Who can define co-sell?

Co-sell has been everywhere recently, but the more I read, the more I realize the industry doesn’t have one unifying definition.

We’ll address this more in the future, but to get the conversation started, here are a few definitions from industry experts:

Erin Figer stated in Kristine Stewart’s Guide to Relationship Selling,

“To me, co-sell is four things. It’s how are you co-selling within your brand, how are you co-selling with your field sellers, how are you co-selling in the marketplace and how are you co-selling with your channel partners? It’s all relationship selling we now call co-sell - relationship selling at scale in a programmatic way.”

Chip Rodgers shared,

“Co-selling is when two partners have complementary solutions or services and work together to close business together. The difference between co-selling and reselling is that with co-selling, each partner has their own deal to close, but they complement each other for a "whole solution" for the customer. Co-selling often also includes 3 or 4 partners working together (i.e., SAP, Accenture, and Google Cloud or Oracle, DocuSign, Wipro, and AWS) rather than just 2 partners working together.

Alex Buckles explained to me,

“It’s when two partners come together to sell jointly.”

I asked Jessie Shipman, and she responded,

“Co-selling is when two reps from different companies work together on a joint solution to solve a mutual customer’s problem.”

It seems like the underlying unifier is two reps/companies selling as one.

What’s your definition of co-sell? Reply, we’d love to hear it.

Salespeople are not partner people

Alex Buckles (a friend of nearbound.com) came into partnerships from sales.

I asked him, "how can partner pros facilitate partner-centric selling in their organization?"

He explained,

At the end of the day, the only thing a sales person cares about is hitting their number.

The way you talk to other partner people is not how you talk to sellers.

Sellers want results, not talk. You’ve gotta show them what partnerships can do.

Find a champion seller (someone everyone in the sales team looks up to) and pair them with a partner you’ve already had success with.

Facilitate that co-sell motion and make sure all parties are successful.

He ended our conversation with a warning:

Be sure to do it right the first time. If it doesn’t go well, you might have a tough time getting another shot.

p.s. If you want extra help making sure you get that co-sell win, Alex and Mark Brigman created a course over on Partnernomics to help you ace the step-by-step. It’s a good one! Check it out!

The State of Co-Selling

Workspan and Partnership leaders put out a State of Co-Selling Report.

Here’s a really fascinating statistic about annual revenue companies are attributing to co-selling with hyperscalers:

Stuff you don’t want to miss!

• September 13, 2 PM EST — Successful Tactics for Product Partnerships —Join Patrick Hu, Head of Product Partnerships at Amazon (New Initiative) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) as they tackle what it means to develop successful product partnerships today. Register here.
• Apply by September 22nd for Firneo’s Certified 8-WeekCohort — Learn the frameworks and tactics to excel in every facet of your partnerships role. Apply here.
• September 28, 12 PM EST - Game Changers: Isaac Morehouse — Isaac will join Oana Manolache to talk about how to use content creation to define a category. He’ll share the 3 elements to help you build brand awareness, drive pipeline, and unite your team. Register here.

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