The Co-Selling Manifesto

TL/DR

It’s hard to scale beyond billions by yourself. The Co-Selling Manifesto spells out the hard truths, choices, urgency, and principles revenue leaders must embrace to avoid relegation. 

I wrote this article for people to share with revenue executives who need to hear the unvarnished truth from someone outside their organization. Here are the top three punchlines:

1. No one wants to build a new relationship with yet another vendor sales rep. 
2. B2B buyers already have people they trust who advise them on the products they should consider and the companies they should work with (Maria Chien, Forrester, 2023).
3. There are 6 – 7 partners already involved in every account and sales deal (Forrester, 2024).

Selling with partners is no longer a nice-to-have option. The modern B2B buyer doesn’t want to talk with sales reps from every vendor, and they’re trusting sales reps less and less. Co-selling with partners that have existing relationships with buyers and customers has become a must-have GTM motion. Companies that continue “going it alone” will struggle to scale beyond billions. 

The best sales reps have been winning more deals and making more money selling with partners for years. Just analyze who goes to club, and why they’re the top sellers. 

But co-selling can’t be forced or bought. It requires an authentic win-win scenario for every partner involved that is centered around each buyer or customer. 

Operationalizing and scaling a customer-centric co-selling program requires the right data, automation, workflows, and best practices. Top companies are already figuring out how to operationalize and scale new co-selling programs.  

HARD TRUTHS: the status quo approach will slow your growth

1. Sales playbook is dead: buyers don’t have relationships with your company’s sales reps, and don’t care to. 
2. New logos are scarce, but necessary to keep your cross-sell wheel growing. 
3. Partners don’t trust your sales reps. Too many sales reps have screwed partners over without consequences. 
4. Partner incentives are broken. You want more leads and intros from partners, but current incentives don’t outweigh the risks to partners when they bring their relationships to your reps. 

URGENCY: CEOs and CROs must make co-selling a mandate

There are three critical reasons why companies must make co-selling a C-level mandate and priority:

1. Growth: partner-led sales are the key to faster growth.
   1. Partners are the best source of new logo pipeline. 
   2. Partner-sourced deals are twice as likely to close.
   3. Partner-sourced deals are worth twice as much. 
   4. Sell with and co-sell motions can accelerate partner-sourced and partner-led sales. 
2. Customer success: sales should respect each customer’s existing relationships with SIs,  ISVs, VARs, resellers, and cloud hyperscalers. 
3. Retention: if you don’t work with partners, someone else will. Competitors have incentives for partners to migrate your customers, but they’d rather help customers renew and expand with the right incentives. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Appoint a VP Co-Selling who reports to the CRO
2. Align partner teams incentives to your core business (ie: helping grow sales of your core products or services)
3. Don’t try to monetize your partners
4. Ensure partners have incentives to help you source, expand and renew customers over time
5. Treat co-selling as the sophisticated go-to-market strategy it is and ensure the program has the cross-functional support and resources to build, measure, and constantly improve over time
6. Invest in a partner ecosystem platform that gives you the data, automation, and orchestration capabilities you need to sell more with, through, and across partners

Learn more about B2B co-selling:

• Go beyond “Random Acts of Co-Selling”
• The Co-Selling Transformation Playbook
• First-principles of co-selling
• The official definition of co-selling
• The emerging Co-Sell Quarterback role