Mastering Co-Selling: Strategies for Sales Success Through Partnerships

Unlock the secrets to amplifying sales through the power of partnership with our latest episode featuring the insightful Rachel Tuller. Together, we navigate the shifting landscape of co-selling, a strategy that when executed with precision, can transform partners into a formidable sales force. 

Embark on a journey through the building blocks of a prosperous co-selling framework, where Rachel and I discuss the critical elements of partner enablement, including aligned messaging and joint marketing efforts. We reveal the magnetism of incentives through a case study that showcases the synergy of tech giants, and we stress the importance of meticulously choosing partners with the right mix of skills and market influence. Discover how strategic communication and the optimal allocation of channel team resources can be the linchpin in cultivating enduring and fruitful partnerships.

As we round off the episode, we probe into the tactical side of co-selling, where careful planning and a unified sales force are paramount. Rachel also shares her expert advice on the role of technology, from leveraging CRM systems to fine-tuning data collection, ensuring your partnerships are not only aligned but also measurable and driven by success. Grasp how channel leaders can craft winning scenarios for all involved parties—manufacturers, vendors, and, most crucially, customers—turning co-selling into a game-changer for your business. Tune in and equip yourself with the strategies to thrive in the world of collaborative selling.

Transcript

Rachel Tuller: 0:00

It's not necessarily new. It's taking more of an alliance approach to our traditional channel business right. So those of us that have been in alliances for a really long time, we're used to frameworks and business models and different roles and responsibilities and sometimes, you know, having those externally facing are just as important, I know, internally for different vendors. You've got your ISR, your inside sales rep, you've got your outside sales rep, you've got your partner sales rep. You've got your AEs, you've got your solution architects right. Even internally you have to define roles and responsibilities. World where you can now do that among vendors is really critical at the outset. Okay, here's our, you know, kind of let's all have a pre-planning meeting. Here's our plan of attack. Here's who's going to be point. Here's who's going to do the services. Here's who's going to, you know, run the POC. Those are that clear definition is something I think that's really critical.

Maciej: 1:05

Hello, welcome and thank you for tuning into channel voices, the podcast for future channel leaders, where we learn the ins and outs of partner ecosystems through casual conversations with channel professionals from a variety of industries, partner types and geographies. My name is Maciek and I'm your host, rachel Tuller. Welcome to Channel Voices.

Rachel Tuller: 1:33

Thank you so much for having me, Maciek.

Maciej: 1:35

We have chosen. Throughout the couple of discussions that we had, we had chosen a topic for today's conversation all around co-selling in the channel. Before we even start with any questions, what's your definition of co-selling in the channel?

Rachel Tuller: 1:55

You know it's interesting, it's certainly evolved over time, but the reality is we've all been co-selling for a long time around the whole meet in the market concept, right? So you know, maybe there's not a defined go to market, maybe it's. There's no exchanging of money, but it's working together as partners to solve problems for customers and coming together with common solutions. So that's one kind of broad definition. And I think where people tend to get mixed up in all of this and I know I have is are we co-selling, are we co-servicing, are we co-delivering, are we co-integrating? There's lots of different ways that partners can work together. So I think breaking it down and really honing in on the co-selling definition for me is really about a joint go-to-market approach. After you've done the technology integrations, after you've figured out your joint accounts, how do we go together and really solve problems for customers?

Maciej: 2:54

Perfect and I'm glad you have called it out, because it has evolved right and I don't think it ever is going to stop evolving, especially in the channel, with new types of partners coming on board, new ones popping out left, right and center. There's so many different motions and co-selling it seems to be quite a hot topic these days within the ecosystem. From your experience, what are some of the benefits of co-selling with partners?

Rachel Tuller: 3:24

I think for me, you know, when partners come together and co-sell with a customer, it's really about leveraging the expertise of each partner, right? So if you're a vendor and you have a software product, you know your people generally know your product better than anybody else, right, because they've been dealing with it. You know they're educated and trained on it on a regular basis and so they can speak to the competitive advantages, right? And all of that I think where the reselling or the co-selling partner comes in is they know their business, they know their services or migration skills or solution architect skills. They've worked with lots of different vendors, so they sometimes have a broader purview. So to me, when co-selling let's say, even an example between a vendor and a go-to-market partner, that's where the magic happens, because everybody's bringing their mutual expertise to the customer.

Maciej: 4:15

With that in mind, you mentioned the education partners. Obviously, knowing their skills, what other elements would you consider being key in a successful co-selling partnership?

Rachel Tuller: 4:30

Sure, I think there's a couple of things that I would focus on. One definitely is the enablement piece of it. Right, I think you know enablement is the new currency. So that's what partners are looking for from their vendor partners. You know, or reseller partners is really helping them understand how to position the technology. You know, or reseller partners is really helping them understand how to position the technology. You know, where it fits in the scheme of things. What are the advantages for the customer in a given scenario? So I think enablement definitely is, you know, leading with that, and that's where some of the co-selling incentives can come into play, where you can provide training, perhaps some of the marketing initiatives that we do together and really honing that joint better together. Messaging it's something we've all been working on for years in the alliances space and it's something that we're seeing shift into more of your traditional channel. Is that approach of taking customers on the journey together right, there's the buyer's journey the partner journey.

Rachel Tuller: 5:24

It's about melding those two and being able to deliver services with the right enablement, the right incentives and the right outcomes for the customer.

Maciej: 5:34

You talked about the additional incentives when it comes to co-selling, and it can be absolutely money type of incentive. It can be additional money type of incentive. It can be additional education, additional training. What's very expensive these days for a vendor to do is actually dedicate time right. So real person time with someone on site, with a partner. That could also be an incentive. When you think about the strategies or the campaigns that you have run in the past, can you recall an example that has potentially had a really big impact on the whole go-to-market strategy?

Rachel Tuller: 6:20

Yeah, it's interesting. We had one recently that I did that included a chip manufacturer, which you think you know they're a little bit removed from the actual sale, but given the AI and data conversations that we're having these days, it's so critical to the business. I mean NVIDIA, amd, intel right, they're all now central to these conversations. So we had a chip manufacturer, a hardware vendor, a cloud provider and a platform provider and we'd been doing some co-marketing together and really doing the branding around AI and data and everything else. And what was great was those leads that were developed were then passed over to a partner who had experience with all four of us as vendors, and that partner was able to tie together all of the solutions and come up with a design for the customer.

Rachel Tuller: 7:07

That was fantastic, and so that was a huge win for us in the EMEA market and all four vendors benefited from it and, of course, the partner benefited from it. Not only did they get you know, we kind of co-sold with them, alongside them but they got all the services from all the partners to go with that. So, while you know, one company might promote that, hey, you can make 5x license revenue on services and another one might be 3x. You know, you add those all together in a stack and that's a lot of money for a partner to take to market. So it was really a great win, win, win for everybody.

Maciej: 7:41

Very good example and thank you for sharing. And you mentioned you know there was that one partner that was able to tie it all together and draft something for design, something for the end user. But when it comes to identifying partners for co-selling motions like what would it be that you're looking for? How would you be trying to evaluate the partners from within your ecosystem that would potentially fit that type of motion? What is it that you would be looking for in terms of capabilities of a given partner, their I don't know market reach, existing customers? What is it that you would be looking for?

Rachel Tuller: 8:28

So this is actually where our program comes in right and our competency-based program, our points-based program that was developed because what we're able to do is quickly look at the data. And you know our regional folks that are in market. They know their partners right. They're working with them all the time so they know who's easy to do business with. Just like vendors we try to be easy to do business with, I think other partners are like that as well, if it's easy to engage them and they've got skilled people. So probably three things at the top, you know do they have knowledge and skills on our products and technologies? Do they have an appetite to want to co-sell and work with us versus, you know, going taking it direct on their own? Are they engaged with us?

Rachel Tuller: 9:09

And that's probably the third one is that level of engagement right? Do they have use cases? Do they have experience in this? Can they prove that? Do they have experience in a given industry or market right? Those are all things that we manage and track inside of our programs so that we're able to, you know, quickly spot an ideal partner. So we've crafted what we would call an ideal partner profile. That says, you know if you've got great skills, great competencies, strong market reach, deep expertise in a given you know use case or field, that's going to make you a little bit more valuable partner to the vendor and if you can articulate that so either through the vendor program or as a partner, being able to adequately and appropriately convey that to the vendors, that, hey, this is the skills that we have, this is how we measure our folks. That's all really important information for us.

Maciej: 10:03

And obviously I mean within the co-selling motion, communication, working together is so important, right? And I think I mentioned that earlier, one of the most expensive things for a vendor to do is just allocate a person. I mean channel teams are understaffed as they are today, and then you start thinking about those different programs, different motions. They all need some kind of human interaction. But Are companies or you know from your experience, the companies that you've been with where you did co-selling were you leveraging any technologies to enable partners and both and vendors to work together through some type of software? Or how did you establish those type of, you know, programmatic means of getting co-selling done?

Rachel Tuller: 10:57

Yeah, so in the past we used to do a lot of this manually, right, we would sit down with spreadsheets, we would send data back and forth Highly unsecure, right, but an opportunity to say, hey, what customers are you in, et cetera.

Rachel Tuller: 11:10

In the case that I shared earlier of the four vendors coming together, we actually leverage technology like cross beam or partner tap, where you can actually upload your list of customers, even opportunities, I mean, you can get really granular and it depends on the level of content or the level of data that each partner is willing to share. But, depending on that level, you can definitely get to a point of technology where one AE or one program manager can sit down. You know, pull up the different partners, get a list of five target accounts that we're going to go after together and go from there. And it's so much more automated and efficient these days that we can now scale this in a programmatic way. So, like you said, we're all tapped for resources these days. So leveraging the technology is really critical to be able to drive and scale. You know this type of motion in the market?

Maciej: 11:59

Yeah, perfect. How do you approach joint sales planning? Right, because this is co-selling. Right, so you share the accounts. You have identified the partners, you know who the accounts are, you know potentially which partners you're going to bring in into that opportunity. But what strategies would you employ to ensure effective coordination and cooperation throughout the whole sales process?

Rachel Tuller: 12:28

Yeah, this is where this is that last mile right, this is, you've done all the work and now it's where the rubber hits the road and you're actually going into a customer meeting. Well, part of the challenge that we've faced is every sales rep wants to own the account. Every sales rep wants to be the lead in this. So I think there has to be a spirit of cooperation, there has to be a incredible collaboration amongst the peers and partners. Now, you know, some of the partners understand hey, I'm playing a backseat here, I'm critical, but I'm coming in after the fact. We need somebody to be the tip of the spear, and that's where we leverage the selling partner, the services partner or the field partner to really be that tip of the spear, and then the vendors come in behind and really support the wood on the arrow, so to speak. So I think that's probably a great model that has worked for us.

Rachel Tuller: 13:20

I think the other thing that I would suggest to other vendors is to pilot this, to find those reps, find those AEs that are really excited about working with partners, that have some experience in how to do multi-partner deals, and really put them in a couple of scenarios where you can guide and coach them through it until you find a process that works for you and your company. This is not really a one-size-fits-all. Every AE is different, every vendor is different and every customer scenario is different, and even in some large customers you've got multiple business units where they're competing against each other inside the customer. So there's always some challenges with that. But I think open communication, a desire like a really solid desire to co-sell, and having that be part of your DNA from the top down, is really critical. If you don't have your you know geographical sales leaders or your CRO on board with this, you're going to have problems.

Maciej: 14:18

Right, I'm glad you mentioned the piloting approach. I mean, to write a program of such complexity from scratch without having any experience or without having gone through at least one or two opportunities like this would be very hard, right. So I think it's right to say that trying to identify those opportunities and see how they develop, who would be the best person to lead a certain motion of that co-sell and take it from there right? I mean because otherwise I'm just thinking out loud here but like trying to design this based on best practices of other companies, even getting people from other companies who've done this before, but potentially going into a different industry or different set of partners, different products. I mean, all of that can be very, very new, right.

Rachel Tuller: 15:23

Yeah, and it's definitely not easy. There are some companies that have figured it out, but I think for those of us that are working in this, like I said, it's not necessarily new. It's taking more of an alliance approach to our traditional channel business right. So those of us that have been in alliances for a really long time, we're used to frameworks and business models and different roles and responsibilities and sometimes you know, having those externally facing are just as important. I know, internally, for different vendors, you've got your ISR, your inside sales rep, you've got your outside sales rep. You've got your partner sales rep. You've got your AEs, you've got your solution architects right. Even internally, you have to define roles and responsibilities and I think just using some of those tools that are available to the industry in the alliances world where you can now do that among vendors, is really critical at the outset.

Rachel Tuller: 16:16

Okay, here's our, you know, kind of, let's all have a pre-planning meeting. Here's our plan of attack. Here's who's going to be point. Here's who's going to do the services. Here's who's going to, you know, run the POC. Those are that. Clear definition is something I think that's really critical. And you know scale is really hard. But once you get repetitive and you do it a couple of times. That starts to become part of your DNA and how you work with partners.

Maciej: 16:43

It definitely doesn't sound like the easiest thing to put in place and hit the button and everyone knows exactly what to do. Right, that is hard and, as you were talking about this and you know so many different parts of the business being involved internally at one vendor never mind multiple vendors, right, but then partner as well. How do you design metrics rather than just the actual sale, right, and the profit that a company makes? But what other KPIs would you be typically looking for to measure the success of a co-selling motion?

Rachel Tuller: 17:24

I mean, in the end it comes down to revenue, right? That's what all of our leaders want to see. So I would think, if you back it up from there, it's with any particular sales process. Right, it's going to be number of engagements, your standard deal registration. So we actually, in two of the companies that I work for, created deal registrations for co-selling, right?

Rachel Tuller: 17:42

So it's not just one doing the deal, but I'm letting you know that I have this opportunity being able to manage and track that and work through the process. So I would say you know, referrals, deal registration, notifications, that would be one KPI. The other one would be number of POCs, who's hosting the proof of concept, customer meetings, number of engagements, I mean. Then you start to get into things like legal and everything else and that's where it gets a little fuzzy. But I think your leading indicators are those sales activities that really get us to the point of having the conversation with the customer.

Maciej: 18:18

You said it is fuzzy, right, when it comes to legal, but it's such an important part and each player within a co-selling motion wants everything on their paper, typically right. So I'd say it takes a lot of negotiation and putting the processes in place to determine these type of things as well, which should not be overlooked. In terms of Other I suppose we talked a little bit about this the hurdles of setting up a co-selling program. Rather than the things that we mentioned so far, or rather you mentioned so far, is there anything else that people should be very careful with or watch out for? Anything that comes to mind that has put some roadblocks on your way to a co-selling motion?

Rachel Tuller: 19:07

Yeah, you know it's hard to manage to, but it's really the personalities, right. When it comes down to it, it's the individual sales leaders and sales reps you know that are sitting around the table. I think if you can iron out the stuff at the very beginning, it definitely makes it smoother down the road, which is how we learned our lessons around. Everybody just showing up at the customer location, Things like pre-planning meetings, having sessions where we're doing a whiteboard together, either with the customer or without. But even ahead of time, doing that pre-work, I think is critical to avoiding issues down the road. Some of those issues.

Rachel Tuller: 19:48

Again, it comes down to personality. If you're co-selling, it's pretty easy to do the transactions because if a customer is buying a solution and there's multiple vendors in there, you are going to sell your solution separately. But I think the partner needs to understand that everybody's got some skin in the game, Everybody's got an outcome, and understanding and communicating that ahead of time here's my want out of this. Here's my goal. I want X number of license and I need this margin. So let's make sure that's what we're shooting for. So if we can communicate that ahead of time, then I think everybody's rowing in the same boat. We've all got a different oar, but at least we're headed in the same direction.

Maciej: 20:32

We mentioned the technology and how you used it in the past to help with the co-selling motions. With all of the technologies and new trends and AI coming into play now, how do you believe the technology will help to further enhance that co-selling process and how are companies and leaders like yourself preparing for that next step of advancements?

Rachel Tuller: 21:01

Yeah, I think with most things, we're building the data right. So some of us have been co-selling for years but we never managed it or tracked it or recorded it in our systems of record right. So having a very strong PRM or CRM that you can track all of this who were all the partners in a given account, who did what activity I think just some of the basic management right and tracking of that information is going to be key. That will eventually give us the data which we can then get the insights out of as to who are our top partners, who are the ones that are really delivering for us, what types of use cases are really lending themselves well to a co-sell motion, to a co-sell motion. All that will come over time. But you've got to start tracking it first and that's where a PRM or a programmatic approach to tracking your co-sell is really going to be critical.

Maciej: 21:55

I think, like I said, we've all been doing it for years, but nobody's been managing it and certainly nobody's been tracking it.

Rachel Tuller: 21:59

So once we started doing that, we were able to glean some insights from the data itself, and that's going to be critical, knowing you know. It's almost like you know be the CFO, be the CEO, and ask yourself what's my CEO going to ask me about this particular deal? What do I need to know about this? And then go build it into your systems of record.

Maciej: 22:21

Interesting, especially with some channel leaders or aspiring channel leaders that I had conversations with, who are potentially, you know, considering bringing in a PRM for the very first time. They all scratch their heads, right, I mean, how am I going to make data collection easy? Not, you know, not to burden the partner with typing in a lot of data, but how do I, you know, semi-automated on the partner side so it flows in flawlessly into our CRM and so we can mine data? Right? I've seen deal registrations that have free text only. Right, I mean, how are you going to mine data based on this? Right?

Maciej: 23:04

I mean, you have no common denominators in your CRM when it comes to measuring opportunities. That's just one example. So the data is there. We just need to start looking at the data in a slightly different way, right? So measuring you know, how many partners in each opportunity, what are their specializations, what other vendors do they have in their portfolio that could potentially also play with us? Maybe we don't even have an alliance motion with that, given vendor right, but partners can also be a very good source of technology alliances based on their portfolio, right?

Rachel Tuller: 23:46

Absolutely, absolutely, and I think you're right. What we did is we started with the end in mind. So like literally on a whiteboard or on a piece of paper sketched out a dashboard that said if I'm a business, leader what story do I want to tell with my dashboards? Right, and that's where you start, and then you figure out what data you have to collect to actually create that view at the very end. So, starting with the end in mind, Excellent.

Maciej: 24:12

And then I suppose if you were to summarize and maybe point out the top three things that any channel leader thinking of co-selling motion should consider, I always lead with a win-win-win right.

Rachel Tuller: 24:31

It's got to be a win for the partner, it's got to be a win for the vendor and it's got to be, most importantly, a win for the customer. So if we're not solving customer problems, why are we doing this? So we start with the customer and where they're going. So customer communication, right, being able to really communicate the roles and responsibilities within the organization. And then, finally, automation. If you're going to scale this, you've got to have this level of automation, whether it be in your CRM or, you know, your PRM or in your, like the partner, tap or cross beam type of tools, where you're, you know, developing all of that and then inside your partner program. So customer approach, communication and automation would be my top three.

Maciej: 25:12

Fantastic. Thank you for that and, as a closing question to this conversation, even though I would love to pick your brain on a lot more things, but we have limited time. As you know, nobody gets off the podcast without being asked this question. What's the one thing, rachel, that you wish you knew before you started your channel career?

Rachel Tuller: 25:36

Oh, my goodness, I think if I knew how fun it would be to work with so many different people, right, like I'm a people person, I'm a relationship person. I think that's why I've been in partners my entire career, I probably would have started earlier. You know, I started as a technologist and then eventually got into sales and partnerships and operations, but for me, it's really about the relationships building and developing relationships over time that you then take to different companies or are able to leverage. I think, as a caveat, one thing that I wish I knew is, whenever you're designing programs or new strategies or approaches, get top level buy-in. Get top level buy-in right. We can build whatever we want at the programmatic level, we can take it out to the field, but if we don't have our executives supporting this, we are not going to be successful. So decide what it is that you want to go after, make sure that you have buy-in and support from your leadership and go from there.

Maciej: 26:40

Fantastic.

Rachel Tuller: 26:41

Too many times it's like pushing a wall uphill.

Maciej: 26:44

Yeah, yeah, Been there, done that myself before, be it bringing in new technology or trying to design something new, especially for partners. Without that buy-in at executive level and the green light, go and do it and show me what you've done. It's very, very difficult right.

Rachel Tuller: 27:07

It is.

Maciej: 27:09

Rachel, I am so pleased that you were able to join me on Channel Voices. Thank you so very much for being here for educating us on the co-selling motion with partners. Appreciate your time and sharing your knowledge with us and wishing you all the best in the future.

Rachel Tuller: 27:30

Thank you so much, Maciek. It's been my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.

Maciej: 27:37

And that's a wrap for this episode. I do hope you found it valuable and, if you did, please make sure to subscribe and leave a review. You can also follow Channel Voices podcast on LinkedIn, twitter and Facebook, or just visit channelvoicescom, where you can send me a message or leave a voicemail. All of the links are listed in the show notes and, once again, I appreciate you tuning in today Until next time you.