It’s no secret that the quality of your co-selling motions is crucial for driving results and maintaining the trust of your internal sales team. Engage a partner with low potential for influencing a deal or at the wrong time, and you’ll risk losing the faith of your sales team and your partner.
Leverage partner data or partners at the right time, and you'll boost your sales team's close rate, annual recurring revenue (ARR), and more.
Let’s say your sales team reaches out to their prospect Hextall & Co. about purchasing your software. Harry at Hextall & Co. opens your sales team’s email, takes a sip of his tea, and then moves on with his day.
It’s possible that Harry isn’t ready to buy your software for any number of reasons:
- Hextall & Co. is in the middle of a reorg
- Harry doesn’t have the budget available to purchase new tools
- Harry doesn’t understand how your software can solve his pain points and is falling back on the status quo
- Harry’s getting ready to go to wizarding school and will be more open to a conversation about onboarding new SaaS tools in the fall
In all of the above scenarios, Harry’s lack of response isn’t a software issue; it’s a timing issue. And your partners have behind-the-scenes intel that can help you get a better understanding of when and how to reach out for the best chance of closing the deal.
Scroll down for a handful fo real-world stories about SaaS companies using partner data to perfect their timing and get results like:
Before we get started, a few key findings:
Setting up Crossbeam notifications or Slack notifications via Crossbeam's Slack App will help your sales team know when it’s the right time to engage a prospect. For example: Census’s team gets alerts when a prospect becomes a customer of a particular partner whose software highly complements their own software. These alerts serve as a signal that their internal sales team should begin the sale process with the particular prospect.
Including tech stack references in your sales outreach can help your sales development representatives (SDRs) book their first meeting with a prospect faster and accelerate the sales cycle. For example: LeanData’s SDRs identify exactly when their prospects have become a customer of their partner using the Crossbeam Salesforce Widget. They then send email sequences that include information about the integrations they have with the partner and how the integrations would benefit the prospect.
Engaging a prospect when they become a customer of your partner can help your sales team skip the part where they’re trying to educate your prospect about your software's value and fast-forward to discussing how your software fits into their existing workflows. For example: an account executive (AE) at TalentPop has a 66% faster sales cycle for leads from a particular partner. Their partner refers their new customers to TalentPop as a trusted consulting partner and advisor in implementing their software.
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#1: How Census initiates sales outreach as soon as their prospect becomes a customer of their partner
When Census’s team receives an alert in Crossbeam that their prospect has become a customer of their partner, the partnerships team will decide whether to engage their partner to get intel about the prospect or to enable their sales team to initiate sales outreach immediately.
To get additional intel, Census's team will reach out to their partner via Slack Connect to ask for their guidance around engaging the account. They'll send a note like the below to their partner’s AE:
Hey, we just saw that you closed Acme Corporation. What’s the state of the account? Do you think it’s time for us to get into there? Do you know what your customer’s strategy is to get all their data into your platform? Because we’d like to help accelerate that onboarding process.
To begin initiating sales outreach, Census's team will run a report of their partners’ new customers that overlap with their prospects and provide the account names to their SDRs. The SDRs will then send an outbound sequence mentioning their “better together” story with their partner’s software. The intention of the sequence is to educate the prospect about their joint value proposition as they’re in the beginning stages of integrating the software with their tech stack.
Below is an example of an email an SDR at Census might send a prospect who recently became a customer of their partner.
Hey Jane,
Noticed from Linkedin that you lead data engineering for ACME Corporation, and it looks like the product team there is on Holver — I’m reaching out from the Census team, who is a Holver partner.
Are there user and company attributes living in the data warehouse that teams want in Holver to do deeper analysis?
For example, if a ‘power user’ is defined in the warehouse and synced to enrich the user profile in Holver, Product and Marketing can now understand how conversion funnels differ between power and non-power users.
Census is a reverse ETL tool that syncs your data warehouse with Holver and other business applications, without requiring engineering code.
Here’s a short clip on how – would love to hear your thoughts.
Best,
Census’ SDR Name
Read: Case Study — How Census Uses Partner Data to Pursue Higher ACVs
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#2: How TalentPop generates a steady flow of ecosystem-qualified leads (EQLs)
TalentPop, a customer service management agency, generates EQLs from partners as they onboard new customers. One of their partners sends their new customers a survey asking them about their software implementation needs. If their needs include customer service support, they refer the customer to a handful of companies including TalentPop.
Below is an example of an email including a warm intro to the prospect from TalentPop's partner.
