How can partners help the sales team win more deals?

Partners are the extended team of a sales organization. They can enhance the overall value proposition, expand the reach, and provide specialized expertise that complements the product or service. Additionally partners can create Joint Marketing Activities and Lead Generation, they can leverage their relationships in customers to influence a deal, they can reduce time to value for the customers, and they can close deals with additional incentives or special/complex terms.

There are countless ways partners can help your sales team win - but the simplest answer is: a good partner can be an incredible advocate for your product and company in front of the customer when your salespeople are not in the room. At Dataiku, our partners have helped us win countless deals by working closely with our sales team. Some specific examples: - Creating pipeline by introducing Dataiku sellers directly to new contacts within our prospect or customer accounts - Providing intel (or even just validating what your sales team has been told by the client) especially around budget, timelines, org charts, internal account politics, and procurement - Mentioning Dataiku’s value proposition in their own executive meetings with joint clients, and coming back to our sales team to share how the client responded - Preemptively identifying a Dataiku competitor in an account that our sales team may not have been aware of, allowing our team to proactively position against that competitor and reduce risk in our opportunities - Presenting themselves as a “neutral” third party and guiding the client intentionally away from a competitive product towards our product - Pulling in their own pre-sales technical resources to help organizations evaluate the Dataiku platform effectively - Reselling Dataiku into geographies and/or industries where we might not want to commit the resources to sell the product directly

There are several ways a partner can help the sales team win more deals: Deal sourcing: Partners can tap into their existing account books or collaborate with the sales team on account mapping to help generate more opportunities. Accelerating sales cycles: Leveraging their network and market expertise, partners can help speed up the sales process, enabling the sales team to close deals more quickly. Co-marketing opportunities: By partnering on marketing efforts, the vendor can amplify its strategy, gaining more visibility, brand awareness, and ultimately generating more leads. Adding value during pitches: While the vendor pitches the solution, a partner can bring additional offerings to the table, building a closer relationship with the customer and differentiating both the partner and the vendor from the competition.

The best way I've seen this done by partners is by having the partner help to "re-activate" deals that the partner has introduced to the sales team as a lead. Meaning, if a potential deal on a lead that a partner sent over starts to go cold or would normally be deemed as "lost" in a normal sales process, you can set up a system where the sales team can reach out to the partner to ask if THE PARTNER can re-activate the lead by getting in touch with them. The partner is likely going to have a better relationship with this lead than your sales team will; thus, they are more likely to continue to look into your offer more if the push comes from your partner. The value of this is that your sales team has an extra lifeline to re-activate a deal. In a normal scenario, a lead may be considered "lost" under certain circumstances. But by having a parter help to re-activate the lead once it gets to this point, you can find that "lost" deals can turn into "won" more frequently.

Partners can provide reach and scale. Partners come in many flavors but they are helping you either 1) enhance your product or service 2) be an extension of your direct sellers or 3) give you access to their ecosystem of partners, or a combination of those three. For direct sellers they can get you access to their customers - if done right the sales reps who work with partners will get exponentially more opportunities into their funnel, leading to more wins and commissions! I’ve seen some reps who want to control the whole process and those are the ones that don’t see the value of partners and won’t be as successful IMO. The partner will give you access to their customer base in return for you being a great closer. If you are working with technology partners, think about the ecosystem of partners that sell their tech as a core business, and how your solution can be an effective up-sell or add-on that in turn can provide them more sales and higher retention.

Partnerships are a revenue role and partners need to be in every deal, with every customer. The core expectation must be to seek this out and not view partners as an outlier. Similar to inbound and outbound sales activity, partner-generated opps need to be at the forefront of the sales team's efforts. It's not in replacement of but rather a layer on top of the sales team's GTM strategy. Concentrated effort in partners should be a no brainer for the sales team as partner involvement increases win rate by an average of 41% as well as deal size by 43%. The question should really be focused on how partners and sales teams work together to build more relationships across the partner's team, run more enablement sessions, attend events with partners etc. This type of activity is what really builds pipeline/

1. Lean on partners for influence. Show them what opportunities they're working are also working with a partner and find a way to get that partner to support the opportunity. It can be a simple endorsement, or it can be a backchannel conversation for more intel that will help them position their follow up and future conversations. 2. Integrations are a big selling point for SaaS and one of the most important if not the most important aspect of a buying decision. The more valuable of integrations you have to your ICP, and the more content and information your sales team has around those integrations, the more value you will provide for them to influence their close rates. Empower them with this information as best as you can.