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)


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