The Rise of Co-Selling Trailblazers

TLDR

The Salesforce Salesblazer Community was excited to learn about co-selling trends, best practices, and career opportunities. This article shares highlights from a recent Ask-Me-Anything session with PartnerTap’s CRO, Autum Grimm.

Last week I had the opportunity to talk with the Salesforce Salesblazer Community about co-selling during an ask-me-anything (AMA) event hosted by the ultimate #SalesTrailblazer, and Fempire Ecosystem author of She Sells, Lori Richardson.?

It was a fun conversation with lots of great questions from sales professionals about co-selling trends, best practices, emerging roles, and career opportunities. The AMA coincided with the release of the latest State of Sales Report from Salesforce Research, which put a finer point on the urgency for co-selling transformation initiatives.

The rising need to sell with partners

Data from the State of Sales Report placed emphasis on what’s driving the co-selling transformation movement . Specifically:

• 84% say partner selling has a bigger impact on revenue than a year ago.?
• Changing customer needs and expectations are making sales more difficult.
• 57% say competitive dynamics in their markets have gotten trickier since last year, and 67% of sales reps don’t expect to hit their quota this year.?
• Within 12 months nearly every company plans to work with partners to grow faster.?

You can read a more detailed breakdown of our thoughts about the latest findings from the Salesforce State of Sales Report and the direct connection to co-selling .?

Why it’s more important than ever to sell with partners

The data shows everyone realizes it’s critical to figure out how to sell more with and through partners. During our AMA I added a bit more color around why this is so important and how it can help.

• Selling with partners is critical right now because B2B buyers have fundamentally changed how they short list, evaluate, and buy new solutions . They’re no longer doing google searches and talking with reps from 7 different vendors. Instead they’re turning to people they know and trust for recommendations on which products and companies to consider.
• At the same time sales deals are more complex these days. There are now at least 6-7 other vendors or suppliers involved in every account.?Many of these vendor companies have established partnerships with your company and the reps need to know one another to be effective. Since reps have no idea who they should be working with at each on their specific accounts and deals it creates confusion and missed opportunities.?
• So sales reps email around spreadsheets with lists of customers and target accounts, do manual account mapping, trying to figure out who to work with on their accounts. We call this “Random Acts of Co-Selling” – which is time consuming, not trackable, and definitely can’t scale.?

The modern CRO has to think differently about selling with partners?

Co-selling is the act of two or more sales people working together to source, influence or accelerate a deal. This involves sharing information about accounts, leveraging existing relationships, and working together to make the customer or new prospect successful.

Instead of batting partners away to protect your reps’ time, CROs need to re-think and re-orient sales reps to embrace a partner-first mindset.?

CROs today need to:

Train sales teams to have a partner-first mindset

Enable sales teams with technology that gives reps the data, automation and tools they need to co-sell?

Build a scalable co-selling program with clear roles, policies, and guidelines for selling with partners

Track and measure the co-selling program metrics and results

Reward co-selling behaviors over the Lone Ranger sales rep

How CROs should approach building a modern co-selling program

Change-agent leadership: Moving a sales organization to a “partner-first”, “channel first”, or “co-sell first” motion is a big change. And with all transformation efforts, co-selling transformation starts with change-agent leadership.

The CRO owns the revenue number for your company, so they are in the best position to step up, make a business case, and lead sales and partnership teams towards a shared vision for co-selling.?

Co-selling strategy and program design: Once you have the right leadership and business case, the next step is to build a co-selling strategy and program centered around the customers and future customers. Co-selling must be a customer-centric program.

Co-selling automation technology: co-selling transformation requires an investment in a new partner ecosystem platform and co-selling software that can give your partner and sales teams the data, automation, and easy-to-use software they need to sell more with partners.?

Partner-first cultural shift: this is an ongoing effort that requires proactive focus. We recommend working with ecosystems consultants at Spur Reply and Achieve Unite to train and up-level your sales reps to become world-class co-sellers.

You can learn more about this process in our 11-step Co-Sell Transformation Playbook .

New career opportunities around co-selling

One of the best questions during the AMA was “are there any new career opportunities as companies move to a co-selling motion?”

The answer was an enthusiastic “yes” about these five new co-selling leadership opportunities and the emerging Co-Sell Quarterback role that stands to become the top pipeline-generating role in a company within just a few years.?

I loved the discussion and insights shared by sales professionals in the Sales Blazer Community this week. Thank you to Kaela Altman for leading this community and creating the opportunities for us all to come together.?