Have you noticed a change in how executives talk about growth this year? The tone is different, there’s more concern and anxiety in their voices. At the beginning of 2023 all the talk was around the macroeconomic forces slowing down purchases. It was generally assumed that when the market picked up, sales would go back to normal. Unfortunately, that isn’t happening. Instead, companies are trying to make sense of lower sales productivity numbers despite all their heavy investments in sales training and productivity tools over the past decade.
Revenue leaders are starting to wake up to the fact that there are more than market swings affecting their pipeline and growth rates. Something more fundamental has shifted.
The way business buyers make purchasing decisions has fundamentally changed. In the past marketing and sales played a larger role in how buyers learned about your solutions and validated that it was the right choice for them. But not anymore. Today it’s your partners that play the biggest role in your sales success.
Traditional marketing and sales motions have become less effective
With so many vendors, suppliers, and delivery options to choose from, business buyers are turning away from the marketing content and direct sales reps they used to learn and buy from, and instead turning to trusted advisers, peers, colleagues, and consultants for advice on their purchasing decisions.
Enterprises are seeing this change in buyer behavior show up in both their marketing metrics and their sales metrics, with lower lead engagement, lower win rates, and lower sales productivity metrics.
Business buyers are turning to trusted advisers and consultants for purchasing advice
With so many vendors, suppliers, and delivery options to choose from, business buyers are turning away from the traditional direct sales and resellers they used to buy from, and instead relying on trusted advisers and consultants to make their purchasing decisions. Enterprises are seeing this change in buyer behavior show up across the board in their marketing and sales metrics.
- Cost of switching solutions or vendors has decreased with subscriptions and new products available in most markets. This changes the balance of power between vendors and buyers.
- Marketing content overload has made it difficult for buyers to wade through the morass of available content churned out by every vendor
- Buyers are very skeptical of new and unknown sales reps assigned to their account. It’s getting harder and harder for new reps to get enough time with customers and prospects to build the trust and rapport needed to sell and grow the business
- Buyers seek back-channel feedback from trusted advisors and consultants before making a purchase decision
More focus and investment in co-selling
Many executives are realizing that they need to move from a “we got this and can do it ourselves” approach to “better together” go-to-market motions with their best partners. They understand that just doubling down on what’s worked in the past won’t work in the future.
The fastest growing companies today are selling with their partners. This is true for companies that sell direct and companies that sell through indirect channels. We’re seeing a co-selling convergence between direct sales teams, channel sales teams, and partners as everyone realizes they need to sell together to win and grow.
Co-selling isn’t new. The best enterprise sales reps have been doing it for years.
But scaling up co-selling with thousands of partners and thousands of sales reps requires five things:
- A secure way to share sensitive data with partners in a digital clean room
- Comprehensive and accurate account mapping to identify all the potential deals in your partner network
- Ability to quickly connect sales reps with partners on their shared accounts, and to keep them aligned as territories change over time
- An easy and secure way for sales reps and partners that work in separate CRMs to collaborate on these new deals
- Attribution tracking so you can measure the impact of all these co-selling activities with each partner on your pipeline and revenue
Our teams here at PartnerTap are already helping some of the largest companies, with the largest partner ecosystems, take co-selling from random acts of co-selling to a highly orchestrated program that scales across thousands of partners and sellers.
If you’re seeing lower sales productivity rates and worried about your future growth we’re happy to advise you on how you can operationalize an enterprise co-sell strategy and grow faster with your best partners.