Allyforce: the power of partnership

I attended a meeting with other people starting businesses and we’re told to develop a pitch to investors and practice with people who neither know the business nor are investors.Does that make sense to you?

One person (and I think sales people would get it) came up with a non-existing reason to not support a tool to help sales people and sales managers get business done. A technical CEO — I think many of you can relate with the guy in the suit who doesn’t care about the sales people as long as he makes his numbers.

Well, I’ve got your back!

I believe when you practice pitching or communicating, it should be for your customers first and foremost. It helps them to recognize their problem faster and quicker and shows you can fix it.

So, I’m going to spew a few ways I like to communicate the value of Allyforce, but need your help.

Allyforce: trade leads to get real and useful prospecting information from other reps you know and trust.

Allyforce: the easiest personal referral network for sales leads

Allyforce: exchange leads, find deals you would’ve missed, and beat quota

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

I got a question yesterday from someone saying sales managers wouldn’t like their reps sharing contacts to get more contacts to sell to? Is that true? In exchange for getting new customers, you wouldn’t trade out disqualified or lost deals?

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

Yesterday I was talking with the CEO of a software company who saw that referral leads to each other, even if the majority were sent to his company versus those of his partners, was a win-win for both.

Why is that?

When one company can enable the completion of a sale for another, that’s when win-win can happen. Now, not all allyforce relationship necessarily work that way. Often times it is purely non-competitive versus enabling.

But sometimes it is an enabling solution. One way to figure out who those players are that can accelerate your sales as well as theirs is to see if there is someone out there operating as a “giant” that has a portfolio of solutions of which one of them is yours.

So, for example, if you are in IT, look at say an IBM, Oracle, HP, or CA and see if one of your products competes with any of the hundreds they offer. Then find a company who also offers a product which competes with the giants.

The giants have those offerings because they are often asked for as a single solution from customers. But that doesn’t mean you can go into a company with your solution hand-in-hand or referring leads to win the deal.

This works in non-technology sectors as well.

Does your consulting services, say, in HR or performance management mirror that offered by larger consulting firms who offer several practices? Which of those practices seem to be “grouped” or lumped in with others that you don’t offer?

The vision of an allyforce is that, together, smaller companies can team to provide the same level of market coverage as the behemoths like IBM while providing superior solutions because of nimbleness.

But it will only work if the people in the field or in inside sales who are making contacts with prospects and customers are able to team with partners effectively.

Look at your strategy and ask yourself, “Have you set yourself up for win-win with partners?”

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

Cool, I just went to another trade-show and I realized that the ’smart’ reps understand how to really maximize their time there.

And it isn’t about meeting customers.

Which is paradoxical but true. There aren’t alot of customers who go to trade-shows. And if that’s the only focus for a sales rep who goes there, they are missing something hugely valuable.

Pretty much any partner one could find was there, and they definitely got the value of connecting and sharing contacts and accounts. Some of these companies don’t have a physical presence in the territory (which makes sense if it’s a smaller company) but partnering is a powerful way to do it.

Trade shows can really be a downer if you’re just looking at customers. But powerful if you’re looking for partner to expand your coverage and network so that you can reach potential customers.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

Allyforce was originally designed for people selling high-technology into large enterprises, typically the Fortune 1000.

However, I am exploring how this could work as a supplement to “lead exchanges” — services that enable local businesses to come together to share potential leads with each other.

I’m not sure how it would work. For example, the Autocomplete currently displays Fortune 1000 companies as someone begins to type. But those won’t be relevant for smaller businesses who typically reach out to local businesses.

Is knowing the contact just as useful? If I wanted to call on a bunch of grocery stories, I think I would have a really hard time knowing who to call.

It definitely would not be useful for calling on individuals…or would it?

The concept of the “Target List” which is so essential for big b2b sales is not that valuable for smaller businesses I suspect. So would that even be useful?

I’m going to start exploring further what it means for people calling into SMBs to be able to share and exchange contacts and account information with others.

I think it will be extremely valuable, but am looking into getting some real feedback from real people.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

One group for high-tech teams that can really benefit and are a natural fit for exchanging contacts are the inside sales teams.

These guys are dialing and smiling and following up on different leads. Many of them need more and better quality leads, and having a way that will let them exchange information back and forth in a very “social” way allows companies which are smaller to team up with similar-sized teams to take on the big companies.

I’m going to have a longer post on this later, but if you have an inside sales team, expand their realm of success by giving them some ways to leverage relationships with your partners.

It’s such a no-brainer, I’m really interested to see how this turns out.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

Some people may love the idea of doing a lead exchange, and finding the right people is part of the challenge. While a service like Allyforce could address it, I think it is much more important to understand the fundamentals to find your own.

One way to begin is to simply ask what is the “space” you are operating in and who are the target audience? For example, if you do application performance, but focus on the database, you could partner with someone who does application performance but focuses on the content delivery.

Suppose you’re in a field not quite as technical, say, you sell human resource and payroll outsourcing. Drill into your profile of customers *first* and really understand them. If the bulk of them are law firms, them target a company that sells contract lawyers.

The smaller the company you target, the less specific you need to be about the types of people you partner with. You may sell into IT at a law firm, but finding someone who sells to accounting is going to get you in the door probably faster than hunting and pecking on your own.

Remember the goal is to come up with names of accounts, people, and additional information you cannot get publicly. The purpose of the lead exchange is to increase your coverage and contact information, which is not easy.

Do other things still matter, like your value proposition, your sales proposition, and your ability to work with customers to discover and define the pain and challenges? Yes.

Will all customers just look on Google and social media and so proactively pushing to them is just backward and unnecessary? Heh, that’s a topic for a much longer discussion.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling

Some people seem to think the idea of jump-starting a referral network to be difficult.

I think you can break it down very simply. The first thing you need to understand, however, is your territory and your plan. Before you can even start a referral process, you need to understand to things down to the specific accounts:

#1: Who are my Target accounts?
This is both in terms of a profile by geography, size, industry, title, revenue, and any other profile such as install base, pains, business goals.

The second is an actual list of the names of companies you target. You need to just have a picture of who those could possibly be and figure out how to start developing a relationship.

#2: Who can I trade-in or exchange as an Offer?
Don’t come to the table empty-handed. Think carefully about past prospects, customers, lost deals, etcetera that would be valuable. Names, titles, projects should all come to mind.

Then…get out of your bubble and look up who is a good partner. I have lots of other information, particularly in the CD at www.allyforce.com/linkedin but also throughout the site to do that.

Who do I want? Who do I offer? Simple.

Posted via email from Allyforce: Secrets to Social Selling