Imagine being able to apply a set of "spies" out in the field to tell you of potential opportunities that you may be missing.

Isn’t that the worst situation to encounter, where you could have competed, maybe even won, in a situation but didn’t even know about it?

With smaller and smaller sales staffs and harder and harder to reach decision-makers, the ability to get good, timely intelligence about situation where you could be selling is very difficult, but even more essential.

Good sales people collect information about the needs, the plans, the environment of their customer.  If your partners have good sales people and you’ve developed a good system for sharing, that’s powerful.  If you’re not doing this, your competition may, and where would that leave you?

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The answer is a qualified, Yes.

I know because I’ve done it successfully.  And I was doing it without one key component which we believe is essential for a company trying to develop an Allyforce.

First, why will they share?

By making the value proposition clear and selecting good, quality sales people.  Almost all of the sales reps I have tried to share leads with, except for one, was more than willing to reciprocate.  Why? 

In part because I made sure that I knew companies that they wanted, and offered to help them first to get the ball rolling.  We know that just because we have a contact that’s not going to lead to a sale.

But faced with the option of dialing into the receptionist or trying to scour contact databases which may be out of date, it is much easier and reliable.

Second, sharing is a basis for building social currency.  It is the social currency among sales reps, in many ways.  Good sales reps know that building social currency is valuable and seek to maintain a balance.  Yes, they will in the end be looking for names that help them, but they know that working with the right partners, that kind of cooperation is a winner.

What helps encouraging successful sharing?

Management buy-in.  In the end, sales people do get guidance from management.  If management says that it makes sense and can paint a clear picture for how and why it will work, and also has a way to make basic metrics, it’s easier for sales people to comply.

A potential hurdle appears if the task at hand is also too bureaucratic, however.

Yes, sales people will still fill out forecasts and the CRM tool — although those activities don’t help to generate leads or opportunities and are very paperwork intensive.  So while there can be alot of resistance, if a company can establish ways to reduce that friction of exchanging leads while also being able to get basic metrics, it becomes a win for all parties.

Management support + simplicity + metrics + mindset of social currency = adaoption and success!

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