Skip to main content
Join us at TDX in San Francisco or on Salesforce+ on March 5-6 for the Developer Conference for the AI Agent Era. Register now.

Cultivate Effective Co-Selling Partnerships

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Describe the benefits and potential complexities of vendor-partner collaborations.

Embrace New Styles of Strategic Sales Partnerships

Vendor-partner relationships are structured in various ways, tailored to the needs of each company. Sometimes, staying competitive in the industry requires companies to embrace the strengths of their competitors by inviting them to become collaborative partners. In this arrangement, vendors and partners band together to package their offerings into unique product solutions or services that both parties want to sell collaboratively. Through these liaisons, vendors and partners combine forces, leaning on each other to drive revenue and increase value across a broader market.

Meet a Vendor and Partner That Sell Together

Take May Flowers Planters Inc., for example. A few years ago, this small vendor, which manufactures flower planters for home and commercial use, was just getting off the ground. Recently, however, the company experienced exponential growth. This surge in sales is attributed to its partnership with April Showers Co., a company that specializes in irrigation systems for planters. May Flowers and April Showers recognize an opportunity to join forces and create a series of smart planters with built-in irrigation systems and light meters, all managed through an integrated mobile app. When plant enthusiasts discover they can set precise watering amounts and schedules for each plant on their property with just a few taps on their mobile devices, sales soar.

Two employees from May Flowers Planters Inc. and April Showers Co. shaking hands, excited about their collaboration.

This collaboration opens the door for May Flowers and April Showers to market unique product offerings together, but it also introduces some unanticipated challenges. To manage their growing number of customer relationships, both companies invest in Salesforce and customize it to meet their specific needs. However, the vendor and the partner soon realize that the nature of their collaboration introduces a complexity requiring special attention.

A Rosy Start

To streamline collaboration, May Flowers purchases Partner Relationship Management (PRM) licenses for each of their April Showers sales reps and builds a partner site where April Showers reps can view May Flowers’s leads and opportunities. This decision significantly improves the vendor-partner relationship: The partner site is built using the Experience Cloud Partner Central template. The template provides a predesigned lead and opportunity workspace that allows April Showers’s reps to start working on smart planter deals quickly.

April Showers reps register for smart planter leads as May Flowers reps create them, and the companies begin building a pipeline for smart planters. From the Experience Cloud site that May Flowers has set up, April Showers reps leverage many of the same Sales Cloud features available in their own Salesforce org.

They use Lead Intelligence and Pipeline Inspection to identify the smart planter deals most likely to close quickly and to spot wilting deals that require nurturing. Additionally, the vendor-partner ecosystem enables May Flower’s sales leadership to monitor progress directly from the May Flowers’s Salesforce org. May Flowers’s business analysts and channel managers log into the Channel Management Console to keep an eye on their partner’s sales activity.

Two computer screens showing successful closures and sales soaring.

At first, both companies are pleased with their new arrangement. Smart planters fly off the shelves, and sales outcomes look rather sunny. But as the partnership progresses, May Flowers and April Showers encounter some technology and process limitations. While the PRM model is working well for May Flowers’s partnerships with individual partner sellers, it isn't working as well for the collaborative selling relationship that these two companies have established. This realization prompts the companies to reassess their approach to ensure that their partnership can adapt and thrive.

In the next unit, we explore the specific challenges they face and how they leverage Partner Connect to address these issues effectively.

Share your Trailhead feedback over on Salesforce Help.

We'd love to hear about your experience with Trailhead - you can now access the new feedback form anytime from the Salesforce Help site.

Learn More Continue to Share Feedback