How do you get buy-in and attention from your partner sales force in order to even enable them?

Build joint customer stories and clearly showcase the value you + partner deliver.

It might seem basic, but the way we've found to get buy-in and attention from the partner's sales team is by

1) Driving joint wins (this is typically done in partnership with the BD team)

2) Documenting those wins in the form of case studies or customer webinars where you highlight the joint solution and how it unlocked business impact for the customer

3) Providing enablement via one-pagers or lunch and learns on how the partnership will help the team reach their goals faster (does your solution help speed up the sales cycle? remove friction from the buying process? provide a fix for a product gap? increase deal size? etc) 

In order to get the best attention from the sales teams, it is important to create a plan in conjunction with them. Early buy-in drives engagement through the process. Also, as with any product marketing engagement with sales, it is an ongoing collaboration and discussion to apply the best learnings and keep the feedback loop going.

Sales will always welcome your support when you can clearly demonstrate that you are helping them drive more sales. Map out how your partnership initiatives will help deals directly or indirectly. How will you help them hit their numbers faster? Get buy-in from sales leadership, and then enable the sales team with any materials and training they need to take the next step. Make their job easy and rewarding, and they'll do it with you. One approach that always helps is to pick 1 salesperson who others look up to on the team to be your ally. Let them speak for you on how you are helping her drive results. The rest will fall in place quickly.

Its critical to get buy-in and attention from your sales organization and the partner sales organization.

Partners should be part of the solution, and therefore, an integrated effort as part of the sales motion at your company. Educating the sales team with the necessary training on how to use and collateral is key, inclusive of user stories, as well as who the target customer is, what the partnership is, why its better together (joint partner message), and key benefits. Incentives and/or leadership prioritization will support further buy-in and attention from sales. I find it helpful to have strong relationships with a few sales colleagues to get input early on for what will matter most to them for building out enablement materials.

As part of building out the GTM plan with the partner, sales enablement would be a component with the partner marketer. Its always best to inquire with what they need, and what works best for enabling their sales team, and deliver accordingly.