How to Leverage Partners in Your Sales Strategy

How to Leverage Partners in Your Sales Strategy

At long last, your product is yours to sell; your partners are your primary customers. And each of your partners has their own customer base, untapped by you. It's a market brimming with possibilities. 

 

Your channel partners provide you and your brand an immediate social context, helping you sell your product in uncharted territory while saving time, cost, and effort.  Partners are the strategic collaborators who open doors to other competitive markets

 

Let's look at some of the benefits of having a channel partner sell your products:

 

  1. 1. Partner programs give you the opportunity to venture into a new market with a different language, culture, and geographic location without the costs of acquisition. Your chances of success multiply while you save on the costs, time, and effort of building your brand in a new market yourself.
    2. As your channel partner is already a trusted brand in this new territory, they bring their hard-earned consumer trust to your solution. 
    3. Your channel partners open up a unique opportunity to immediately reach out to new markets and create new sales opportunities.

 

The concept of channel partners helping to scale sales is not new. 

 

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) includes three types of partnership--Gold, Silver, and Remarketing--with a different value proposition for each. For example, Gold Partners get exclusive privileges, like extensive product training; Silver Partners may resell the Oracle Platform as a service. Salesforce, another leader in succesful channel partnerships, has their AppExchange for Salesforce, the AppStore, and other platforms. 

 

A recently published UBS study, shows how effectively Cisco has leveraged their channel partner program to contribute to their revenue growth. 85% of Cisco's revenue is generated through direct sales partners, which consists of only 30 of its top global enterprise customers. 

 

Here are some thoughts on how to leverage your channel partners for scaling your sales:

 

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” Andrew Davis

 

 

  1. 1. Create content, share content, ask for content: You know your products and services best. Your partners need your expertise. The best way to provide that? Content. By creating and sharing content about your products, you empower your partners to talk about your solution with confidence. With a repository of content that they can share, repurpose and include in their touch points for their customers, your partners can interface with customers directly with the right know-how. In turn, their ideas and customer interactions can be a valuable source of content for you. 

 

  1. 2. Ask for help organizing networking events in their cities: Customers love meeting their solutions providers face to face, but arranging meetings in other markets or countries is far from easy. Through channels, it's suddenly far easier.  We've found that partners are excited to organize seminars, meet-ups, and networking events on your behalf so you can meet your customers and expand your brand.  

 

  1. 3. Encourage them to create forums: Just as a large corporation would have its own forums, your partners can create forums for you to connect with customers through forums and meaningful support interactions.You'll get a better understanding of your users and their pain points, making your solution more saleable and adding value to your sales scaling strategy. 

 

Conclusion

 

According to  a recent report published by Openview, sales reps can manage 29 open opportunities at a time. Now multiply that by your partners to watch the numbers increase. From the tech industry to FMCG, channel partners are one way of reaching out to underserved. Leveraging your partners to scale your sales gives you opportunity to save costs and time while they get to increase their brand value. 

 

What's your channel partner success story? Share with us here. (link to submit content for publication)


    • Sticky Posts

    • As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

      Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has

    • Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

      It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET

    • Recent Topics

    • Customize user data collection with User Layouts

      Users denote the people in your organization who work on agile projects using Zoho Sprints. You can add them to your workspace and associate them with required projects. Organizations have distinct requirements in collecting user data. Apart from the

    • Zoho Sites with GoDaddy DNS

      We have a site hosted with www. in front that works perfectly well. The issue is with getting the TLD/naked DNS pointed to the www. while using GoDaddy dns. I have edited the DNS Forwarding entry in the domain so that the root example.com forwards to

    • Integration with Moodle

      Greetings, I hope find all doing well and safe. I've recently returned to using Zoho Flow after a break and was hoping to connect my WooCommerce store with Moodle, the world's most widely used learning management system. My goal was to automatically enroll

    • Possible for "Specify URL Criteria" in URL/Permalink settings to be assigned to a variable?

      I want to embed a Zoho Analytics chart view as a Related List item in the Zoho CRM Accounts module, such that when one is viewing a CRM Accounts module record for an Account, the user will see the chart for that specific company. Is it possible to set

    • How to present an Analytic on a CRM dashboard and filter it on loginuser id

      How to present an Analytic on a CRM dashboard and filter it on loginuser id? I want to display an Analytics pivot table (as a widget) on a CRM dashboard and have the pivot filtered on the loginuser. I want additional user-filters available, such as date,

    • Allow 2 logos for Branding, one for Light Mode and one for Dark Mode?

      Our logo has a lot of black text on it. If we leave the background transparent, per recommendation of Zoho, when a user is viewing a file and turns on dark mode, our logo is not really visible and looks really weird. It would be really great if we could

    • Pre-fill TO and CC fields for Email Templates

      This would be a game changer to be able to set either specific email addresses or merge fields based on deal role titles into email templates. Please pass this along to *hopefully* add to future features of Zoho CRM.

    • Payroll In Canada

      Hi, When can we expect to have payroll in Canada with books 

    • Why can't we associate a contact to mulitple accounts?

      This simple feature has been for 14 years now... it's way past ridiculous. We don't want to add a multiple lookup field, we just want to add a second account to our contact. This way i'll go on Jonh Doe and see in the account field : Company 1 and Company

    • Calendar Bookings in Recruit

      Hi there, We have recently started using Zoho recruit and although it has some great functionality there are a few gaps that are causing real headaches. One of those being how interviews are scheduled. The majority of our hiring managers are field based

    • Multiple Vendor SKUs

      One of the big concerns we have with ZOHO Inventory is lack of Vendor Skus like many other inventory software packages offer. Being able to have multiple vendor skus for the same product would be HUGE! It would populate the appropriate vendor Sku for

    • How to Use Branch-Specific Templates for Invoices Created via Zoho Books invoice API?

      I am using the Zoho Books Invoice API and I am sending the branch_id when creating an invoice. The invoice is being generated, but it is using the default template rather than the template that corresponds to the branch I specified. In Zoho Books, when

    • Automatic Department and Employee Sync Between Zoho One and Zoho People

      Dear Zoho Support, I'm writing to propose a valuable feature request that would streamline data management and improve user experience within the Zoho ecosystem: automatic synchronization between departments and employees in Zoho One and Zoho People.

    • Delete Unactive Users form Directory

      Hi, how to delete all unactive users ?

    • Manual Journal entry problem

      Hi, all my manual Journal entries are not reflected in my general ledger. i have check to see if the entry were done correctly and everything is fine. Please help me

    • Changing Related Modules in a Report

      Once a report is created, is it possible to add Related Modules? David Shalev | Chief Revenue Officer | 800 558 9130 davids@splitit.com | www.Splitit.com

    • Is there a way to limit/turn off unlimited Version History?

      We save CAD files in our Zoho WorkDrive and while the files aren't very big themselves, whenever someone hits the save button in the CAD program it uploads another version of the file to the WorkDrive. This means files that are only a few MBs in size can actually be taking up 10s of GB in our WorkDrive if someone is saving frequently. Is there a way to limit the number of versions WorkDrive stores to save WorkDrive space?

    • ZOHO One Webinar Functionality

      I am currently trialling ZOHO Projects and have also been looking into over a dozen different Webinar solutions from various vendors. I understand that ZOHO Webinars is a stand alone tool. But that ZOHO Meetings also offers webinar functionality. The

    • Avoid None option in List Custom Fields

      Does anybody know a way to avoid -- None --  option to be displayed in a List Custom Field?  - With Mandatory option selected, you can prevent from saving if user select --None-- value. - With Default value selected, a different value than --None-- is

    • How do I modify the the incoming/current call popup? I can modify other call pages but not that one.

      I want to modify the incoming and active call popup on the crm to include customer relevant information, such as purchase history or length of relationship. Under modules and fields, I don't seem to see active call as a choice to modify, only the main

    • JavaScript or iframe embed with transparent background

      If I have a form with transparent Wallpaper, it appear great on my website by using my default background. However, using Zoho Forms SAVE button, the user is directed to Zoho Forms managed page and a blank background. Alternatively, I can include a Wallpaper

    • Emails and Kanban for Portals

      There was talk portals would have emails and email templates, and kanban view. Is there any release date for this? Portals has been so good for offering a simple crm option. It just needs a couple of small things.

    • Custom sorting Axis in a Heatmap report

      I have a heatmap and want to sort the order of the axis in a custom priority order - is this possible ? So I want the priority to be "New, Urgent, High, Medium, Low, Not Set, Unknown" Can I set this manually ?

    • ZOHO BackStage

      How to get list of events, using ZOHO BackStage APIs. Is it possible OR not?

    • Greylisted, try again after some time

      Can you check my ip, i send to duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn but have an error; my ip is 112.213.94.12 Here is log: 2018-01-09 09:40:29 H=mx.zoho.com [204.141.32.121] SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn>: 451 4.7.1 Greylisted, try again after some time 2018-01-09 09:40:32 H=mx2.zoho.com [204.141.33.55] SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn>: 451 4.7.1 Greylisted, try again after some time 2018-01-09 09:40:32 duyna@vietlinkjsc.vn R=lookuphost

    • The 3.1 biggest problems with Kiosk right now

      I can see a lot of promise in Kiosk, but it currently has limited functionality that makes it a bit of an ugly duckling. It's great at some things, but woeful at others, meaning people must rely on multiple tools within CRM for their business processes.

    • Zoho People down

      Zoho People (EU) appears to be inaccessible this morning. Have gotten through log-in and MFA but have been on the "Please wait while we work our charm..." page for several minutes now. A colleague has tried to access it via the One dashboard and experienced

    • Adding Bluesky channel

      Hello, Is Bluesky (AT protocol) soon added on Social ? Bluesky is being developped and is now open to anyone (no more invitation) Thank you

    • No Zoho Support on the weekends or after hours?

      Zoho Support is only available Monday - Friday during normal business hours. My business (as does many businesses) operates 7-days a week. Last Saturday, I had a client come in and in order for me to help her, I needed to log into CRM but to my surprise,

    • How do I overcome the 800 transaction rule limit?

      I just received a message: "You have reached the maximum rule limit of 800." I searched the documentation, and I didn't find anything about the cap or limit. I asked the ZOHO Books team if there is a way to increase the limit. Their answer was: "Please

    • Search functionality in Vault is very poor

      Hi Zoho Team Please... the search functionality is absolutely vital in Vault, particularly when it's being used by a team. It's just a fact of life that everybody has their own way of naming something, so using exact match on the Password name is horribly

    • 👋 Pessoal, como está sendo sua experiência com ferramentas de produtividade?

      Percebo que muitos usuários de soluções como Google Workspace e Microsoft 365 acabam enfrentando desafios quando pensam em migrar de plataforma, especialmente por conta de multas contratuais ou até pela complexidade em adaptar as equipes. Além disso,

    • Quais são os maiores desafios que você enfrenta ao implementar o Zoho CRM?

      Olá, pessoal da comunidade Zoho Brasil! Sou parceiro autorizado da Zoho e, ao longo do tempo, tenho notado que cada implementação de CRM traz desafios únicos, dependendo do segmento de negócio, das metas da empresa e até da familiaridade da equipe com

    • Parent - Child Ticket Twins

      I think i maybe losing my mind. Are these two completely separate parent-child ticketing functions? I think I remember adding a plugin years ago and I think I also remember seeing something about parent-child ticketing in a release notes being added.

    • Can the Comments from approval process be posted onto a module field and not on the timeline?

      I have set up approval process for the quotations module and would like for the approval comments to be posted onto a module field as opposed to me searching for the particular quote and going to the timeline section. This would also help keep tabs on

    • auto reply shopify order details in zoho desk based on order number in subject using deluge script custom function

      auto reply shopify order details in zoho desk based on order number in subject using deluge script custom function

    • Is there an ability to keep the status field unlocked while having an active blueprint?

      Hi. Is there an ability to keep the status field unlocked while having an active blueprint? Here is the case. We have a transition let's say "Ask to the customer" When we do this transition the Status is switch to "waiting for customer" But if for exemple

    • Rename Category and Sub Category fields

      Is it possible to rename the field labels for Category and Sub Category - if so can this be done at layout or department level ?

    • Thoughts on users being able to create Zoho accounts?

      For anyone who's used Zoho for a while, I'm sure you've come up against an issue where you create an account for a user, and they go ahead and sign up for a new one accidentally. Then, only they can delete the account, as it exists outside the organisation.

    • Deluge should permit a connection to be set with a variable

      Hello, Being one who occasionally likes to post code in the forums, I try to make anything that the end user needs to define be present at the very top of the script so that those who want to implement the script won't have to hunt through lines of code,

    • Next Page