Strategic Partnership Blueprint, Building and Aligning a Robust Pipeline Through Collaborative Channel Leadership and Sales Enablement with your Partner!
To build a robust pipeline for approaching a partner in channel sales, you need to focus on Business Development (BD), Business Relationship Management (BRM), for future Sales Enablement.
Following these steps for a strong relationship with both the leadership and individual sales at the partner organization, to effectively build your pipeline for adding value and CX to the customers and drive mutual success.
Business Development with Leadership
Strategy
- Ensure alignment between your strategic objectives and the partner’s goals.
- Select partners whose existing portfolio and client base are in line with your solution’s target market.
Value
- Develop a value proposition that clearly articulates how your solution enhances the partner’s portfolio
- Highlight increased value, improved customer experience (CX), or enhanced efficiency and usability.
- Emphasize the unique benefits and competitive advantages your solution brings to the partner and their clients.
Targets
- Define clear goals and objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the partnership, such as revenue targets, market penetration goals, or customer satisfaction metrics.
- Ensure that these objectives align with both parties‘ mid-term success and long-term strategic goals and are measurable and achievable.
Leadership
- Offer comprehensive training sessions for the partner’s sales leadership, focusing on the value proposition of your solution, competitive positioning, and effective sales strategies.
- Provide ongoing support and guidance to help the partner’s sales leadership effectively communicate the value of your solution to their sales teams and clients.
Initiatives
- Collaborate with the partner to develop joint marketing campaigns, sales promotions, and co-branded collateral.
- Align these initiatives with the partner’s existing sales and marketing strategies to maximize visibility and engagement with their clients.
Enablement with Partner Salespeople
Enablement
- Provide customized sales training and enablement resources for each pre-sales and salesperson at the partner.
- Address specific needs, challenges, and selling preferences to ensure maximum adoption and effectiveness of your solution.
Tools
- Equip sales with the necessary data and resources to effectively position and sell your solution on top of their portfolio.
- Include sales collateral, product demos, case studies, and objection handling guides tailored to the partner clients and process.
Engagement
- Support sales in revisiting their clients viewing the benefits and value of your solution with data, tools and information.
- Provide sales with educational materials, webinars, and workshops to help them effectively communicate the features and advantages of your solution.
Cross-Selling
- Cross-selling of complementary products or services who is already making a purchase of the partners portfolio.
- Provide sales with incentives, training, and support to capitalize on these opportunities and maximize revenue generation.
Upselling
- Identify opportunities for upselling within the partner’s existing client base.
- Upselling to buy a more featured or extended / premium version of the product or service by adding our solution.
Support
- Establish regular onsite meetings and communication channels with sales to provide ongoing support, answer questions, and address concerns.
Pipeline Alignment by Partner Account Management with Sales at Partners
Effectively align channel partner strategies and opportunities report within both systems. Ensure to have the right information and data aligned and captured in both, yours` and partners` CRM.
Customer
- Name, contact details, and any other relevant demographic information about the customer.
- All data providing a basic understanding of who the customer is and how to reach them.
Purchase
- Details of purchases made by the customer, including potential partner portfolio and your solution.
- Purchase history patterns, preferences, and add potential cross-selling or upselling opportunities.
Portfolio
- Products or services offered by the partner,, including descriptions, options, and features.
- Enables sales to match customer needs with your offerings cross-selling and upselling.
Cross-Selling
- Suggestions for potential volumes of complementary products with the past purchases.
- Cross-selling recommendations and volumes data into the CRM system and sales cycles.
Up-Selling
- Potential upgrades or add offerings based on the customer’s current or usage patterns.
- Upselling opportunities within the CRM system to represent relevant upgrade options.
Preferences
- Data on technical preferences, solutions, tools, customer experience, interests, and patterns.
- Understanding personalized engagement and targeted cross-selling and upselling efforts.
History
- Record of past interactions between the customer about wins and discontinued opportunities.
- Tracking history in future customer engagement with the partners data and information base.
- Evaluate, identify, report, and share the right time and context for cross-selling and upselling.
Pipeline
- Align Information about each customer is in the sales pipeline with the partners opportunities.
- Including their current stage, probabilities, dates, next steps, and any pending actions.
- Follow-up based on the sales pipeline status to ensure cross-selling and upselling.
- Align to prioritize and manage opportunities and clients throughout the sales process.
Performance
- Agree key performance indicators (KPIs) related to cross-selling and upselling efforts.
- Revenues, conversion rates, average order value, and revenue generated from additional sales.
- Monitoring performance metrics with the partners tools and information of your cross-selling
- Tracking upselling figures with strategies and make data-driven decisions for optimization.
Feedback
- Note comments, and feedback from sales representatives regarding customer interactions.
- Capturing feedback and in the CRM with valuable insights for future cross-selling and upselling.