the partners you were trying to keep.

  • Your partners can see which vendors you have claimed from the moment they are invited, not at the moment they are refused.
  • Claims lapse after 180 days without a deal. A relationship you registered and never used does not stay fenced off forever.
  • Claiming a vendor you do not actually work with is a bad trade: it costs you nothing to hold and costs your network real opportunities.

What the vendor sees

When a partner in your network registers a deal, you see them immediately. The vendor sees the deal as coming from you. Once they accept the registration they see your partner too — named as working through you.

Disclosing earlier would invite the vendor to go around you. Never disclosing would make their own conflict checks impossible, and a vendor who cannot tell who is in front of their customer will eventually stop accepting registrations from anyone.

What to do first

Networks are live and free to open. Payouts through a network are not built yet: commissions are tracked, and money still moves the way it does today.

  • Open a network and name it. Nothing to apply for.
  • Claim only the vendor relationships you genuinely own today.
  • Invite three partners you already work with, before twenty you do not.
  • Set one default split you would be happy to explain out loud.

MacroBP does the part that is hard to do by hand

Registration in twenty seconds without an account, revenue reconciled to what actually collected, and commissions that settle themselves.

Get started →