Your partner ecosystem's growing. 👏 But so is the number of partner requests you're sending to your sales team. 

Ask your sales team to co-sell with too many partners too quickly, and your Slack messages will likely end up in the "Later" Slack graveyard. But approach your sales team thoughtfully with their best interests in mind, and your co-selling syncs will soon become their happy place.  

Below, we're sharing the before/after changes that Fivetran made to ensure their partner activities continued to meet their sales team's needs as the number of partner requests they received increased.  

As a result of these changes, Fivetran's AEs have shared positive feedback about their partner activities, they're having higher quality conversations with leads, and they're excited to co-sell with more partners. 

— Olivia Ramirez, Managing Editor

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How Fivetran Removed the Barriers to Co-Selling

When she joined Fivetran in 2022, Curry Wilson was in a position that many partner managers dream of — Fivetran’s sales reps were already co-selling with partners, and the entire org was aware of the impact of their partner ecosystem: 

• Their deal sizes are 48% larger when a partner is involved
• And 65% of their pipeline, on average, has a co-sell attached

The biggest challenge Wilson faced was getting Fivetran’s sales reps to co-sell with more partners — not just their favorites. But when sales reps receive multiple requests a day to work with partners, it can be easy to ignore the unfamiliar and stick with what works. 

Wilson has recently become the sole point of contact for anything partner-related for her account executives (AEs) assigned to the Central region of the US. She sits on all of her AEs' calls with partners and ensures that the activities they participate in have a direct impact on their goals.

“It’s not confusing anymore. It’s just one contact,” says Curry Wilson, Partner Sales Manager, Central, at Fivetran.

Below, we’ll share how the changes Wilson and her team implemented helped to break down the barriers to co-selling and focus their partner activities. 

Before: Multiple internal partner managers would send partner requests to their AEs

Previously, each internal partner manager had a direct line to Fivetran’s AEs. They would confer with their partners and request that their AEs participate in specific co-selling motions and field activities with their respective partners. 

Sometimes, this would result in Fivetran’s AEs receiving multiple Slack messages in a day, with each message requesting their time for different partner activities. Fivetran’s AEs would need to determine which requests to prioritize, and some Slack messages would go unanswered. 

Additionally, requests from their partners didn’t always align with the needs of Fivetran’s AEs. For example: A field activity with a partner might not target the right region or specific target accounts their AEs needed to break into.

After: Wilson manages all partner requests to her AEs and prioritizes partner activities that help them hit their goals each quarter 

Wilson is part of the partnerships team; However, she joins every sales meeting and sits in on every call between her AEs and their partners. As Partner Sales Manager, she filters all partner requests from Fivetran’s partner managers to her sales reps to ensure each partner activity is a good fit. She also gathers requests and intelligence from her sales reps to prioritize the right partners and activities each quarter to help them hit their goals. 

AE requests —> Partner Sales Manager <— Partner Manager requests 

“You can’t ask AEs to remember everything about an account and everything about a partner. You need to remove that barrier if you want them to co-sell,” says Wilson.

When Wilson transitioned into the Partner Sales Manager role, she needed to understand which partners her AEs liked working with, which regions they needed to target, and which target accounts they were trying to break into. In collaboration with Fivetran’s marketing team, Wilson surveyed her AEs each quarter. The survey included questions like: 

• What kind of field events would you like to see happen next quarter? 
• What cities do you want to be placed in to break into specific target accounts?
• Which partners would you like to work with? 

If an AE said they wanted to build brand awareness in a particular region, Wilson would collaborate with the marketing team to organize a field event in that region.

When planning the event, she would ask the AE which partners they preferred to work with, and she would check Crossbeam and Salesforce (using Crossbeam’s Salesforce App) to identify which partners overlap with the AE's target accounts in the region. To choose the right partner, she would look for the following:

• A partner whose target accounts or customers overlap with the AE’s target accounts
• A partner who the AE already has a good working relationship with (think: They’ve closed deals together) 
• Or a partner that has shown success working with another AE on similar deals

An example: Wilson collaborated with the marketing team to organize an event in a particular region where an AE had a high number of target accounts. They organized an informal brewery event in a city that was convenient for many of the AE’s target accounts, and they invited a few partners to sponsor the event. Wilson also invited her AE’s preferred partner AE to the event to help promote their joint solution.

The event generated 30 EQLs via signups, with 15 target accounts in attendance. The AE was happy because they were able to have quality, one-to-one conversations with 15 of their target accounts and follow up with 15 others.

Feedback from an internal AE regarding a recent event with a partner: 

In order to prioritize her AEs’ needs, Wilson has had to say, “No”, to some events from partners that aren’t a good fit. However, she says that focusing on the right partner activities for her AEs will be mutually beneficial.

“All of us have the same goals,” says Wilson. “Ultimately, it will be better for the partner, too, because they’re going to have higher engagement [at our joint events].” 

Additionally, Wilson’s AEs are branching out to work with more partners they hadn’t worked with previously. When they hear success stories from their peers, they become interested in working with those partners, too. 

Before: Fivetran's AEs managed key components of tracking and attribution 

Wilson has also taken some of the mechanics of working with partners off of her AEs’ plates. Previously, when an AE initiated a co-selling motion with a partner, they needed to: 

• Mark the opportunity in Salesforce as a “co-sell” and tag the relevant partner 
• Register the deal with the partner

However, each partner had their own deal registration process, making it difficult for AEs to remember the nuances of each. For example: Some partners required filling out a deal registration form, and others required contacting a specific person on the partner side. 

“If [your AEs] have to remember nine different partners and what they do and how you should co-sell with each of them, they’re not going to do it,” says Wilson. “It takes up too much of their time.” 

After: Wilson is now the keeper of partner-related knowledge and ops 

Now, Wilson is the only one who needs to be aware of the nuances around deal registration and other partner-related ops. 

“For [Partner A], I fill out this form. For [Partner B], I go to this person. I remember all of that,” says Wilson.

Wilson also proactively checks in on her AEs’ deals to identify where partners can help. In some cases, the AE has already observed that the partner can help via the Crossbeam Salesforce App and has reached out to the partner directly. If they haven't engaged the partner yet, Wilson will help to initiate next steps and will tag the partner in Salesforce.

Wilson also helps her AEs with list enrichment. For example: Some of Fivetran’s partners’ AEs sell into specific verticals, while Fivetran’s internal AEs sell regionally. When a partner’s AE participates in a co-selling sync with one of Fivetran’s internal AEs, the partner’s AE might send them a list of their open opportunities. It’s possible the open opportunities overlap with multiple AEs from Fivetran's side. 

Fivetran’s AE sends the list of opportunities to Wilson, and Wilson will: 

• Add the list of open opportunities as a custom Population in Crossbeam 
• Generate a Report in Crossbeam revealing which internal AEs are associated with each open opportunity in the list
• Share the intel with each internal AE and ask if they’d like to speak with the partner’s AE 

“They love it,” says Wilson. “All they need to know is, they come to Curry with anything partners.”

Wilson adds that as more of Fivetran's partners have adopted the Crossbeam Salesforce App, it's enabled AEs on both sides to be more proactive. Since her AEs can see a more comprehensive list of partners who can help with their respective opportunities, they're more likely to reach out directly to their partners in real time. 

“It used to be that we would get 10 requests a day in our Slack channel asking ‘Who’s the rep for this?’, and now it’s down to one or two [messages] a day,” says Wilson. 

What People Are Saying

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'Til next time! 

👋 Olivia Ramirez 

Managing Editor

Crossbeam