In today’s market, 96% of all sales are believed to be partner-assisted, and 89% of companies are currently using and investing in partner sales, according to a recent Salesforce study. With these metrics, leading organizations are placing increased focus on strengthening and enabling their partner relationships to drive sustainable growth and revenue. In a recent Customer Value Community workshop, professionals in B2B sales, customer success, and value gathered to discuss and share insights into building high-value partner relationships and effectively enabling them in value selling. Here are four takeaways from the discussion.
1. Foster a Culture of Curiosity
Building a strong partner sales relationship starts with curiosity. Without a deep understanding of your partners’ business models, customer base, and objectives, it’s impossible to establish a meaningful collaboration.
To assess potential alignment, consider asking your partners:
- What is your current customer base?
- How do you typically sell your product/service?
- What type of activities are you engaging with your customers?
- What unmet needs do your customers have?
- How do you deliver value to your customers?
These questions will help you determine whether your partner’s customer audience aligns with your offerings and who may be most interested in strengthening the relationship. By proactively engaging in these discussions, you create a foundation for a partnership built on shared objectives and mutual value creation.
2. Elevate Awareness of Value-Based Selling
Once you’ve identified partners with strong alignment, the next step is to increase their awareness of value selling. Some of your partners may be well-versed in value selling and value realization, while others may need foundational knowledge. Meeting them where they are in their journey is critical. Ecosystems’ Value Validation Framework provides a structured approach to aligning partners around value selling. It consists of six key elements:
- Objectives: The overarching goals the organization aims to achieve.
- Tactics: Specific programs or projects to be employed in pursuit of the objectives.
- Problems: Clear identification of the root cause challenge to be addressed.
- Metrics: Quantifiable measures used to assess progress and success.
- Targets: Specific, measurable outcomes to be achieved.
- Timelines: Defined periods for achieving the set targets.
By aligning your partner enablement strategy with this framework, you create a common language and structure for value discussions, making it easier to drive impact and collaboration.
3. Enable & Coach Partners as an Extension of your Sales Team
“Treat your channel partner as you treat your own team, as they are an extension of your salesforce. If something is important for your internal sales team, it should be equally as important for your partners.”
Awareness alone is insufficient; partners need structured enablement to drive value-based selling effectively. To achieve this, organizations must democratize value selling into a repeatable framework that partners can easily adopt and scale. To ensure success:
- Provide partners with the same sales tools and training as internal teams.
- Customize brands and content to match Partner GTM.
- Conduct regular coaching and enablement sessions.
- Host dedicated office hours for partner teams to address questions in real-time.
- Leverage enterprise value platforms like Ecosystems.io to facilitate collaboration and value alignment across partners.
With a structured enablement approach, partners gain the confidence and capabilities needed to articulate and quantify value in customer engagements. An enterprise value platform like Ecosystems.io allows you to align and collaborate with your partners on value in an easy-to-use format with 5,000+ best-practice business cases.
4. Drive Digital Coaching & Engagement
With Gartner predicting that 80% of all B2B sales interactions will take place in digital channels this year, mastering digital enablement is no longer optional—it is imperative for scale.
To succeed in supporting your partner ecosystem with scale, digital sales environments should:
- Ensure value metrics are clear, concise, and easily accessible.
- Facilitate real-time collaboration through digital platforms.
- Utilize AI-driven insights to enhance partner effectiveness.
Ecosystems’ value platform provides an intuitive interface for seamless collaboration between sellers, customers, and partners. Additionally, ViViEN, Ecosystems’ virtual value engineer, leverages insights from 35,000+ users to refine business cases, assess sales effectiveness, and suggest optimizations.
By integrating digital coaching and AI-driven insights into your partner enablement strategy, you empower partners with the tools and data needed to drive more effective value-based selling.
Elevating Partner Enablement for Sustainable Growth
Partner value enablement is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic necessity. By fostering curiosity, increasing value awareness, implementing structured enablement, and leveraging digital in-app coaching, organizations can transform their partner ecosystems into powerful drivers of growth and customer impact.
Are you ready to maximize the potential of your partnerships?
Contact our team to learn how Ecosystems can help you enable your partners for success.
