Crafting Selling Motions: Navigating the Customer Journey in Ecosystem-Led Growth
In our journey through ecosystem-led growth, we uncovered the foundational elements that enable businesses to thrive within a collaborative landscape.? With our groundwork laid, we now focus on the nuances of selling motions and how they intersect with the customer's journey, providing a blueprint for expanded partner engagement.? Selling motions are how the partner engages with the customer.? This is typically resale, managed services and or consulting services.? This chapter introduces an additional layer of complexity: the challenge of engaging partners with multiple selling motions and the strategic necessity of expanding our engagement team.
Diverse Selling Motions and the Customer Journey
In our journey through ecosystem-led growth, we find ourselves navigating the choppy seas of the security market, where selling motions represent the sails of our ship, each one tailored to catch the wind at different stages of the customer's journey.? Just as a skilled sailor understands how to adjust the sails to harness the wind most effectively, businesses must master the art of utilizing diverse selling motions to propel their partners and themselves toward success.? Whether it's the early gusts of awareness in the 'Advise' stage or the strong, steady winds of engagement in the 'Adopt' and 'Manage' phases, knowing when and how to adjust your strategy is key to maintaining momentum and direction in the unpredictable waters of the market.
These motions align with the customer journey: Advise, Design, Adopt, and Manage, and offer multiple avenues for partners to add value that expands the solution's value.? For instance, one set of partners might focus on assessment services or tech advisory during the 'Advise’ stage.? As the journey progresses to 'Design' and 'Build,' another set of partners may offer architecture design or application modernization.
Expanding Partner Engagement
The ability to have a collection of partners to engage through various selling motions is crucial for ecosystem-led growth.? It allows them to meet customers where they are and provide tailored services that resonate with their current needs.? For example, a partner might assist with incident management during the 'Adopt' phase or aid in analytics and business process optimization during 'Manage.'
This flexible engagement is invaluable as it keeps the partnership vital and responsive throughout the customer lifecycle.? Partners can unlock new revenue streams and deepen their customer relationships by aligning their offerings with the customer journey stages.
Example Use Case: Multi-Motion Partner Engagement in Action
Let’s consider a cloud software company that relies on a network of partners to sell their cloud-based solutions that only had limited experience with cloud providers like Google, AWS, and Azure.? In this scenario, the partner is not involved in any part of the customer's cloud journey, nor are they integrated into cloud migration programs offered by the cloud providers.? The result is a partner focusing primarily on a software license sale only with limited engagement points in the customer’s journey.
The company recognized an opportunity to expand its partner ecosystem and increase the value proposition for both itself and its partners.? It began to engage with partners who offer additional services to complement the company’s core product, creating a multi-motion partner landscape that can address a customer’s needs throughout the customer journey.
How was this done…..The new model involved partnering with select partners who are Cloud Specialists, especially those offering Cloud Migration projects.? This enabled those partners to sell a product license and increase their service revenue by offering a secure cloud migration service to their customer.? This was a win-win collaboration that increased revenue for partners, reduced customer burden, expanded market reach and deepened partner engagement.
You do not need to be a large company or have an extensive relationship with one of the cloud providers to take advantage of this approach.? This approach is mostly about the partners themselves and the fact that they focused on the customer journey around the cloud.? If our product engages the cloud you could use this approach even if you had no relationship with one of the large cloud providers.
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The Complexity of Multi-Motion Engagement
While there are great benefits to multi-motion engagement, challenges do arise when partners engage in multiple selling motions.? This complexity is akin to engaging with entirely different partners, each requiring distinct strategies and support.? For instance, a partner acting both as a reseller and a consultant needs engagement tailored to both roles.? This multi-dimensional engagement necessitates a nuanced understanding of each partner’s contribution to the customer journey.
Expanding the Engagement Team
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Addressing this challenge requires us to look beyond the traditional partnering team.? Effective engagement in this multi-motion environment calls for the inclusion of diverse functions such as marketing, sales engineering, product teams, and more.? This cross-functional collaboration ensures that we align with the multi-faceted nature of our partners' involvement in the ecosystem, thereby enhancing our ability to deliver a seamless and impactful customer journey.
Recognizing the intricacies of engaging with partners that operate across multiple dimensions, our forthcoming series will delve deeper into the structure of an effective alliance team.? This exploration is essential for navigating the complexities of today's ecosystem-led strategies.
Aligning Selling Motions with Ecosystem Strategies
An effective ecosystem strategy demands a deep understanding of the customer journey and the alignment of selling motions to fit each stage.? This alignment, now seen through the lens of multi-motion partner engagement, becomes even more crucial.? It ensures partners can become integral to the customer's success, offering seamless support that evolves with the customer's needs.
This alignment is not about a one-time transaction but establishing a long-term advisory relationship.? It's about ensuring the ecosystem supports the customer's growth at every step, delivering a unified experience from the cloud infrastructure to application management.
Building a Collaborative Ecosystem
The diversity of selling motions reflects the broad array of service activities a partner can leverage throughout the customer journey.? As highlighted by Canalys, these activities present partners with a roadmap for engagement, ensuring that at each phase of the customer's progression, there's an opportunity to add value.
Canalys is a leading global technology market analyst firm that provides insights into the technology industry.? They are known for their in-depth research and analysis on areas like cloud computing, cybersecurity, AI, and emerging technologies.? Canalys hosts annual forums that bring together leading technology vendors, channel partners, and industry experts to discuss market trends and opportunities.? Their "Canalys Partner Ecosystem Flywheel" model highlights the importance of an interconnected ecosystem of vendors, partners, and service providers collaborating to drive growth and better serve customers.
When partners are empowered to advise, design, adopt, and manage, they are not just service providers but critical players in a symphony of collaborative growth.? The result is an ecosystem capitalising on each service activity, creating a rich tapestry of customer engagement and revenue opportunities.
Conclusion
Aligning selling motions with the customer journey while engaging with multi-motion partners presents both a significant challenge and a strategic opportunity.? Expanding our engagement team beyond traditional boundaries enables us to navigate these complexities more effectively.? This holistic approach enhances our ecosystem's alignment with the customer journey and maximises the value delivered through our partner ecosystem.
Stay tuned for an upcoming part in the series, where I will explore the critical role of an alliance team's roles in supporting complex partner engagements, to ensure our ecosystem-led growth strategies are fully equipped to meet the challenges of a dynamic market landscape.
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