Partnering has become an increasingly important part of the business strategy for many organizations, especially in today's fast-paced and highly competitive market and tough economic times. Collaborating with other businesses, whether they are suppliers, vendors, or customers, can help organizations expand their reach, increase their revenue, and improve their overall competitive advantage within the market.
One of the most effective ways of partnering is through co-selling. Co-selling is a process in which two or more organizations work together to sell each other's products or services to their customers. This can help organizations tap into new markets, increase their customer base, and drive sales.
However, co-selling can be a complex and challenging process, especially for organizations that are new to partnering. That's where the WorkSpan Co-Sell App comes in.
WorkSpan Co-Sell is a secure SaaS solution that helps companies efficiently run and scale their co-sell programs with best practice methodology for co-sell processes and automated opportunity sharing with partners. The App also provides real-time KPI reporting and a single platform for managing repeatable planning-to-execution motions with all co-sell partners.
As a result, companies can scale revenue growth through partnerships while reducing operational costs and improving staff productivity to succeed in today’s challenging macroeconomic environment. Through the digitization and automation of partnership motions and best practice methodology for co-sell processes provided by WorkSpan, companies can increase deal win rates, deal velocity, pipeline, and new customers.
The Starting Problem
Organizations wanting to kick-start or expand their own partner ecosystem often lack the resources and expertise needed to manage partner programs effectively.
Without the right tools and processes in place, companies often struggle to define key metrics and workflows, which can lead to confusion and inefficiencies. This lack of clarity makes it difficult for partner professionals to track and analyze co-selling opportunities, pipeline, and revenue generated through partnerships - all of which are necessary to truly assess if a co-sell partnership is successful.
With defined, simplified packages for co-selling, the WorkSpan Co-Sell App outlines best practices for co-sell processes and workflows and offers templates to help standardize your partner program.
WorkSpan’s expertly designed, in-app, repeatable and scalable processes and templates eliminate the need for companies to experiment with trial and error tactics when growing their programs. Instead, WorkSpan makes it simple for partner teams to roll out new co-sell programs to partners and create a consistent experience. WorkSpan Co-Sell App also helps organizations avoid errors and inefficiencies by providing real-time data on workflow progress to all stakeholders.
Cutting Through the Confusion
Another challenge in co-selling is the difficulty of securely tracking opportunities and progress with partners. Many organizations rely on multiple versions of the truth and disconnected tools such as spreadsheets, slides, documents, forms and emails, which can lead to errors, confusion, and inefficiency. In the end, co-sell program performance becomes a guessing game for all involved.
WorkSpan solves this problem by providing a single application for organizations to manage their co-selling planning, opportunity collaboration, and progression with partners.
The Co-Sell app streamlines connectivity between the organization and their partner’s CRM to enable referral and opportunity sharing across partners from inside their own CRMs, giving organizations complete visibility into co-sell opportunities and eliminating the need for manual data entry and duplicate records.
Need for Speed
Even with partners agreeing to pursue a set of joint opportunities, the progression is at times slow. This happens because there are no real communication and collaboration channels being leveraged for real-time engagement, with partners ending up working in silos.
WorkSpan Co-Sell App revolves around how companies should collaborate and execute co-selling activities with their partners. By leveraging partner plans, reports, and continual automated opportunity updates, the app enables more effective co-selling and brings unprecedented speed to partner co-sell execution. The App allows companies to seamlessly align their goals and strategies with their partners, ensuring a shared vision and coordinated approach.
The app facilitates real-time communication and collaboration, allowing for efficient exchange of information and automated updates to opportunities. This streamlined process eliminates manual effort, reduces delays, and ensures that all parties involved are equipped with the most up-to-date data and insights. As a result, companies can execute co-selling initiatives with precision and agility, accelerating deal velocity and driving increased revenue growth.
The application provides capability to log cadence notes, task assignments, and automated workflows, and can also automatically notify the appropriate team members when key events occur, such as new referrals or updates to the stage of an opportunity.
Overcoming the Data Dilemma
Organizations have for a long time been struggling to get a comprehensive view of their ecosystem’s performance in trying to understand which way their partnership is heading. This is due to the complex nature of partnerships and limited visibility into the co-selling performance in real-time.
With multiple partners, each with their own systems and processes, it becomes challenging to consolidate data and extract meaningful insights. Additionally, partners may not always have access to real-time data, making it difficult to make informed decisions in a timely manner. This lack of visibility and transparency can lead to missed opportunities and ultimately missed for co-sell programs.
WorkSpan Co-Sell app provides partners with real-time sales performance and insights that can help organizations measure their co-sell performance, identify opportunities for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. The key metrics include the following:
- Ecosystem Referrals - Inbound, outbound, accepted and declined referrals.
- Ecosystem Pipeline - Opportunity count and value, sourced by partners, opportunities to close and win, and average deal size.
- Ecosystem Revenue - Win count and revenue, inbound and outbound win rates, average win rate, and revenue sourced by partners.
The application's flexible configurable dashboards, secure data sharing, access, and security policies put organizations in full control of their partnering data - all without needing customizations, coding, or changing existing business rules.
To learn more about how WorkSpan Co-Sell app can help you and your partners quickly set up, simplify, and grow your co-sell business, Schedule a demo today!
Happy partnering!
Nitin Mathur is a marketing maverick with an extensive experience in the tech, telecom, and consumer electronics industry. As Director of Product Marketing at WorkSpan, Nitin is on a mission to revolutionize the way businesses manage their multi-partner ecosystems with WorkSpan's cutting-edge product capabilities. Prior to his stint at WorkSpan, Nitin worked at various marketing positions at some of the biggest names in the industry, including IBM, Motorola, and Philips. He is also a tech enthusiast passionate about harnessing technology's power to solve real-world problems.
