How We Run Tasva's Wedding Partner Program

Channelplay runs the Tasva Partner Program for Tasva, the men's celebration-wear brand that Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail launched with designer Tarun Tahiliani. Our telecalling and business development team signs up wedding planners, photographers, decorators, caterers, choreographers and musicians as Tasva partners, who refer grooms and their families to Tasva stores.

We own the whole chain for each partner: the first call, the paperwork that gets them a vendor code, the vouchers and gift hampers they hand to their clients, and the in-store events the partners help us run. A yes on the phone is where our work starts, not where it ends.

Why would a menswear brand run a partner program for wedding vendors?

Because the wedding trade is already talking to the families Tasva wants to dress. Tasva makes celebration wear for men, and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail said at launch that the brand aims to rethink the Indian male celebratory experience, fitting out the Indian groom included. The range covers sherwanis, achkans, bandhgalas, jodhpuris and accessories.

A family planning a wedding works with a planner, a photographer, a decorator and a caterer, and talks to each of them regularly. So when one of them suggests where to dress the groom, the tip comes from someone the family chose to trust, right when they're deciding.

Tasva's stores are company-owned, with no franchise partners, so there's no local franchisee in each city whose job is to build these relationships. The partner program does that job.

Everyone gets something out of it. Take a photographer. They offer their clients a Tasva benefit along with the shoot. The client visits a Tasva store and buys using a unique code. The client gets the benefit, the photographer earns a commission on the qualifying purchase, and Tasva gains a customer who arrived on a recommendation.

Who is on the partner onboarding team?

The team has two roles:

• Telecallers call the lead list, which is mostly wedding vendors.
• Business development and operations executives onboard vendors as Tasva partners.

The program runs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Jaipur. The team reports to our managers and to Tasva's zone-level managers in the Aditya Birla Group, so Tasva's zone managers have a direct line to the team signing up partners.

What is the partner onboarding process, step by step?

Every partner goes through the same steps:

1. A telecaller or business development executive contacts the vendor.
2. We collect the vendor's details and the documents Tasva needs.
3. We submit them to Tasva and the Aditya Birla Group.
4. The Aditya Birla Group generates the vendor's code.
5. The vendor receives Tasva gift hampers and vouchers.
6. The vendor offers these to their own clients to drive purchases at Tasva.
7. When a referred client makes a qualifying purchase, the vendor earns a commission.

The first call and the commission get all the attention. The steps in between decide whether a vendor who said yes ever sends anyone: a vendor whose documents never arrive has no code, and a vendor with a code but no vouchers has nothing to offer a client.

How do we measure a telecalling team for partner onboarding?

On connected calls and onboardings, not on dials. There's no target for the total number of calls. What's expected is a minimum number of connected calls and, each month, a minimum number of onboardings.

A dial target rewards calling the same dead numbers again. A connected-call minimum rewards getting a vendor on the line, and an onboarding minimum rewards finishing the paperwork, which is the part that turns a call into a partner.

Calls are tracked in a call-tracking tool, our own app handles operational and team monitoring, and managers monitor calling, connected calls and onboardings through those systems.

Escalations are few. On the calling side they're wrong or unreachable numbers, which makes the lead list the thing to watch: every dead number is time not spent on a vendor who picks up.

What happens after a partner signs up?

Now the partner needs something to hand out. We collect the codes, vouchers and gift hampers from Tasva, store them, manage the stock, supply them to partners and track that inventory in our own process and app.

A photographer who promised a client a Tasva benefit and has nothing to give them is unlikely to make the same promise again. So we treat partner stock the way a store treats shelf stock: stored, tracked and supplied to partners.

How do Tasva's partners help run its in-store events?

We also manage Tasva's in-store events and partner-led activities: calling customers and vendors, planning the event, and arranging food, an anchor, music and photography. We run them with the partner network: the vendors who refer clients to Tasva also help execute its events, so the same network that sends customers to the store helps put on the event that welcomes them.

What should you ask before outsourcing a partner onboarding program?

If you're building a referral program with a trade that already reaches your customers, put these four questions to any agency, us included:

1. Who owns the step after signup? If the agency's job ends when the vendor says yes, the codes, vouchers and stock that produce referrals belong to nobody.
2. What is the team measured on? The answer you want is connected calls and onboardings. A dial count tells you how busy the team was, not how many partners it signed.
3. Who on your side sees the pipeline? Your regional managers run the stores the partners send customers to, so they should see who's being signed up near them, not read about it in a monthly deck.
4. Can the partner network do more than refer? If your brand runs store events, the vendors you sign up may be the people best placed to staff them.

To see where an onboarding funnel leaks, read our guides to merchant onboarding funnel metrics and reducing onboarding drop-offs. Our merchant and partner onboarding team runs onboarding programs for other brands too, including Zomato's restaurant partner onboarding and merchant onboarding for Amazon Pay.