A co-selling partnership is a kind of partnership in which two or more companies decide to work together as partners. These partner companies then send their respective sales teams to work together in order to target their potential customers.
According to https://www.workspan.com/guide-to-drive-co-sell-partnerships/, co-selling with partners is projected to generate more than $300B. However, the co-selling partnership isn’t an easy process. Once you identify your potential customers, you have to structure your co-selling partnership. Once you find your partners, this process involves three important steps that are mentioned below.
Joint Account Plans Management
First of all, the company managers would have to sit together and discuss the joint account management plan. Then, together, managers of both the companies will select accounts that would help them develop Co-sell opportunities. This won’t be easy as both the managers would have to conduct deep research on regions, buying centers, business type, and line.
Co-Marketing and Leads Management
The next step would be deciding the specific market you will target and creating some Co-marketing plans. Once the planning is done, it’s time for the execution. At this particular stage, both the partners need to decide the processes for sharing and distributing leads. Both the partners would have to keep each other informed until the leads finally create an opportunity or become dead.
Referrals and Opportunity Management
This is the final step which further consists of seven steps that would help to drive the Co-sell partnership.
Sub Steps:
- The first step involves identifying co-sell opportunities that drive channel sales. Then, try to create a new and clear policy for this. The policy must include every important detail that needs to be acknowledged by the concerned people and authorities, such as the standards, performance tracking, and timing for sharing leads, and so on.
- The next step is to run the identified referrals through channels for qualification. Usually, only two or three leads are supposed to qualify.
- The third step requires engagement with referrals. Connect both the salesperson and monitor their activity.
- The fourth step is generally known as the Partial Close Deal. By this time, one of the partners has won a lead, and the other hasn’t.
- The fifth step is also known as the Complete Close Deal. Once the deal has been closed, both the management and partner teams are informed.
- The sixth step involves the collection of incentives. These incentives are usually offered in the form of commissions or repayments.
- The last step is focusing on or discussing the referrals that have been discontinued by one or both partners.
So, this is how you can structure a co-selling partnership. Co-selling is the latest and advanced partnership process, and this kind of partnership can enhance the efficiency of both companies working as partners. Therefore, more and more companies should think about it and learn more about co-selling partnerships. Following these proven steps is certainly going to take your business and company to new heights.
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