Growing a business is hard work. It takes time, effort, and money to get a business off the ground and running. There are so many things to think about when it comes to growing a business, from developing a product or service that customers want to buy to advertising in the right places.
Business team meeting to conference, collaboration discussing working analyzing with financial data and marketing business strategy project, presentation and brainstorming to making profit of company.
The co-sell partnership is a great way to help businesses grow and generate revenue. However, if you’re not careful about who you partner with and how it can affect your business, the potential benefits of this type of partnership may be lost. To make sure that your co-sell partnerships are successful for both parties involved, make sure you take these considerations into account before getting started:
- Determine Why You Need A Partner
Do you want to expand your reach? Gain access to new markets? Increase sales? If you can’t answer these questions, you might not need a partner. Too often, businesses enter into partnerships without having a clear goal or objective in mind, which can lead to problems down the road.
Before entering into any partnership, take the time to determine what you hope to gain from the relationship. A co-selling guide can help you better understand the benefits of co-selling partnerships and how to go about finding the right partner. Besides, if you can’t clearly articulate what you’re looking for, it won’t be easy to find a partner that meets your needs.
- Know Their Business Focus
It’s important to consider what your business’s primary focus is. For example, if you’re selling shoes, it’d be ill-advised to partner up with a blog about the latest in phone technology.
It might not hurt to have some complementary products, though. Take a look at a popular eCommerce store that sells clothing called ModCloth, for example. While they don’t sell shoes, they have a wide variety of products that complement their clothing line. With this in mind, they partnered up with GOLF WANG to sell a collection composed of both their products.
So, if you’re trying to get into co-sells and don’t know what the best option would be for your business, it might not hurt to see who could benefit from what you have!
- Get An Attorney
Before getting everything sorted out, it’s crucial to get an attorney who specializes in co-sell partnerships. This way, you’re guaranteed that everything will go smoothly and all parties involved are protected, especially the business owner. You need someone by your side who understands what you’re looking for with this type of agreement and where they can push back if necessary. By getting a good attorney, you’re also protecting yourself from any potential lawsuits that could come up down the road.
- Consider Authority Lifestyle
Another essential thing to consider is the authority lifestyle. This refers to people being more likely to buy from an entity with a reputable or authoritative website, brand name, etc. You should make sure your co-seller has enough of these things before signing up for them as this will increase sales and conversions on both sides.
An excellent way to determine if they have sufficient authority is by looking at their traffic count over the last month. If it’s above 500k, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t be working with them because chances are high that customers who come in through them would also want to purchase products from you due to increased credibility levels.
- Market
It’s also important to consider your marketing and branding strategy before getting into a co-sell partnership. You should take the time to identify which customers you want to target and what messages appeal most strongly to those customers. The last thing you want is for your partner’s buyers to try out your product only to dislike it because they didn’t fit within your buyer persona or their tastes were different than yours.
When choosing a co-sell partner, make sure that the customer base matches up well with each other and both companies’ goals; this way, there’ll be greater success rates in sales conversions. It’s also essential, just like every other business decision, to consider the pros and cons of potential partnerships.
- Identify Goals And Visions
Every business should have goals and visions in place that they want to accomplish. Examples include increasing profits, improving customer satisfaction ratings, engaging more with customers, and others.
Partnerships can help your business reach these goals by providing additional resources for achieving them. However, when choosing a co-sell partnership, make sure it aligns with your company’s vision because if not, it may be counterproductive to what you’re trying to achieve.
Final Thoughts
Getting into a co-sell partnership is an excellent way to increase exposure for your brand. It can also be highly beneficial when you’re looking to generate more income with the products you sell because it allows people who are already customers of yours and others in their network to make additional purchases on your behalf, which results in higher commissions earned by yourself. However, before getting into any agreements like this, mentioned above are some things each business should consider first.
