What is deal registration?
Deal registration is the process where a channel partner notifies a vendor of a sales opportunity they are actively pursuing, in exchange for a protected window and improved margin on that deal. Once approved, the partner gets exclusivity - typically 30 to 90 days - during which the vendor's direct team and other partners cannot compete on the same opportunity. Registered deals earn roughly 5 to 15 additional margin points over unregistered ones.
How deal registration works
- 1
Submit. The partner notifies the vendor through the partner portal - customer details, product or solution, and estimated deal value.
- 2
Evaluate. The vendor's channel team checks the opportunity against its criteria: ideal-customer fit, minimum deal size, and whether it is already registered to another partner.
- 3
Approve. If it qualifies, the partner receives a protected window and improved economics on the deal.
- 4
Close. The partner works the opportunity with protection in place. Registration almost always has to precede the sale - register late and the protection is gone.
Why it matters to partners
Registered deals earn an additional 5 to 15 margin points over unregistered ones - a range on which five independent channel sources converge (indyrct Value Leakage Report, 2026). For an MSP doing $2M a year in product and licence resale, leaving half of its eligible deals unregistered can forfeit around $100k in margin annually. Registration is also the gateway to everything else: an unregistered deal is an invisible deal, with no protection against a direct team or a competing partner arriving late with a lower price. The full margin model is in The Value MSPs Leave on the Table.
What registration protects you from: channel conflict
Channel conflict is when two partners - or a partner and the vendor's own direct sales team - pursue the same customer at the same time, driving the price down and souring the relationship. Deal registration is the mechanism that prevents it: the first partner to register and be approved holds the opportunity, so nobody else can undercut it inside the protected window.
The multi-vendor problem
Every vendor runs its own portal, its own rules, and its own deadlines - with little consistency between them. A partner managing 8 to 15 vendor relationships faces a different registration process for each, and the sales motion routinely runs faster than the portals. Deals close unregistered, and the margin evaporates. This is the coordination problem Cotillion CORE automates: registering deals across your CRM, PSA and vendor portals from a single source of truth, with AWS Partner Central and Autotask live today and ConnectWise and Microsoft next. See it in action on the demos page.
When should you register a deal?
As early as first-meeting stage, before you write the proposal. Waiting until you are sure loses the protection window - and the window is the point. Register early, register everything, and report registration coverage weekly.
Frequently asked questions
See where deal registration fits your vendor strategy
Deal registration is one of three margin levers most partners under-use - alongside MDF and rebate stacking. The Vendor Strategy Health Check quantifies all three against your numbers in about five minutes.