In my neighborhood bulk trash pickup is the first Monday of every month. People pile up old furniture, appliances, yard garbage and debris at the curb.
The weekend before pickup, the Scrap Man drives up and down our streets to pick anything metal that he can take to sell to the recycling center.
It’s an example of a natural sales partnership. My neighbors put out things they don’t want. The Scrap Man, at no cost to us, removes a large portion of it and the city of Plantation pays less to Waste Management for hauling off our bulk trash. Every makes or saves money while getting what they want.
When it comes to sales, our partnerships should work almost this effortlessly.
They usually don’t.
How To Fail at Sales Partnering
Whenever I am running a sales team, I tell my reps that if anyone calls wanting to discuss “partnering” to direct them to me. I recommend you do the same.
100% of the time, the requester wants one of three things:
- They would like us to sell their product.
- They would like us to give them our customer lists & leads and make introductions to our key clients.
- They want us to send them referrals.
None of these 3 aligns with my sales team’s primary objective – which is selling our product. The requester rarely offers anything remotely beneficial for my team other than some vague promise to “send business your way”.
It’s even worse when I am working for a large or well known company. Then the requests come daily to my team from people who want access to our customers and leverage our brand recognition.
It is always a waste of my rep’s time.
A Better Way
On the other hand, I have seen informal partnerships work all the time. It usually happens when someone on my team (a sales rep or sales engineer) crosses paths with another vendor when working with a customer.
My rep will see firsthand how that vendor helps the customer. If he likes what they did, then the next time he runs into a similar situation, my rep will mention that vendor to his customer. He might even make a warm introduction.
After this happens a few times, if all goes well, the vendor will look for opportunities where he can refer business to my rep too.
And when there’s a problem at a mutual customer, the partners work together to solve it.
That’s it. There’s no formal program*. There’s no boring lunch’n’learns, no official playbooks or rules of engagement. Money, commissions or kickbacks are never part of the deal.
It’s a system that simply makes good business sense.
Just like the Scrap Man.
Right about now, you might be thinking, “That sounds like BS.”
So I thought I’d offer two real life examples:
When I sold Internet Service, I would often get a call from Brian Lesniakowski. He ran a computer services company that installed networks, computers and servers. Brian would say,
“Steve, I’ve got this customer who needs a T1. They’re doing xyz. Can you reach out to them and get them a quote?”
As a rep I loved when Brian called because his customers were fully qualified and ready to buy.
After we’d worked a few deals together, I also realized that we never had any installation problems with any of Brian’s customers.
With other customers, I frequently had installation problems. So I started to I refer my customers to Brian. He’d handle the installs and become their computer service company.
This worked so smoothly that when I moved into management, I directed my entire team to refer computer business to Brian and to take care of his customer’s Internet needs.
How well did this partnership work? Well, it’s 18 years later and I still remember Brian’s name, despite having not spoken to him since then.
When I sold server virtualization software, my customers frequently needed to upgrade their storage hardware in order to use my software. My company didn’t sell storage hardware. HP, Dell, IBM and NetApp did.
But sending my prospects to these huge corporations was like pushing them off a cliff into the ocean. I had no idea if they’d get a return call, much less the right solution.
Fortunately, my sales engineer introduced me to Christian Butler who sold for a startup storage company Compellent. When I sent Christian to a prospect, I knew he’d get them the right solution right away. He not only became my go to storage partner, he became the partner for our entire region.
Just like with Brian, we closed good business and took care of our mutual customers.
There’s many other examples I could provide** and probably a few that reps on your team could too.
If you’ve been tasked with building a partner channel or if you just want to help your sales reps sell more through referals, I’d encourage you to explore this approach.
It starts by teaching your reps to pay attention to other vendors who work with your customers. When they run into someone really good, they should get his contact info. The next time your rep encounters a similar situation he can recommend that vendor to his customer. If the vendor delivers, then repeat.
Do this a few times and your rep can build a natural sales partnership that works.
*There is a place for a formal reseller program for specific industries like hardware resellers, VARs, retailers etc. That’s a topic I’ll cover in another post.
**Interestingly Brian, Christian and I all moved on to other companies where we became Sr. VPs. Working well with others and servicing our customers apparently paid off for all of us in the long run.