Partnership Sales: Stalled Deals & New Lead Generation
Whether you’re generating new leads or trying to reset a stalled deal for your Partnership Strategy, here are three key principles and a specific script you can use to get to the next step.
1.Partnership are Sales Opportunities.
– Build a pipeline
– Manage each deal as you would a sale.
2. Analyze the Partner’s Situation:
– What problem do they have?
– Who are the key buyers & decision-makers?
– Why would they “buy” from you – what’s the ROI for the potential partner?
– How will you implement? How can you get started with a pilot or with 1-2 case examples to make sure the partnership can work?
3. Sell the Next Step
– Early conversations typically lead to early enthusiasm. Everyone thinks ahead to how wonderful the partnership could be and how it would benefit both sides.
– Then the enthusiasm wanes, so we need to warm them up again.
– While the first conversation was thinking big picture and long term, let’s bring it back to the next step to get there.
– Here’s an email/call script you can use:
“Hi [INSERT NAME} – We spoke at the XYZ Conference.
“Since then, we’ve been working with a couple of companies just like you to build out our partnership strategies. It looks like we’ll be able to [INSERT YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION; ie. generate $__ in revenue / increase customer retention by __%].
I have a couple of ideas about how that might apply to partnering with you. When might we find 10-15 minutes to run these by you?”
Post any questions you have on this here, or if you need help applying this to your specific company and situation.