Integrating Co-Selling into Your Sales Motion. Podcast with Autum Grimm

Sell Like A Leader – Episode 6

In this episode, we dive into:

– Embracing co-selling: partner leveraging benefits, shifting away from the “Lone Ranger” mindset, the role of data and what types of data sales leaders should prioritize for successful co-selling, and how co-selling benefits not just lead generation but also strengthens existing client partnerships.

– Co-selling teams: the need for robust training and change management, how to foster a sales culture that thrives on collaboration and inclusivity, designing compensation structures to incentivize both sales professionals and partners, establishing the appropriate protocol for your co-sell program, pitfalls of not having a clear execution strategy, and measuring co-selling outcomes using KPIs.

– Rapid Fire Q&A

About Autum Grimm

In this episode, David Kreiger chats with Autum Grimm, the CRO and co-founder of PartnerTap, where she empowers channel and sales leaders to maximize revenue alongside their partners. Autum is an active member of the Latinx tech community, passionately supporting diverse founders and advocating for gender and racial equity at all levels. In her personal time, she extends her impact by championing organizations dedicated to serving youth in Clark County.

Podcast Key Takeaways

• Moving from the “Lone Ranger” approach to a team-focused strategy not only increases revenue but also enhances the overall selling process.

• Effective co-selling relies on leveraging data to identify and pursue shared opportunities, ensuring a data-driven, synergistic approach to partner relationships.

• The days of long-term partnership maturation are behind us. Companies now demand expedient results, making it crucial to implement structured co-selling strategies with clear KPIs.

Connects

Connect with Autum Grimm: https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumgrimm/

Connect with David Kreiger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger

Subscribe to the podcast and follow the Podcast LinkedIn page so you don’t miss any episodes!

Transcript

David: Hello, and welcome back to the Sell Like a Leader podcast. We are a podcast for revenue leaders who are looking to cultivate high-performing sales teams within their organization. I am your host, David Kreiger, founder of SalesRoads, America's most trusted sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm.

And today, I am really excited to bring you another fantastic sales leader, Autum Grimm. Autum is the CRO and co-founder of PartnerTap. And she is an expert in empowering channel and sales leaders to maximize revenue by leveraging partners. She is an active member of the Latinx tech community, passionately supporting diverse founders and advocating for gender and racial equality at all levels.

And in her personal time, she focuses on working with organizations dedicated to [00:01:00] serving youth in Clark County. So, Autum, thank you so much for joining us today.

Autum: Thanks for having me, Dave.

David: Let's jump into it. So sales, I think, is changing or evolving, there's lots of ways to approach selling and, from the background, from the things that I've been reading, and the company that you're running, you look at co-selling as the new way for sales going into the future.

And so, could you start, for some of our listeners who maybe aren't completely familiar with co-selling, can you give us a definition of co-selling and maybe just an example of how that works for sales teams?

Autum: Yeah. So eight years ago, I founded PartnerTap because I sold with partners, and I knew that if I could make it easier for sales professionals to sell with the partners that they worked with day in and day out, that they would make more money and they would make it to more President's Club trips. 

At PartnerTap, we define co-sell as activating the connection point [00:02:00] between sales professionals so that they can work across organizations to source, influence, or activate, or accelerate a sales process.

David: That's great. Diving into that a little bit more, I think people are familiar with having partners who resell, right? They have people reselling their products, which is a way that I think sales has happened for a long time.

And people still have partners like that — can you break down how this process is different? What is co-selling and what does the motion look like when you are doing a co-sell?

Autum: Right? Co-selling is selling together with a partner, right? Reselling is you're selling a product. But let me be a little more specific. The old playbooks that we created 10, 20 years ago — they just don't work anymore. And sales transformation is really a top priority for companies in 2024.

Companies are [00:03:00] changing the way that they buy products, and the sales processes are becoming exponentially more complex. And so the modern sales playbook really has to have an element of engaging with a partner and the companies that your buyers are trying to buy from. 

So that if there is any influence that's happening behind the scenes, you're ahead of that and you're controlling and driving that influence versus being a victim to it.

David: Yeah, that's interesting. And I think we're seeing a lot — and you see it throughout sales — but we're seeing it a lot now, especially as companies, I think, are investing. 

You know, the economy is growing in many ways, or at least in several sectors, but unlike the golden years of '21 and '22, when money was cheap and people were just throwing it at lots of different products, people in companies, I think rightly so, are scrutinizing deals a lot more. So I hear a lot from salespeople. 

They [00:04:00] feel like they've got a deal. They feel things are going well, but then it gets killed from a different aspect — somebody that they didn’t even meet with.

So, how does this fit into that whole process of trying to both multi-thread in an organization and be able to stay in front of a sale and get really deep within an organization?

Autum: I think that, again, it goes back to influence, right? Being in front of the right person to have the conversation. There’s just certain things that I think selling alone, you're not going to get ahead of time. You're probably not going to know if they have a buying history of a certain sort.

You're not going to know if an organization has a specific cyclical structure unless you go in and you ask for yourself. The quickest way to get through this information and get this information is to go to your partner who's already sold goods and services to the organization directly.

Getting deeper into the [00:05:00] organization, right? You can certainly research all day long. But if you don't align with a partner, there's just certain things you're not going to get in a deal, right? And your deals aren't going to go as fast because it's going to take longer to go understand the lay of the land.

And then secondly, you're not going to know if this company has an aversion to specific pricing structures — you may struggle with how you get the most value for your potential sale, for your customer. And then, also, it's got a lot to do with driving the value that the customer perceives.

So if you're over here selling a certain way and it's not to the buying preference of your customer, you're not going to be doing a very good job. You're not going to be creating a memorable and enjoyable experience for your customer. So, you know, co-selling has many benefits.

David: I do think it would be helpful for our audience to understand how this is facilitated.

How does PartnerTap facilitate these types of complex [00:06:00] information sharing — understanding who you should be co-selling with, how to co-sell with them. And so if you could give us the rundown just for the mechanism of how people pull this off, because it's not so easy, because you don’t necessarily know the people you’re supposed to be speaking with, who you should be co-selling with, and how to do.

Autum: When you talk about an organization, let's keep it really broad, right? I'm guessing you have a pretty diverse audience. So when you think about what an organization has to go through to embrace co-sell— however they worked, whether the direct sales team is the quarterback and the partner organization, or the reselling organization operates as more of a quarterback, an overlay, that's a full-on transformation, right? 

So an organization that wants to operate more in a co-sell motion, they're going to have to invest in training, enablement. It's super critical for a co-sell program to be successful that they really articulate the why. So the value that the sales team and the partners are going to take away. [00:07:00] 

And a big part of that is constant training, constant investment, constant going back in — investing in change management as the relationship is evolving to drive adoption. And, I think about different ways that companies do this.

Lumen is one of our customers, and Lumen put PartnerTap in place, and then they had to train their partners how to use it. And so they actually did a bunch of webinars. So they would launch webinar programs and series of info — information-driven webinars and education series about why they were picking this new path and what they were changing, and what they were modifying.

And a lot of our customers will also take the opportunity at conferences to develop and disseminate the strategy, right, around CoSell. A lot of this is — it's not a sneak attack. Companies need to know what's about to happen before they get to the dance. So you have to really, like, establish the appropriate [00:08:00] protocol for your co-sell program to be successful.

So members of the Tolaris community, which is a TSD, wore t-shirts at the last Channel Partners event that said, "Ask me about PartnerTap." That helped them drive adoption for their co-selling program. And I think that’s what you’re asking me — is like, how does a company execute and adopt a co-selling program?

And I think it’s unique to every person. So, how a person adopts and leverages our platform is going to be different every time you go through it, because everybody’s CoSell program is a unique version of their go-to-market in their organization.

David: That’s interesting. And so, with the training, do your partners — or do you recommend that this is something that you reserve for certain AEs, and they are the co-selling AEs, and are they the best AEs? Or do you feel like everyone on the team has an opportunity to co-sell? So, how do you delegate co-selling at an
organization?

Autum: Yeah, it's [00:09:00] interesting. So I think for organizations to be successful, I don't think. Delegating is, um, like when you think about successful sales organizations that maybe you and I have been a part of in the past, there was this character called the Lone Ranger.

The person that did everything all by themselves. I think the first step in embracing a successful environment where CoSell is heavily adopted is the Lone Ranger isn't the celebrated element. So the Lone Ranger isn't the guy that, or gal, that gets all the accolades anymore. The people that are truly celebrated are the people that really get how to co-sell.

And one thing that I recall from being on the sales floor is that the people that learned early how to work with partners those were the ones that had the most success. So those were the people that had deals that closed for more money. The big deals that happened, there was always a partner hanging on to that thing, supporting it at every angle, helping it to get through the process.

And [00:10:00] you know, the deals were always so dramatic when people talked about them. But I think aligning your compensation structure is super important, so that it is A. And you need to create value to your partner and your seller to work with a partner. So you've got to create the right and cultivate the right petri dish where co-sell is successful.

And like I said, the first thing to address is your culture, right? Is your compensation structure right? And, by all means, even if you're not going to incentivize through compensation, if at least you're going to make comp be neutral, that is the first step. 

And I got to tell you, we've got some great partners — JSG Group and Spur Reply, AchieveUnite — like some of these organizations are like fantastic at helping companies assess and decide if they've built the right culture and compensation structure to enable a successful partner ecosystem. 

So as far as delegating CoSell, I'm less about forcing something, but I'm [00:11:00] more about creating a place where things naturally open up and grow?

David: There's a lot to unpack there. So first, I love the fact you're talking about the Lone Ranger not necessarily being the top dog, because I think in sales, a lot of times that is the perspective, but. But I think when you peel back the onion a little bit, you realize that's usually not necessarily the best person to have on your team.

I always have said that sales can be an individual sport, but at its best, it is a team sport. And it's that individual who likes to work with others, knows how to build networks, knows how to help each other over the long term. 

And maybe in the short term, they might close more in a given month, but over the long term, those people who really know how to build those types of relationships then have much more leverage to be able to have a network that's going to help them sell and help them to bring deals to fruition.

And so I do think it is interesting to look at CoSelling from a [00:12:00] cultural standpoint, because if you don't have the right culture, you might not be as successful with it. But with the right culture, it can just ignite what you're doing. I think that's awesome. 

And then I also think it is interesting looking, you know, at comp. At the end of the day, salespeople do want to be comped accordingly.

I love that you guys have partners to help people figure it out because if you just look at it singularly and you try to maybe have a salesperson make less money or whatnot through co-selling, you can cut your nose to spite your face because you're not creating the right type of incentives for them to really be able to benefit from this and therefore embrace it.

So there are a lot of aspects to CoSelling as people get into it that they do need to take into account that maybe they didn't realize when they're just thinking about it. You touched a little bit about it, and I don't know if we can dive into it a little bit. It's interesting that as you set up a CoSelling program, training is [00:13:00] important.

And so setting up some of the webinars — are there any key principles or things that you think are important that should be part of the training to make sure that you are setting things up for success in a CoSelling
environment?

Autum: Yeah. Whatever makes that partner successful, that's going to be the cornerstone of what you focus your team around. So I think not having a siloed approach with the partner is important. If you think that one shoe, one size fits all, I think you know that's what we're seeing is the big problem right now — organizations have grown into co-sell.

So what they've done is they've created this environment where we get together at a conference and we exchange a list, or we have a cocktail and we talk about a few pockets of customers that we both might be interested in. 

And what it really creates is this random act of co-sell where [00:14:00] you don't have a consistent strategy across your organization, but what you have is pockets of success.

So in a way, that Lone Ranger approach — when things are left alone completely without any direction — sometimes it can be a little bit built upon what works for the one person versus the strategy of the organization. Defining the strategy for how partners will help sell more business that's super important.

And that's the cornerstone, really.

Like, I'm like, okay, I can go sell these three products through this partner. We golf together. We like each other. So everything I have is going to go through this partner. There's things like that happening, and that's not scalable.

David: Yeah, that makes complete sense. And so if I'm a sales leader and I have been hearing about co-selling, I'm looking for more ways for my team to be able to break into new accounts, but not just break into new accounts. 

Like you said, really have a [00:15:00] partner who's going to help you navigate, understand reasons why they've bought in the past, and really get all the benefits that they can get from a good CoSelling program.

What are some of the tips or initial steps? 

And it can be, we've touched on a lot of things already. It can be repeating some of them, but if you were advising a sales leader who's starting a co-selling program, what would be the order of operations and things that you would recommend that they do to co-sell?

Autum: Get PartnerTap.

David: Well? Of course.

Autum: And hire you to help with some activities. I would use PartnerTap, and then I would take the list and I would hire your company to go set appointments. How about that? Co-selling is a massive opportunity. And depending upon the type of partner, the next steps really vary, right?

Every organization that sets a partner has an intention for that partnership, so the first step is getting data to understand [00:16:00] what real potential is available for me with this partner. I think the big, tragic misstep that a lot of organizations make is they sign these agreements and these partners and they create these incredible plans, but then they don't really have the execution strategy around getting to the revenue.

And so the random act of co-sell gets involved, and then they're not able to truly link. So I would be very remiss if I didn't say to gather data and look at the data, and constantly perfect your strategy with your partner.

Data-driven strategies are the only way to have truly measurable, successful results, right? So take a look at your KPIs. Are you actually sourcing and influencing revenue? Is it just pipeline? Is it revenue? What's really happening? 

Partners are, in fact, signed up and ready to go, like having a tool like PartnerTap is important. It will help you [00:17:00] actually measure and track your KPIs. I think a company that doesn't have their eyes on the revenue side of the house right now, and they're building partners, it's going to be a very long and exhausting cycle for them each quarter when they have to go to the business and ask for more money.

And they don't have the KPIs in place to back up why they're asking for money. Normally, it used to be that, oh, partnerships take a long time. Yeah. You've got to build a relationship. You got to meet with them. 

You really got to get to know them. But unfortunately, the day and age that we're in now, that cycle to success has been shrunk like a shrimp.

So you don't have the lengthy time to be in a business role, even in partnerships, for several years to go, okay, well, I signed this. It's going to be successful in two to three years. Now the C-suite is going, show me the money. I want to see double-digit growth. I want to see the revenue become 90 percent of what we source, 90 percent through the channel or partnerships, like ungodly goals that are being [00:18:00] imposed upon people.

And so, you know, I think back to one of our customers, LastPass. They were able to bring in PartnerTap and identify 15,500 new logo accounts for just one of their NSPs. And it grew revenue 4x in their first year with PartnerTap. And then the person that ran that program, she was actually invited to President's Club for their top marquee NSP.

And so you don't get results like that without a tool. You don't get success of that magnitude with a partner if you just keep plugging away and doing the same thing every time, which is again, back to that old sales playbook. So it's super important that you try new things. And if you don't know what to do, again, I go back to asking JSG Group, Spur Reply, AchieveUnite.

These partners really know how to build the strategy for you to execute. And what steps should occur in what order for your business?

David: Looking at a tangible [00:19:00] example can really help crystallize that. So they obviously had some MSPs that were good clients, were good partners. How do they identify that many that are of interest to them? 

Are they looking at leads in their CRM? Are they defining their ICP, and then PartnerTap is saying this MSP is already working with this company? How does it work best? Is it more broadly defined, or is it an actual match?

Autum: What I will tell you is think about it in more of a broad, a broad stroke. A company has a universe of data. If I'm letting my sales rep and another sales rep account map on two lists, I'm only pinpointing a very small segment of their view of the universe.

Where if I'm able to take data sets from an entire partner, and I'm taking my data set and I'm bringing those data sets together in the universe that we both exist in from a global perspective, and we're [00:20:00] narrowing the playing field down to exactly what the two of us think are the most important accounts to focus on, that's going to get a way bigger result pool.

And so it's an element of looking at the right datasets in the right scope, and then activating those professionals around those accounts to go drive actual pipeline and tracking it, and looking at the pipeline and going, what actually turned into pipeline?

And how can we measure that? Can we measure that success in the terms of closed deals or just potential pipeline, and how fast will that pipeline grow in relation to some of the other pipeline avenues that we get?

David: What's also really interesting about co-selling is that when you look at it from a quarterback standpoint to the partner standpoint, one might think that it's just benefiting the company that's looking to sell new deals into another company's book of business. 

But really, when [00:21:00] this is done well, and you're defining different prospects by the needs that they might have, how their partner can help solve those needs, you're reinforcing your relationship with your existing client by helping them to see that there are some other products that can help them.

And so it is a symbiotic relationship where maybe there's some financial flow-throughs, but even without that, when you are helping your clients find new products, find new things that are going to help solve the issues that they're having, and your team understands that you've got this partner that can help do it, you're making those relationships even stronger, even if you already had that relationship to begin with.

Autum: Exactly. That's right. You're putting the best argument for co-sell. It's so much more fun to win as a team.

David: And that's a great place to end here on the co-selling. And we'll go into our last part of Sell Like a Leader, where we like to ask some rapid-fire questions of our guests. And so we move fast here. [00:22:00] As I ask these questions, if you can, just answer with the first thing that comes into your head, and we're just gonna go through them pretty quickly.

Are you ready?

Autum: Yes.

David: Awesome, Autum. All right. So, what is one thing people don't give enough value or attention to in leadership?

Autum: Comfort with the ambiguity. I think it's something that people need to feel okay with, constant change. Amazon just announced that they're going to be laying off 200 salespeople in the near future. I literally just saw that in my inbox when I hopped in here. And every company, whether it's big or small, is going through major change.

And I think in leadership, if you're okay with ambiguity and what we used to call white noise back in the day, you're going to make it because your team looks to you to be able to show them the path going forward.

David: That's a great mindset. What is one skill you advise everyone in sales to master?

Autum: Listen.

David: What? No, just—

Autum: Listen. Yeah, that's right. Listen.

David: It's so [00:23:00] powerful. Favorite business, leadership, or sales book?

Autum: Emotional Intelligence.

David: I believe so much in emotional intelligence, but I don't know that book, so I'm going to check—

Autum: It's by Daniel Goleman. It's a good book. It talks about the different versions of emotional IQ and how to get them. I think the other part of that, too, is not just emotional intelligence, but when you have people on your team that lack a certain element, you can teach it.

I hate these ideas that people are endowed with certain godly traits that can't be achieved by others. To me, that sounds ridiculous. Emotional intelligence is literally a learned practice that can be taught.

David: Yeah, as long as you're the type of person that wants to learn and is open, then you can change anything in your life. Favorite quote, mantra, or saying that inspires you as a sales leader?

Autum: Everyone has talent. What's important is following the talent into the dark places that it leads you. Always been my mantra since my first sales job at ADP.

David: I'm going to ponder that one. That's one of [00:24:00] the deeper mantras I've gotten on the program. That's great. What is the most important goal or project that you're working on right now?

Autum: I'm transforming the way that the world sells.

David: Well, this is awesome. I have no doubt you are transforming the way the world sells in a better way. Co-selling, having a group sales party, helping one another out. There's nothing better than that, both for salespeople but also for prospects.

Because for us to have to always relearn the way a buyer or a company is wanting to buy products, it just makes for a better buyer experience. 

And so, co-selling is just a fascinating topic. I think for all organizations to explore, think about ways that they can implement it. I think you are very honest in some of the things that really people have to understand, think about in order to do it well, thinking about culture in co-selling. 

I didn't realize that was going to come up, and the training that's involved, the strategy. But it really is an amazing and effective go-to-market strategy. So [00:25:00] thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on this today.

I know I learned a lot. If people have other questions for you, Autum, or want to connect, what's the best way to do that?

Autum: I'm on LinkedIn. That's always the best way to reach out to me. And anyone can reach out. Just Autum without the "n" Grimm like politics. You'll find me on LinkedIn.

David: All right. On that note, thank you all for listening to the Sell Like a Leader podcast. I hope you got some great nuggets here that you can take back to your organization, to your team about ways to think about go-to-market and sell in a new and effective way.

If you like what you heard here and it's helpful, please subscribe to the Sell Like a Leader podcast on the platform of your choice. And also, you can always reach out to me. I'm also on LinkedIn, David Kreiger. Please reach out with any questions, feedback you have, things you'd like to see on the show. And with that, we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks again, Autum.