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    How to Co-Sell with Channel Partners

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    Channel partners provide a way for companies to not only bring their products to market, but to develop long-term profitable relationships that are beneficial to the maker, the seller, and the buyer. But we still have a long way to go to truly unwrap the potential of co-selling relationships with channel partners.

    What Is Co-Selling, And Why Is It Important?

    Co-selling, in the channel context, is when two companies partner to sell each other’s products and services for the benefit of the end customer.

    In the traditional reseller model, one company produces a product, and another company sells it to their customers at a mark-up. In this model, the reseller acts as an extension of the producer’s sales team. The producer benefits from reaching a wider market. The reseller benefits from the mark-up and from providing additional expertise and services to the customer.

    In the partnership model of co-selling, both partners provide a product or service that they package and offer to customers together. In this model, the offerings of each company are usually complementary in some way, and by offering them together, they provide benefits to themselves as well as to the customer.

    There is a lot of variation in the level of benefit provided to the customer as well as the degree to which the partners collaborate and co-sell each other’s products and services. At the highest level, the co-selling partnership delivers more than the sum of the parts and differentiates the offering from competitors.

    Here’s What Makes Co-Selling with Channel Partners Hard

    In theory, co-selling is simple.

    In reality, it can be complex.

    With co-selling, you have two organizations with different offerings, ways of selling, and sales leadership. Managing leads and the pipeline can be complicated. Without transparency into each other’s pipeline, you may step on each other’s proverbial toes by contacting the same customers with disconnected messaging.

    As the producer of a product or service, you may be concerned about how your channel partners are managing leads that you generate for them. As the channel partner, you may be concerned about how your vendor manages the leads you generate. As a customer, you might be engaging with several partners, who in turn engage with the same producer, adding to the complexity.

    Even if you know who your joint prospects are, HOW do you co-sell to them with channel partners?

    Depending on the level of trust between the co-sellers, you may not be willing to share your contact lists with each other, for fear the other may share your contacts or poach your deals.

    There are plenty of tools that have cropped up in the market to attempt to help co-sellers manage this complexity (check out this ecosystem landscape by Canalys.) There are systems, like Crossbeam for instance, that look for common prospects and customers between CRM systems and match them so that you can identify opportunities to co-sell rather than counter-sell.

    But even if you know who your joint prospects are, HOW do you co-sell to them? In most cases, there is no shared methodology, no shared process, and no consistent agreement as to who takes the lead and how you pass the baton, once you’ve identified a co-sell opportunity.

    How to Co-Sell Effectively With Channel Partners

    In order to co-sell effectively, both partners must share a degree of trust and transparency, as well as a process, methodology, and understanding of how to hand the baton to each other.

    A smoothly orchestrated co-selling effort produces more than the sum of parts for all parties. The partners gain access to each other’s opportunities. The customer experiences a smooth purchasing process, and a more valuable package than either partner’s offering alone would have been.

    But in order to pull it off, co-sellers need a way to share their selling process with one another. A tool like Membrain can help partners establish and manage a shared process and methodology, as well as shared data, without giving away their proprietary information.

    Even when Membrain is not the primary CRM for either company, it can form a bridge between the two for shared contacts and co-selling efforts. Our guided selling process helps both companies stay on the same page, understand where each shared prospect is in the pipeline, educate sellers and their managers with embedded enablement content, and provide the cohesive buying experience the customer needs.

    Membrain enables pipeline transparency, the ability to get the right KPIs to coach to, automated reports for the right managers in both organizations, quick access to information on mobile devices, and even a shared calendar for booking meetings with multiple parties.

    All of the same tools that make us the best sales tool for HOW you sell makes us the best tool for when you want to co-sell as a team. We’d love to show you how.

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    George Brontén
    Published October 5, 2022
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn

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