A recent Salesforce survey of sales leaders found that 84% are seeing improved sales results by working with partners more closely. Let that settle in for a minute. Then consider that nearly every company from this survey expects to use partner sales within 12 months.
So how are you incorporating value into your partner channel?
Ecosystems conducts research around Value Maturity called the Value Blueprint, which is the only benchmarking survey in the industry that measures value maturity across people, processes, and functions. This survey was conducted across 110 individuals and 80 leading technology companies. Despite the increasing priority for many B2B companies to move to a partner sales approach, it was found that out of the 15 different areas professionals were surveyed across, working with partners was the lowest of the 15, with an average maturity score of 1.7 out of 5.
Although partner sales have become an increased priority for many B2B companies, many are struggling with how to effectively implement this new sales approach. In a recent Customer Value Community webinar, “Putting Value with Partners into Action,” our guest speakers joined to share their insights into partner value selling.
What is Partner Sales?
Partner sales is any sale that is at least in part influenced by your partnerships. In partner sales, you can sell to your partners, and/or you can sell with your partners to customers. Both motions are bucketed in the partner sales category and both have been fruitful. This article will explore the four types of partner value engagements to help put value with partners into actionable steps.
4 Types of Partner Value Engagements
1. Joint Enablement
One of the most important aspects of creating joint enablement with your partners is how you communicate your value to them. Each organization has its own way of communicating its value, and it is essential to tailor your approach to align with its current frameworks or value selling methods. If they are not confident in your joint value, they will struggle to advocate your joint value to potential customers.
The second element is ensuring you have a trusted relationship with your partners where they trust you are a strategic go-to-market partner for them. You need to get their buy-in first before you will ever be able to get the buy-in of a customer. Additionally, if you gain their trust, they may be more likely to allow you to join in on customer conversations to give you the chance to present your joint value.
2. Joint Pipeline Generation
The second element to a successful partner relationship on value selling is joint pipeline generation. Work with your partners to better help train them on great discovery and how to recognize potential opportunities that would align with your joint partnership strategy. To do this, define what your ideal customer profile would look like as a joint partner and the overall customer benefits. If you have this well-defined, it will be easier to determine potential pipeline generation opportunities.
3. Joint Deal Engagement
To create joint deal engagement, you need to work with your partners on what a joint business case between your organization and theirs would look like. Consider creating templates in advance that map out the benefits of your joint value propositions to your customers. You also need to work with your partners on justification as to why you should be pulled into a potential deal opportunity and when the best stage is should the situation arise.
4. Joint Value Realization
Once the deal has been closed, processes also need to be in place to have you track the value realized of your joint solutions. How will the two of you work together to track impact continuously? By tracking the value realized over time, it will be easier to create a solid business case going forward for renewal and expansion opportunities. To do this, you need to have defined business outcomes from your customers that you can measure your success against over time.
Ecosystems’ SaaS platform allows you to track tactics, metrics, targets, and timelines to ensure you have defined and trackable measurements to demonstrate value realized throughout the course of your partner relationship. And, as our platform is fully collaborative, you, your partner, and your customer can all collaborate around value. If you would like to learn more, contact our team.
