Tag: pipeline

Partnerships that Create PIPELINE

As I wrote about previously (link) we’ve developed a “fully baked” business development strategy for MasterMessaging this year in order to create FAT pipeline and give us more opportunities to tell our story, sell more deals and hit a number that represents an 87.5% revenue growth year over year.

The structure is what we call The 3 Pillars of Pipeline and they are activities that center around the areas:

  • Internal
  • Inbound
  • Outbound

On the Internal side, we started our process by first investing in building deep and meaningful partnerships with a few select companies. This has been a huge win for us over the last couple of years and continues to be a significant source of our yearly revenue.

However, when I mention developing partnerships to colleagues and this being a strategy for increasing revenue, I often get a general look of bewilderment, as if partnerships are rarely if ever considered. In my opinion, not exploring the possibility of value added partnerships is a real mistake and leaves a BUNCH of opportunity on the table over the life of your business.

Common objections to pursuing partnerships are:

  1. A lack of belief that partnerships could actually bring in revenue and could end up being a colossal waste of time/resources if the effort proves to be unsuccessful.
  2. Due to the inherent complexity of partnerships, many don’t know where to start the process and lack the structure to make them a win/win.

I understand that many sales pros have had the experience of someone getting very excited about your company/product/service, promise to make referrals to other companies and then nothing comes from the relationship, which is frustrating. In contrast, a legit partnership agreement is inherently different and built on several important criteria:

  1. Our solution provides incredible value to our partners AND their clients.
  2. It’s built in such a way that results in our company being “top of mind” with partners.
  3. It’s built in such a way that results in a mutually beneficial financial outcome.

Let me speak to each of these criteria using our experience in the last several years of successful partnerships:

VALUE TO OUR PARTNERS AND THEIR CLIENTS

Value is a sometimes mysterious word in the world of sales, but it need not be. I don’t have the space here to expound on the topic, but here is a resource we’ve provided on how to communicate value in the mind of our prospects (and partners) based on breakthroughs in behavioral psychology.

The way that the human brain perceives value is in a contrasting world view. Or: your prospects/partners world WITHOUT your solution vs. your prospects/partners world WITH your solution. Use this simple formula: Contrast = Value.

Value to our Partners AND their Clients was discovered by looking at their world and determining if we can improve it significantly through the application of our solution. We’re a sales consultancy with a focus on developing messaging that makes it easy for prospects to make a decision quickly. We also apply a behavior change framework to make the principles and techniques we teach “sticky” and applicable long after an event based training.

Understanding the value we bring, we asked ourselves a question:

“Who have we worked with or have in our networks that can benefit from our solution either before, during or after a client engagement?”

No value = no chance of partnership, little value = little chance of partnership, BIG value = Real partnership! Using that approach, we quickly identified a handful of companies we’ve worked with in the past or who are in our network and walked through a process I’ll detail in just a moment.

BEING TOP OF MIND WITH PARTNERS

The agreement then has to be structured in a way that we are always top of mind with our partners. The way we did that was to build custom services that are complementary and sometimes directly connected to what our partners are selling and vice versa.

If that sounds complicated, it really isn’t. Sometimes it’s a no brainer. Let me give an example.

We work with a partner that delivers powerful marketing materials to mid-market and fortune 500 organizations and their primary point of entry is through marketing. However, for their solution to achieve maximum value in an organization, it must be adopted and USED by the sales team to increase revenue. Otherwise, the tremendous value that they create could potentially go unrealized.

Our partnership structure is simple: They deliver the messaging and we train the sales team how to deliver it using our behavior change methodology. We created a process and product specific to our partners solution that helps them deliver maximum value to their clients and now every time they deliver their solution, we get introduced to their clients!

Win/Win.

MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT

Obviously, no one in a for-profit business is going to be motivated to sell someone else’s solution without some kind of financial benefit. These financial benefits can come from either a direct monetary compensation structure or an indirect value added benefit.

We have a partnership with a company with a very high priced solution and every prospect is a whale, which makes them rare. Our partnership is simple, if we connect them to a buyer and they close business, we get paid a commission for the introduction, a direct monetary structure.

We’ve had a partnership in which our engagement with partner clients enhances the value of our partners solution. They provide first appointments for their clients and we help their clients craft messaging that converts those first conversations into sales. As a result, they are able to charge their clients more for their solution due to our ability to help their clients realize the full value of what they provide.

Here’s how we identified and engaged past clients and our network to develop these opportunities:

STEP 1:

We scoured our past client list and network to develop a master list of potential partnership opportunities with organizations/individuals that we can measurably impact using the criteria above. If we have something, we move to step 2.

STEP 2:

We met with each one, presenting the value we believe we can create in their business and their client’s businesses. If they are interested and see the possibility, we move to step 3.

STEP 3:

With the information gained from that meeting, we conduct a strategy session to determine a partnership agreement that meets the criteria above. At this point, we’re doing all the work. If they are favorable to the solution we provide, we shake hands or sign agreements.

The result? Increased opportunities to sell our products and services and INCREASED REVENUE.

If you would like to schedule a brief 20 minute Business Development Assessment that will help you increase opportunities to tell your company story with target prospects, email me here.

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MasterMessaging is a sales consultancy that helps our clients increase revenue in predictable, replicable and sustainable ways. All based on applying principles derived from the latest in behavioral psychology. Principles ranging from how individuals perceive value to communicating in a way that overcomes the status quo.

What if you could…

– Shorten the Sales Cycle?

– Sell higher margin deals?

– Drive higher adoption of your product(s) over time?

You can, ONLY by partnering with MasterMessaging.

Ask about our online courses, custom playbooks and interactive learning journey methodology: www.mastermessaging.com Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com

The 3 Pillars of Pipeline

7 months ago I was moved from Product Development to Director of Business Development for our sales consultancy and given a 1 year quota that represents 87.5% year over year revenue growth.

Not one to waste time reinventing the wheel, I began gathering insight from authors and sales leaders like Tony Hughes, Graham Hawkins, Lee Bartlett and John Barrows.

To be honest, I was looking for a silver bullet activity to make an immediate impact on revenue in our organization.

I wondered, “what was the single best activity that I could engage in to get some quick wins and create a big, fat pipeline where it was non-existent?”

Would it be Inbound Marketing? Maybe an Outbound Call Campaign? Or should I just get busy with Social Selling?

The answer… Yes!

What I uncovered in my research is an almost universal agreement that a multi faceted approach is the only way to create Predictable, Replicable and Sustainable revenue growth over the long haul.

I’ve summed up these activities into 3 buckets I call, “The 3 Pillars of Pipeline”.

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Pipeline Pillar #1: INTERNAL

We were able to identify several internal activities that are giving us more opportunities to tell our story with warm leads and referrals from happy clients.

We started here and quickly identified over 100 new opportunities for business.

PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT – Identifying, creating and strengthening partnerships and teaming agreements with colleagues who have complementary product/service offerings to our own.

In this process, we inked a referral agreement that will be very lucrative for one of our partners and increase revenue to our organization as well. This is a true win/win activity, but it’s definitely playing the long game.

PAST CLIENT OUTREACH – Reconnecting with and updating past clients of recent product developments (custom sales playbooks) and additional service offerings (coaching programs) has created an abundance of additional selling opportunities.

1st DEGREE SOCIAL SELLING – My business partner and I both have good Networks. A LinkedIN Navigator search identified dozens of potential prospects from contacts that are most likely to answer and email or phone call.

Also, with turnover being what it is these days it simply means that many of our older contacts are now working for companies that need our services.

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Pipeline Pillar #2: INBOUND

We identified several areas we can quickly and inexpensively improve our ability to create inbound marketing traffic.

This was our second step in the process and with the proper systems and technology in place, is a relatively “set it and forget it” activity only requiring a couple hours a week to manage.

WEBSITE UPDATE – We’re constantly improving our core service offerings and adding new products in response to our client requests, so we should be updating our website to reflect these changes on a regular basis.

Our website will serve as the primary landing page for anyone searching for for services we offer and step 1 in all of our Inbound efforts.

CONTENT MARKETING – We’re sales trainers and have enough compelling science backed content to fill several calendar days that we share during our workshops and coaching sessions.

So why not break off portions of our IP that address and solve problems sales pros have and deliver them in small, easily digestible blog postings and white papers across a variety of social media platforms?

WEBINARS – We’re developing a 45 minute webinar that will address and solve a near universal problem our prospects face, “How to Sell Based on Value”

We’ll market via social media and serve whoever shows up to the webinar with something of real value. After the webinar, we’ll put them into to a cadence that hopefully leads them to become customers.

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Pipeline Pillar #3: OUTBOUND

Of course, a truly well rounded Business Development program would be incomplete without an outbound calling and email campaign to identify and engage LOTS of new prospects, quickly!

We moved this to last because the contacts are COLD.

2nd DEGREE SOCIAL SELLING – We don’t know each other, but we know some of the same people and some of them are willing to make introductions.

With a long history of giving, it hasn’t been that difficult to find contacts willing to make introductions to friends and colleagues on our behalf. But we did have to do the work to identify them and create targeted messaging that makes sense.

COLD CALLING – With the right messaging targeted to your prospect this really doesn’t have to be such a scary thing. We’ve received some great training and built out a system that works for setting up additional opportunities to sell via the phone.

EMAIL MARKETING – There are affordable and incredibly easy to use platforms for email marketing that introduce cadences like Growlabs and Salesloft. Again, the most important part of your email marketing cadence is the MESSAGING.

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All of these activities are crucial to create FAT pipeline with lots of new opportunities, but all the opportunities in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t speak the Language of Decision.

That’s why you need a First Call Playbook or a Sales Conversation Playbook with suggested scripts, from prospecting to proposal that will enable you to engage your prospect in a meaningful conversation that ends in a sale.

Good thing that is what we do for our clients 😉 As a result, we’re going to blow away our revenue goals in 2017… are you??

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QUESTION: What crucial pillars am I missing that are part of YOUR business development program?

If you enjoyed (or even disagree) with this article, please like, comment or share to your network.

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MasterMessaging is a sales consultancy that helps our clients increase revenue on ways that are predictable, replicable and sustainable.

Ask us how we helped an Atlanta software company take their first call conversion rates from 8% – 47% in one quarter utilizing our First Call Playbook.