This is the second installment in our three-part series on scaling revenue-generating partnerships. You can find the first article, and the first challenge, in the series here.
Universal Challenge #2: can’t co-sell without the right data, access, insights, and technology
There are many companies that have invested in teams of people to manually account map and connect sales reps with partners on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes this is just one small part of a Channel Operations person’s role. And sometimes there are teams of people doing nothing but “account mapping” all day every day. This work is very manual, time consuming, and never ends.
It is hard to keep the partner account ownership and sales rep intros up to date as people change roles and territories are realigned.
And even when the right sales reps at each partner are connected directly via email, it is unrealistic for sales reps to build the informal relationships needed to co-sell over corporate email. Corporate email is designed for official communications. Yet the most valuable insights two account executives can share with each other often can’t be shared across such official channels.
Co-selling can’t be wished into existence.
Connecting sales reps to their peers at each partner is the “last partnership mile” that can drive exponential revenue for both sides. It requires an intentional investment in the right data, technology, and partnering best practices that enable your sales reps to connect directly and collaborate with sales reps at each strategic partner.
- Right data: sales reps need to see which strategic partners have existing relationships at each of their accounts and exactly who at each partner owns each account. This data must be up to date or else account executives will be constantly reaching out to the wrong sales reps.
- Right access: sales reps need a way to connect and chat with their peers across partners so they can start to build the trusted personal relationships they need to co-sell together. Corporate emails work well for official communications but are not an effective way for sales reps to build rapport with other reps. Sales teams need a more casual text-based chat platform to communicate with other partner sales reps.
- Right insights: sales managers want to make sure that all chat-based communications are saved into their CRMs so that future account owners get the full history of each account and can benefit from the partner insights.
- Right technology: A one-off solution with each partner won’t scale and will make it harder for account executives to be effective. Enterprises need an approach and technology solution that will scale across multiple strategic partners while giving sales reps control over who they want to engage with.
Many enterprises run into this issue when trying to establish or scale their co-selling program. What partner sales teams need is a platform that can automate or streamline all of the above-mentioned practices. With the right technology, sales teams can identify and secure otherwise lost revenue opportunities.
Find the solution to the two universal challenges enterprises face here.