In last week’s GoToEco article we introduced the need for a standardized 6-step Co-Sell Orchestration Playbook & Program.

The 6 steps are broken into Planning (Focus, Alignment and Ops) and Execution (with Partner, Process and Reporting):

In this week’s article, let’s dig into the details of each of these program elements. As you’re reading, keep in mind Rob Rebholz’s words of wisdom:

“Let’s debunk a myth right off the bat: co-sell orchestration isn’t a drawn-out, half-year project. By adhering to best practices, you can have it operational in mere days or weeks. And although it’s not an instant magic bullet, co-sell orchestration can significantly bolster your lead volumes, improve close rates, shorten sales cycles, and enhance ACVs. If you’re aiming to demonstrate how partners can boost revenue, it’s high time to embrace co-sell orchestration.”

Program planning

Focus areas for Co-Selling

Based on an internal assessment that drills down on four key categories, your team can set the right objectives by considering the following questions:

Alignment with your Revenue Team

The key to success in co-selling is creating a reciprocal relationship with your partners; you cannot get if you are not willing to give, so a business case like this one is required to drive the required investments, e.g., having your customer success and AM team help your partners with intros and influence.

Operations

Having the right tools and the right process is key to standardization because, much like with the sales process, more than one tool or solution is required to drive end-to-end co-sell orchestration. Here’s a systems view of a solution we’ve built with Superglue based on Salesforce and Crossbeam Core as an example, but you’ll need to work with RevOps to align on your approach.

Program execution

Partner prioritization

Since co-selling is a reciprocal give-and-get sales model that needs to align with your team’s revenue goals, it’s key to focus on and motivate the right set of partners. In the case of the Partner Assist Co-Sell approach, we recommend standardizing the identification of the right partners and the creation of a reciprocal SLA agreement process as follows:

Process and enablement

The heart of standardization is who does what and when. You need a rigorous and repeatable process. Here’s an example of how we do that matched to the operational flow from our joint solution with Superglue and Crossbeam.

Reporting

To prove revenue impact, it’s critical to track the sourced and influence impacts from your co-sell process. There are a few imperatives:

1. Show multi-factor Impact directly within CRM. We recommend the best practice of tracking your primary co-sell motion, e.g., Partner Assists directly in Salesforce by recording both the stage of the partner assist (Requested, In Process, and Given) and whether that assist pertains to a partner sourced or partner influenced deal. This ensures that RevOps, in forecasting and de-risking, starts to look at Partner Assist status on all deals. Hint: Our research and client experience show that partner assist deals close at 4x the rate of outbound activities. You need to prove that this is true at your shop and then scale this motion.
2. Conduct Cohort Comparison of Revenue Contributions from Partner Assisted vs Deals without Partner Assist. Because Revenue Teams over-index on sourced deals, they miss out on this outstanding data point: Digital Bridge cohort research comparing thousands of partner attach vs non-partner deals report 2.5-3x greater revenue contributions. Conclusion: Partner Influence is Golden.
3. Collect Attribution Data from your Account Mapping Vendors. Both Reveal and Crossbeam are investing heavily in tracking partner influence to demystify and prove the value that partners add across the customer buying cycle (not just based on sourced deals and referrals). Lean on vendors to supplement your CRM and your cohort analysis to prove once and for all that Nearbound or Ecosystem-led co-selling is the most efficient and repeatable revenue engine.

Conclusions

As we concluded in last week’s article, the big reason why partner teams cannot show predictable co-selling results is that we don’t adopt a standardized, business-case-justified approach to garner the required alignment with Revenue Teams. Applying the 6 steps in the above program outline is a proven way to overcome the challenges and rescue your Revenue Team.

If you are coming to or thinking of coming to Catalyst in Denver the week of August 21, we will be presenting a workshop that will go into much more detail on how to plan and execute a standardized co-sell orchestration solution. Come join me, Rob Rebholz from Superglue, and Derek Safko from LeanData at our Co-Selling Success Workshop on August 23rd at 11:10am MT or hit any of us up on LinkedIn and we’ll tell you more about these frameworks, playbooks, and offerings.