You remember back in the day when you and your sibling would team up and work an angle on your Mom and Dad? (if you’re an only child, I’m sorry you missed out on the fun of this challenge).

You would come at your parents from all directions trying to get your way, whether the goal was a trip to the water park, to a sporting event, or Chuck E. Cheese.

In a nutshell, you would leverage each other’s strengths and knowledge to get the outcome you were both looking for. 

In a B2B sales environment, we call that co-selling, and it works wonders in winning new business.

Maybe you’ve tried it, maybe you haven’t. 

Maybe you understand how great it is, but you just can’t get your team on board with the idea. 

Not to fear, Partnered is here.

Below are 3 ways to get your sales team on board and excited about sales partnerships and co-selling to help you win more deals asap.

Let’s get after it.

Co-selling Leads To Increased Revenue

If nothing else, your sales team cares about money, paycheques, and quotas.

Co-selling checks off all of these boxes simultaneously. 

If you want your sales team to buy into co-selling, talk money to them — because there is a lot of it to be made with strategic co-selling partnerships.

Software company Episerver understood this early when they partnered with Microsoft. 

As the Director of Strategic Alliances and Global Partnerships at Episerver, Karen Chastain puts it this way: 

“The co-selling effort with Microsoft sellers has contributed to our growth, assisting us in selling the benefits of the cloud, including security and time to market.”

To date, Episerver has seen a 200% year-over-year growth in their Digital Experience Platform product since partnering with Microsoft. 

You’d better believe their sales team made some money here. And by leveraging co-selling, your team can, too. 

Prospecting Becomes Much, Much Easier

Prospecting is difficult and time-consuming for many sales professionals (you’re probably nodding your head as you read this).

According to the Brevet Group, it takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to even reach a prospect.

That’s not ideal, and it’s frankly stressful when you’re trying to meet your quotas. 

How does co-selling solve this? Let’s look at a visual representation. 

When using a partner platform like Partnered (shameless plug #sorrynotsorry), you can reduce prospecting time up to 50%.

Rather than spending those 8 calls trying to connect with a prospect (and who knows if they will even be the right person), you can skip all that and tap your partner to help set up a meeting with the right person. 

If you want to put a bow on it, let your sales team know that co-selling will give them a faster path to success (aka more money — faster — by making their prospecting efforts more efficient). 

Co-Selling Can Drastically Improve Your Time-To-Close

What salesperson doesn’t love closing a deal in record time?

You get your cheque and have more time to stack up the next deal.

Co-selling can help achieve this. 

A few key factors come into play here to make this happen.

Co-selling can help you identify the most strategic co-selling opportunities

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Working with your partner, you can map accounts to find overlap between your partner’s customers and your prospects.

From there, you can dial in on which of those customers would be most interested in the product you offer.

Now, all that’s left is for your partner to make an introduction to that qualified prospect, and you’re off to the races.

In fact, with the referral, you improve your chances of closing the deal by 70%.

Co-selling can help your team be more prepared for prospect calls

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As Partnered customer Noah Klausman states:

When your team is given all the information they need leading into a prospect call, deals close faster because you’re prepared for any objection and armed with tailored reasons why your product can help your prospect. 

Co-selling allows your team to leverage the pre-existing relationships your partners have
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As a salesperson, you know good relationships are a major factor when it comes to doing business.

Co-selling allows your team to tap into strong pre-existing relationships your partners already have with your prospect.

Think about it…

Would you be more willing to do business with someone your good friend recommended? Yes, you would.

According to Review42, consumers referred by a friend are four times more likely to buy.

The same rules apply to co-selling partnerships, and they are a great way for your team to improve their time-to-close. 

Conclusion:

Getting your sales team to break old habits and implement new processes is always a difficult task.

But by positioning sales partnerships and co-selling in ways that speak to their motivations, your chance of getting buy-in from the team will drastically increase.

Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, Commercial Partner at Microsoft/Chinasoft, sums up co-selling perfectly in this tweet. 

If you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of co-selling, and you want to reap the benefits it offers, we’re here to help! 

Get started with Partnered today!

Using a network like Partnered is the simplest and most effective way to allow your sales team to reap the rewards of a strategic alliance partnership. Partnered is a fully automated platform that crunches partner data and pushes key insights into the laps of your sales team, allowing your team to save time prospecting and use powerful insights to close more deals.

If you’d like to check out how Partnered can help you and your team boost sales and close more deals, get started for free!