jsyl23

Director, Business Development

For Salesforce AE's

This is for all Salesforce AE's out there...

Other than turning to your colleagues and asking who they've used in the past, how do you find new implementation partners to work with? And what have some of these partners/consultants that you're working with today done to break through the thousands of other options that you have available to you?

Thanks!

👑 Sales Strategy

☁️ Software Tech

👊 Referrals

15 comments

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Possible translation: I am currently, or am considering becoming, a SFDC Partner and I’d like to grow my business. How do I get into your preferred IP list?

Shoot it straight, get the best answers.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

👀🍿

Phillip_J_Fry

Opinionated

Director of Revenue

jsyl23

Fire Starter

Director, Business Development

Thought it was fairly straightforward of an ask, but yes that's right. A current SFDC partner, hoping to hear ideas on how to break through the noise.

Extra context - In the meetings I've had recently with AE's - they've said they're inundated with emails/LI requests all promising the same but rarely do they follow through.

Actual translation: What have some of the top partners you've worked with done differently to get their foot in the door to help grow your business and play a meaningful role in bringing you new deals?

LambyCorn

Arsonist

A mfkn E

keeping it simple. like

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

Aaaahahaha !

SaaSguy

Tycoon

Account Executive

Its all about schmoozin IME - go to a metro with a Salesforce tower and take an RVP and their team out for drinks.

jsyl23

Fire Starter

Director, Business Development

Cheers to that, thanks @SaaSguy. I'm heading to Boston in a few weeks and have some buddies there so that's a good place to start, thanks again.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I get 2-3 emails per day from potential SF partners - all of which I delete. Emailing is NOT the way to network.

Conferences are a great way to meet/greet many people quickly.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

I feel like conferences would be good for this .

themetalhead84

former first line sales leader

Ok I’ll bite and give you some tips working there for 6 years.

You gotta figure out how to break in and build initial relationships with AEs or RVPs. Sponsor some end of month catering, end of quarter HH etc.

Define the industry you are targeting. You can’t cover all verticals - pick one. In my vertical in particular there were obviously GSIs for the larger accounts, but in reality there were only a couple dozen boutiques and of that a handful would specialize in a particular product ie CPQ, Field Service, Industry Cloud etc. Poll AEs and get a consensus of where their white space is or the major gaps in other partners.

Be comfortable with your first couple of deals not being profitable. Come in as the low cost / high value solution to the AE and customer.

Pre sales with most of these partners suck. Get the smartest people you can find to help with discover.

Come up with a marketed solution that you can co sell with Salesforce AE. This needs to be multicloud including Mule, Analytics, additional CRM use cases, and marketing. There’s a huge gap in us having ok product knowledge, ok industry knowledge but there’s a need for partners to sell the actual holistic solution

Your deal should always take a backseat to ours. Salesforce runs a monthly cadence, prove to the rep you are going to step aside so they can take down licenses

Once in the account find new licensing opportunities and bring it to the rep.

You will make a name for yourself if you start checking some (not all) of these boxes. Once you get good PR you will spread like wildfire within the vertical for what you are good at.

Best of luck

jsyl23

Fire Starter

Director, Business Development

@themetalhead84 this is great, thanks. We've been too broad when it comes to covering all verticals - as of now, we cover all verticals for SMB-GC accounts. Great idea with polling AEs to figure out the white space/gaps within the partners they're working with.

Where we've found the most success is when the AE shares those accounts with us in Quip that are stuck due to those gaps you mentioned. That approach has worked great and we've brought in deals where we weren't part of the deal at all, and those AEs continue to work with us.

While those AEs are recommending us, we need to do more. What I'm hearing from you, and everyone else is getting more involved, sponsoring events, hosting happy hours/lunches etc. Hell, that's the fun part anyhow.

Thank you, and everyone else who gave their two cents. One thing is for sure, I definitely underestimated how many partners all claim to do the same thing, along with how many messages you receive from them daily. Thanks, everyone!

LambyCorn

Arsonist

A mfkn E

this information is absolute gold. Thank you for sharing

Tf1859

Fire Starter

Account Executive

Referrals from other AEs and leaders and specific specialities.

I only have a couple partners I bring into deals: 1 Premium guy who has all the exec presence and a good sized firms, 1 super technical guy who runs a tiny shop but is a savant, and 1 super budget guy who is amazing seller on transactional deals and comes in with super low prices. (IMO those three guys will do better projects for my clients if they know that I’m the AE for multiple projects with them. There’s built in accountability there.)

There are tons of partners and it’s incredible difficult for me to tell who’s good and who’s not. Word spreads quickly based on which teammates have had amazing vs terrible experiences with different firms.

Referrals from other AEs is the reason I consider bringing on new partners — that’s what I’d lean into if I were a partner

saaskicker

Tycoon

Enterprise AE

App Exchange, Events, which partners want to sponsor a happy hour/webinar for my segment, who has done a great job already in my segment that isn't going to eat into my ACV - also helps to schmooze