Co-selling is when two sales teams within a department or two partner companies, join forces to sell a product or service to new or existing customers. By empowering a sales team with resources, warm introductions, and contacts – it helps them close more deals, faster, thus growing revenue for the organization.
Co-selling is a great way to:
- Increase revenue by leveraging new customer data
- Cross-pollinate ideas and resources
- Streamline sales processes
Both teams benefit as the partners get a commission on every deal they close together. This is the perfect scenario where each team receives a smaller piece of a bigger pie. However, there are thousands of sales teams, and one thing that is apparent is that many of them don’t know how to effectively launch a co-selling partnership.
? COSLR is designed to be your automated Co-Seller. It’s packed with 200+ features like a B2B leads database, Email Automation Tool for sending drip campaigns to those leads, plus a browse extension for easily finding leads on websites or LinkedIn.
Here are the steps you can take to launch a co-selling partnership.
Step 1: Assess your marketing and sales funnel
Before you bring on a co-selling partner, it is essential to assess your sales and marketing strategy. Sit down with your team, and review your current sales funnel and strategy. Where are you missing out? Where could you use a partner? Are your prospective clients already working with the partner?
If you’re co-selling within two departments of the same organization, then it’s easy to highlight how both products or services can be complimentary. However, if your co-seller is another organization, then this is a good opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses between both teams and how each company’s products will compliment the other.
Step 2: Identify your target market and who your prospects are
Once you have assessed your own company’s sales and marketing funnel, it is time to evaluate the co-selling partner’s strengths and weaknesses. You also want to identify your target prospects, the industry, and the job title of the leads you’re targeting. The best way to accomplish this is through some type of mapping where both companies bring their prospect list together and then map each account to one another to come up a good approach.
Organize prospect lists between two co-sellers:
1. Existing Customers – Clients who are currently paying for your product or service.
2. High-Intent or “Warm” Leads – These are Leads who are in an active deal conversation
3. Prospects – Potential customers who are on a lead list, but not yet participating in any sales discussion or process
Once the mapping is done it’s time to identify the opportunities and which tactics will work best. In most cases, the next step would be to understand your co-seller’s client base and facilitate warm introductions for “existing customers.”
Step 3: Understand the co-seller’s existing client base
Talk to prospective co-selling partners and understand the existing client base in detail. That way you will get a better idea of your prospective client’s spending habits and overall preferences. It is also important to determine what both companies can offer to each other. This is no time to be stingy with information.
Here is a sample of how you can begin to message the client base
| Partner’s Existing Customers | Partner’s Warm Leads | Partner’s Prospects | |
| Your Existing Customers | This is an opportunity to highlight both of your strengths with a case study or webinar. Leverage this as marketing collateral to get additional warm leads. | Provide your co-selling partner with a warm introduction. | Provide your co-selling partner with a warm introduction. |
| Your Warm Leads | Get a warm introduction from your co-selling partner. | Co-Sell on a call and highlight the value of your combined product or service. | Co-Sell on a call and highlight the value of your combined product or service. |
| Your Prospects | Get a warm introduction from your co-selling partner | Co-Sell on a call and highlight the value of your combined product or service. | Lead with your core value prop, but also highlight your co-selling partner’s product. Leverage marketing collateral and case studies. |
Step 4: Focus on profiling your target audience
After understanding your prospective partner’s existing client base, it is time to analyze your target audience. What are the needs, demands, and preferences of your prospects and their companies? Understand where the market is, and what your prospective partner can bring to the table. This will help you carve out your niche and understand how to use your partner as a tool for your business.
Now you know your target audience and prospective partner, it is time to begin building your own database of customers. This is can be done through email marketing, social media campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, and other digital channels. COSLR’s leads database is a great tool for finding industries and decision-makers.
Some other things to consider:
- Who is involved in the decision-making process at the target company and what is their job title?
- What’s the company’s solution and how is it performing in the current market?
- What is the budgeting process at the target company and are they able to spend?
- Does the key decision maker at the company?
Step 5: Create a marketing plan that incorporates both co-selling parties
Once you have evaluated the market, it is time to create a marketing plan to target prospects. This should be a plan that includes both companies. This is an important step because you are actually positioning yourself as a ‘partner’ to the prospective client. Things like case studies, webinars, or one-sheets are a great way to build trust and highlight strengths.
The main goal is to understand your ideal target market better so that you can work with your partner to get the same audience. Hopefully, you will also be able to get a detailed analysis of your target market, which will help you set up a strong sales funnel for your business.
Final thoughts
If done right, the benefits of partnering with the right co-selling partner will be invaluable for your business. This is a great way to make sure that you do not waste any time and invest your resources very carefully so that the final result is something you can be proud of. The main benefit of this kind of partnership is that it helps both businesses find their target market better and work together to create a strong sales funnel.
Remember, this partnership should serve as a sales funnel for your business. Not only does it help establish strong customer relationships, but it will also help you build a strong reputation in the market. It will also help you increase your sales and market share.
