How do you identify which partners are the best fit for co-selling versus just lead-sharing?

Lead sharing is a great place to start a partner program. Once lead sharing has been established, and conversations begin between your partner and your sales team, you can evaluate and identify true co-selling partners by asking: - Is there a clear list of accounts your teams can collaborate on? Account mapping is key to evaluating partners - understanding where your partners are and aren't, what personas they talk to within client accounts, and the kinds of problems they're helping customers solve will help determine whether it makes sense to engage in more strategic co-selling. - Is there a clear joint value proposition with this partner? This should be a story your sales team and the partner can agree upon, and should make it clear to a customer or prospect that your products create more value together than either could drive independently! - Does the partner have the sales capacity to make co-selling make sense? While there can always be small organizations that make a big impact, the most successful co-selling partners have some sort of sales capacity (think BDR teams, client partners with quotas). The ideal co-selling partner has salespeople who can collaborate with your team at various steps of pipeline generation and development. - Is there mutual trust? The importance of trust cannot be overstated! The best co-selling partners have already created some level of trust with your sales team. To create trust: does your sales team need to see or know to trust that this partner is worth continued co-selling with? Perhaps you can create a certification program, where partners can prove their technical knowledge of your product. If possible, you can even have partners certify on a go-to-market talk track, ensuring they’re able to speak to your product as well as your own internal salespeople can. Additionally, the partner must trust your salespeople: ensure the rules of engagement are clear, so that salespeople know how to work with a partner in a way that sets them up for success as well.

When building the recruitment strategy the channel team needs to understand what the sales team expects from partners. Co-selling should go beyond simple lead sharing—it requires a structured approach that covers everything from lead generation to account management and co marketing The ideal co-selling partner should: Have deep expertise in our products and technology to effectively support the sales team in pitching, positioning, and accelerating deal closures. Provide dedicated resources such as marketing support, BDRs, and technical specialists to help drive engagement and execution. Own a strong customer base that enables effective account mapping and targeted expansion opportunities alongside the sales team.