3 Ways to Change Your Selling Point of View

“Building a foundation solidified on trust and mutual commitment ensures successful partner/vendor relationships.”

Getting your organization to shift to a partner-centric management mindset will require a change in the way you train your team to interact with partners. Pay special attention to those on the front line like channel account managers. You will have to train (or retrain), CAMs how to engage with your partners and the best ways to practice partner-centric management.

Challenger selling is a thing of the past, we are no longer asking our customers to challenge the norm. Collaboration is the future. When selling aligns with your partner-centric management philosophy, your partner programs are bound to succeed.

Below are a few factors to consider when shifting your teams to partner-centric management:

1. Shift the Power to the End-User

This means buying decisions are now directed by the consumer. Everything from measured business outcomes to vendor loyalty is all stemming from consumer requirements. Collaborating with your partners and consumers gives you the competitive edge you need.

2. Look for a Broader Set of Skills

Technical skills and marketing are not as common at the partner level, which means your partners don’t have the infrastructure, skills, and knowledge to fully support the end-users. This puts an even larger emphasis on collaboration. Servicing your consumers properly means your partners will rely on you for some of these resources. This collaborative element will drive the relationship forward and upwards to a much more entangled, strategic level.

3. Build More Successful Relationships

Building a foundation solidified on trust and mutual commitment ensures successful partner/vendor relationships. Once you sharpen your skillsets and commit to working in unison, you will undoubtedly build strong long-lasting relationships within your own team and that will transfer to your partner/vendor relationships.

ISO recently released a new standard model for collaborative business relationships: ISO 44001. From that model, and from our research, we determined that collaborative selling – where trust is at the core of a mutually beneficial relationship, is the way forward. Collaboration creates something larger than the sum of the parts and it is what today’s partners require.

This content was originally presented by Jessica Baker, Chief Program Officer at Achieve Unite, as part of a Lightning Round presentation on the “Top 9 Things Channel Chiefs Must Do in 2018 to Transcend the Performance of Their Channel.” To watch the entire presentation featuring a host of top channel strategists, CLICK HERE.