Top 3 Reasons to Partner for Sales Growth

​No doubt there are many reasons to establish relationships with partners to increase sales.  This discussion isn’t about providing an exhaustive list of dozens of reasons to add partners.  Instead this discussion is about the top reasons to engage partners for increasing sales.  What activities are going to move the bar on sales?  How can you justify the investment in a relationship?  How do you quickly and easily evaluate the value of a partner?

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Here are my top 3 reasons you should consider partnering in order to increase your sales without hurting the bottom line;

1. Scale your business
A good partner removes the resource constraints that come along with scaling your business for increased sales volumes.  Rather than having to invest money into marketing, sales or pre-sales resources, you can grow sales volumes by leveraging your partner resources to minimize your investment costs.
Partners are able to contribute valuable resources, and often do it quickly.  Good partners will be faster than you to hire and train salespeople, technical pre-sales or marketing professionals. 

2. Complement Direct Sales
When evaluating the value of a partner, it’s helpful to view them as an extension of your direct sales efforts.  To ensure a partner adds value, align and support these partners as you would your direct sales team.  While channel conflict isn’t always possible to avoid, planning ahead with activities (such as deal registration) will help to minimize the impact on your direct sales team as well as your partner.
In addition, the partner relationship will require you to implement a sales discipline that may not yet exist within your direct sales team.  For example, if you need to train your partner sales team on your product set, this new relationship may force you to create this training program for internal use as well.  Therefore, your direct sales team will benefit from the added quality of the partner support efforts.

3. Market Coverage
Market Coverage may be a term you don’t hear too often.  It refers to the number of active sellers that sell your products or services in a given market.  Partners have an important role to play by being in a great position to improve your market coverage.
Your direct sales team is good.  But there are limits to what they can do. You may looking to enter a new market or strengthen your presence in a market that is already doing well. Can your direct sales team reach all of the markets that you want to target?  How quickly can you add new sales talent?  A good partner will come with established relationships, well-trained salespeople, as well as market knowledge for key markets.
 
Partners can provide many valuable contributions to your sales efforts.  Make sure to consider how the partner will scale your business, complement your direct sales, and increase market coverage before deciding which partner is the right one for your business.