Today, nearly 96% of all revenue is believed to be partner-assisted, making investing in your partner ecosystem crucial. It is clear that this is a growing concern for many top B2B companies, as made evident by a recent study conducted by Salesforce of 5,500 global sales leaders. In 2024, 89% of sales teams currently use partner sales, and 54% plan to within the next 12 months.
But 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, with 84% of Salesforce surveyors stating they have seen improving sales results by working closely with partners.
With an increased focus on partner-assisted sales, how can we ensure we are best enabling our partners around value selling? This was a topic amongst our Customer Value Community Value Disruptors in a recent discussion. This group of senior leadership in B2B sales, customer success, value, and enablement from top SaaS companies like HP, Autodesk, and Salesforce joined for a discussion featuring Lorin Coles, CEO and Managing Director of Alliancesphere, who has over 25 years of experience in partner sales. Check out their 4 top tactics below.
1. Align with Partners on the Value to Customers
The first step to any successful partner relationship is to define roles and align on the value that each party in the partnership will provide.
For example, some partners will be Value-Added Resellers (VARs), including offering solution bundling, software implementation services, other professional services and consulting services, and full-service Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
First, your partner needs to understand
- A. The value of your solutions and services,
- B. The value of their solutions and services, and
- C. How A+B = additional value that neither A nor B could provide on its own
Note: this analysis would apply for solution bundling and solutions + services partners, not for simple resellers.
Second, understand why the partner chose to do business with you in the first place, which boils down to two things:
- a. Ease of Doing Business
Partners are looking to align themselves with a product or service that has a simple design and UI that is easy to understand. The more efficient the better, as it increases the likelihood of use.
Not only should the solution or service be efficient, but it should also increase the partner company’s overall profitability. Increased revenue for both you and your partner company creates a relationship you can both benefit from, increasing loyalty for both parties.
Once you tap into what partners care about most and align on the value that each of you will provide to your customers, they will be more likely to trust your partnership and work with you on value selling. This creates a bias towards your technology over your competitors, increasing loyalty for your product/service.
2. Provide Training and Resources
Despite 96% of all sales being partner-assisted, organizations are often not providing their partner with the same levels of training and resources that we do our sellers. For your partners to be able to sell your product/service, they must first be enabled to do so. Take the time to enable your partners by providing sales training and resources. Listen to your partners on what they feel uncertain or uncomfortable speaking about and tailor training sessions to meet these needs.
Any successful seller must first feel confident in their ability to speak on the product/service and its unique capabilities. The same is true for your partner sellers.
3. Allocate Market Development Funds to Your Partners
It can be easy to overlook partners when it comes to investing funds and instead focus on your front-line sellers. This leaves little room for your partners and leads to the argument that you just don’t have the funds.
However, to truly drive customer success with your partners, it is important to allocate market development funds (MDFs) to your partners. MDFs are funds that are directly allocated to co-invest with your channel partners to hit established revenue targets together. This can look different at each organization, with people often using MDFs for things like demand generation, sales enablement activities, etc.
Be sure to set aside a portion of your funds to invest in your partners to set them up for success and increase the profitability of your channel partners.
4. Utilize a Value Platform
A value-selling platform is an excellent strategy for collaborating with partners. A value-selling platform helps you collaborate on best-practice business cases that take a holistic approach to value, looking at both quantitative and qualitative metrics. By giving your partner access to your platform like your customers, you are able to create a continuous feedback loop of information. When a partner helps create a sale of your product or service, they own the customer relationship, and it can be difficult to know how that relationship is going. By having your customers and partners working within a value-selling platform, you are able to have a more transparent view of the customer journey.
Additionally, partners are able to add their own insights into your product or services right into the platform. This creates a multi-faceted experience for your end customers, as they are receiving insights on the value of your product from both you and the partner, while simultaneously allowing you to stay up-to-date on the sales interactions your partners are having with potential customers. This is also beneficial to your customer success team, as this transparent look into the data of the partner/customer relationship allows them to better track and demonstrate value realized over time, giving them the right to have that renewal conversation.
The Ecosystems platform is a collaborative environment, allowing you, your partner, and your customers to collaborate on value together with the help of best practice business cases and a library of 5,000+ value drivers. If you are interested in learning more about the Ecosystems platform and how it can aid your partner sales, contact our team.
