How to do Partner Sales

Description:

Whether early or later on in the game, many teams are eager to sell their products via sales partnerships. This presentation goes over the common problems and pitfalls that can happen in the partnership process. You likely can’t avoid all of the problems, but it is helpful to know the issues to watch for. Florian will cover the 5 most common forms of partnerships, from simplest to most complex, with their various pros and cons. We’ll explore the 5 most common pitfalls and problems that can come up also, and how to address these problems so that the sales partnership dance can proceed more smoothly.

Exercises for this lesson:

Note: This exercise is intended for individual or team sales agents as a way to practice and reinforce learning. Incorporate this practice into your day and, if possible, into your ongoing sales work. This practice shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 minutes a day. Good luck and have fun!
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Introduction: Before you form a sales partnerships you’re going to need to understand the basics of selling your product. Remember that right about the time when you are ready to enable and onboard an internal sales agent smoothly is the same time when you are ready to work with a sales partner.

Instructions for “Create your FAQ”

Step 1: Find a friend from outside of your company that can share 10 minutes of their time. The less they know about your company and product the better! You want a fresh audience.

Step 2: Pitch your product to your friend using simple language.

Step 3: Have your friend revert with any and all questions that come up for them about your product. How does this feature work exactly? Where can they get support for that problem? What is your return policy like? Have your friend ask you as many questions as possible just as though they really wanted to buy your product. Make sure they also take on the perspective of actually implementing your product and having to deal with the operational pain of doing so.

Step 4: During the conversation make note of these questions and of the answers your are providing. This is the building block for the FAQ document/segment on your website.

During the week:

Tuesday: Work through “Create your FAQ” with 1 friend
Wednesday: Work through “Create your FAQ” with 1 other friend and apply Step 4 during a live customer interaction
Thursday: Work through “Create your FAQ” by applying Step 4 during 2 other live customer interactions By doing the same exercise with different people you should get some variety in the questions that they ask you! Make sure to converse with people of different personality types.

Timestamps:

0:00 introduction

0:50 a frequent topic: teams want to hand out sales operations to sales partner very early

2:18 disclaimer #1 - yes, you do need to know how to sell to your clients first before partnering

3:49 review of the 5 most common forms of sales partnerships, in order of increasing complexity

12:35 the top 2 things you need to understand before jumping into a partnership

16:05 general overview of commission structures based on different partnership forms

16:55…this is how you know that you are ready to onboard your first sales partner!

18:05 first major pitfall to watch for: conflict of areas

22:05 there will always be debate about who contacted a customer first: commission wars

24:40 pitfall #3: the “presumptive operative ramp-up” also known as premature scaling

27:00 pitfall #4: getting super hyped up about c-level connections

30:23 pitfall #5 - unplanned working hours happen - be prepared for this