Less is more in successful sales (what? how?)

Today’s sales teams are facing a special challenge: Quotas continue to rise to ensure company growth, but traditional sales plays aren’t working as well as they used to.

One persistent problem: leads.

In Crossbeam and Pavilion’s 2023 Future of Revenue report, the number-one reason cited by GTM leaders for missing targets was struggling to get high-quality leads. Technology has enabled teams to collect high volumes of leads, but if those leads aren’t potential buyers, they have little value. Still, how can you meet ever-larger revenue quotas if you don’t expand the pool of possible opportunities?

This is where Ecosystem-Led Growth comes in. GTM teams that work with their partners to source and support deals have found that ELG deals:

Close 31% faster
Are 49% more likely to close
Lead to 48% higher ACVs

And 87% of GTM leaders say that leads obtained through their partner ecosystems are of a higher quality than those from other lead sources.

What this means: Instead of struggling to search for more and more opportunities to meet ever-higher revenue goals, sales teams that pursue ELG strategies can drive more revenue with fewer opportunities, meaning more cost-efficiency and fewer dead ends.

3 tips to master co-selling with partners

Revenue tech platforms Gong and Chili Piper have an enviable tech partnership. Both tools optimize customer interactions to generate and accelerate sales pipeline, but in very complementary ways — Gong through revenue intelligence, Chili Piper through automated meeting scheduling and handoffs.

Their integration Chili Piper for Gong Engage is designed to help sales teams close deals faster. The integration gives sales teams more momentum because it enables immediate meeting scheduling right within a customer interaction. It even lets users schedule on behalf of others and get round robin functionality.

*Chili Piper for Gong Engage’s Instant Booker.*

The customer response to this new workflow has been so positive that Gong and Chili Piper’s own sales teams are finding big success by co-selling to shared prospects.

Here’s how they’re doing it:

1. Focus on your mutual customers’ experience

“We work well together because we have the same goals in terms of supporting workflows, making it easier for our customers, helping them save time, and ensuring that deals keep moving forward efficiently,” says Matt Schroyer, Director of Partner Marketing at Gong. “Chili Piper provides a critical scheduling and routing element of that.”

If you think about the overall customer experience above all else, the message to customers and prospects about the benefits of having both solutions becomes much clearer.

2. Seize the power of co-selling to simplify both the sales process and the buyer journey

“We’ve been getting incredible feedback from our customers and prospects when we tell them about the new integration, like ‘oh my god that’s so great, and such a natural fit,’” says Alexis Petrichos, Director, Strategic Partnerships & Ecosystem Marketing at Chili Piper.

“I think the best way we can serve these customers is by integrating our two solutions, but also by making the selling process easier for our teams and the buying process easier for the customer.”

“Together, Gong and Chili Piper are able to deliver an integrated solution with a streamlined buying cycle,” says Schroyer.

“Scheduling is a key part of creating and converting pipeline, so leaning into our partnership during the sales process has helped us to create raving fan customers in a competitive space.”

3. Stay on top of ongoing opportunities

As part of their success in Ecosystem-Led Growth, Gong and Chili Piper use Crossbeam to identify and pursue any co-selling opportunity.

Crossbeam Account Mapping identifies the accounts where both partners’ prospects, open opportunities, and customers overlap — and Sales teams can see this information right in their Salesforce instance with Crossbeam’s Salesforce Widget.

This means that Gong and Chili Piper can connect and make a plan to co-sell to each other’s customers or shared opportunities by pitching together and highlighting the benefits of the integration and using both tools.

image1-2 — *Account mapping in Crossbeam*

Schroyer says that account mapping with Chili Piper in Crossbeam is one of the most valuable ways they approach segmenting audiences and refining messaging for co-marketing and co-selling at Gong.

“Knowing that we have these joint prospects and customers with Chili Piper helps us work together to learn about each opportunity and target those with the most engagement.”

UPCOMING EVENTS

Nearbound Podcast THE LIVE FINALE

Join Isaac Morehouse, Jared Fuller, Bob Moore, and Simon Bouchez TOMORROW, Friday, June 19 at 7am (your local time) as they discuss the future of B2B, the partnerships industry, and the crazy history between PartnerHacker, Crossbeam, Reveal, Nearbound.com, and the destiny of Ecosystem-Led Growth.

Join the LIVE podcast here.

Stuff you don't want to miss!

TODAY — Extend HubSpot with G2 and 6sense: How B2B SaaS Companies Can Leverage Account Based Strategies to Win—Tiphaine Amblard (HubSpot), Rachel Gianfredi (G2), Stephen Lackey (SmartBug Media), Jeff Wagner (6sense), and Jonathan Burg (New Breed) how you can better leverage the G2 and 6sense integrations to optimize your ABM strategy. Register here.
July 31st — Partner Sourced Summit ’24: Bob Moore (Crossbeam), Justin Zimmerman (PartnerWebinar), Rob Rebholz (Superglue), Greg Portnoy (Eulerapp), Cody Sunkel (PartnerFleet), Asher Mathew (Partnership Leaders), Katie Landaal (ZoomInfo), Lizzie Chapman (Nextroll), Alexis Bonavota (G2), and many more, will share tactical ways they use to drive partner-sourced revenue. Register here.