Kicking off the new year, we want to talk to experts to help answer the question, “how do you drive revenue and how do you accelerate growth in 2019?” For many companies and sales leaders, there is some intersection with Salesforce, whether you’re a CRO using Salesforce or more likely you’re somebody in services or software and trying to figure out how do you partner with Salesforce. Or maybe you’re a sales leader looking to emulate the success of Salesforce.com.
To better understand how to partner with Salesforce, I had the chance to interview three experts on the topic; Alix Douglas, Director of ISV partnerships at Salesforce.com, Kevin Murray, Director of Marketing and Partnerships at Traction On Demand, and Helen Joo, VP of Alliances at Altify. All three are expert in the world of technology partnerships, and all three are seasoned professionals when it comes to building relationships and driving revenue in the Salesforce ecosystem.
While partnering means many things to many different organizations, Murray kicked off the discussion by anchoring the definition of partnership in terms of customer success – a must have for any type of successful partnering. And in the case of Salesforce, this is a critical element for any partnership with Salesforce, which makes trust a central tenant of both their partner program and a core value of Salesforce the company. According to Alix,
“We really approach partnership from the very highest level. How is this going to be a mutually beneficial relationship for both of us with this laser focus on our mutual customers, certainly from a revenue perspective, from an innovation perspective, but then of course, how are we going to better serve those customers?”
The panel also spent time getting into the details of what doesn’t work and why partnerships and partner programs fail to produce the right results. According to the panel, this starts with lack of focus in the early part of the partnership, the inability to bring value to both Salesforce and the customer, to falling victim to the “If we build it, they (the customers) will come”. Successful partnering means you have to own your own success. It also means you need to have a plan to evangelize your partnership and results to the army of Salesforce AEs. According to Joo,
“You’ve got to approach the partner selling and partner education not any differently than the way you look at a prospect. We talk about finding new prospects as you may have to do 10, 20, 30 touches before they turn into a potential lead, and partners are no different”
Ultimately, building a partner and alliance strategy is a long game and it takes investment, strong management and focus to build a successful program. The experts shared their best practices, which you should check here. (www.altify.com/podcast-the-secrets-to-partnering-with-salesforce/)
For more insights on growing predictable revenue, building your revenue team and building sales skills tune in next Thursday for the next episode.