Sales strategy, by any name, has one goal: closing more sales. Every sales strategy defines a roadmap for decisions, interaction, and ultimately success.
How will you move from a blank slate to general leads, hot prospects, and a closed deal? How will you magnify results with repeat customers, cross-sales, and referrals? With each sales strategy, you’ll discover unique opportunities to leverage time and effort.
Here are three proven sales strategies to drive results. Employ each one at the right time, with the right team-and you’ll see fresh ways to sell to new or existing prospects.
Selling To
is a strategy that won’t disappear anytime soon. It’s a proven method for connecting to people, exploring needs, and identifying leads. While we all have war stories to tell about call lists, pounding the pavement, and burning the midnight oil-Selling To is a bit old school. Much like an old friendly clunker truck. We know it. We love it. We hate it at times too.
The real thing about Selling To is it doesn’t work like it used to. You can pound your fist on the desk all you want. This strategy has diminishing returns. Prospects are not as responsive to offers. You can track them down. You can hound them day and night. But, the fact is: prospects don’t respond to email, InMail, or phone as they did in the past.
This can be troubling. Disconcerting. Irritating. Our responses to change often emerge as complaints. We blame. We rail. We recall the good-ole-days. But, they are gone. No one likes or loves change. But, here’s the truth: Selling To is in this list of strategies for one reason, and one reason only. People still rely on it. Tooling to support the Sell To Strategy like Outreach, Salesloft, and ZoomInfo aren’t going anywhere.
I think it’s like using that old Red pick-up. It’s old. It guzzles gas. It is kind of rusted and bent. It’s not all bright and shiny as it once was. But we still like to jump into the pick-up and go for a spin. That’s what Selling To is like. It’s comfy, familiar, and maybe makes you feel like a teenager.
Don’t even think about ditching it. It’s valuable. It makes you feel good, in control, and like the world is all right. But, if you’re going on a long trip, up a mountain, or across a desert-leave that Red Pickup at home. OK?
Sell Through
is a sales strategy where companies sell through value-added resellers. The key idea that makes it work: you’re clear on the value of the offer. Because of this clarity, it’s a win-win model. Everyone benefits.
The customer gets tremendous value. The resellers get powerful value. Companies get new leads, new clients, and sales grow organically. Think of this as a low-touch sales model. When you understand your target customer and what attracts them, you can figure out if this strategy will work for your organization.
The Sell Through model works especially well when you’ve got an avid group of users, armed with lots of information about your company. Today’s buyers are shopping completely differently than they did a decade ago.
For example, buyers often are already using software via a free trial. They are experiencing value. They are in effect, already sold. They know from their own experience that your product solves their pain points and problems.
If this is how things are going, you see the advantage of Selling Through. Relying on Strategy one, Selling To, would be a mistake. When the buyer is already ‘sold,’ a sales call would seem forced, or overly pushy. has used this insight exceptionally well, building a 20 billion dollar company with a unique sales model. In essence, they have mastered a minimalist or low-touch sales model.
Atlassian’s success is based on removing any obstacles from the customer’s pathway. They actively focused on transparency. They made it easy for customers to get the information they needed-with minimal sales contact. How? By sharing pricing information, pro-actively answering frequently asked questions, and providing exceptional service.
For other companies, the appeal of Atlassian’s approach is obvious. Without a formal sales team, money can be invested in other areas. There is more money to pour into R & D. A low-touch sales model shaves costs at the beginning of the sales model. However, you’ll still want to invest in people and offer human contact for more complex sales, and to provide awesome service.
Sell With
is an indispensable strategy for technology partnerships. It’s becoming more natural to see companies take a collaborative approach to sell. This is a fast way to share resources and provide exceptional value to customers, with partnerships.
Sell With has become more and more viable due to rapid growth in the number of application programming interfaces (APIs). With APIs, organizations can add new partners, reach new demographics, and expand to new geographies. CoSelling Partners can share insights in ways that were previously impossible.
This trend is only expected to increase. are experiencing a 30 YoY growth, enabling rapid expansion across technology partners. Due to the growth in APIs, collaborative selling with tech partnerships is also growing quickly.
However, there is a major challenge. CRMs are. Business leaders want a single point of customer truth, and according to a 2020 Forrester Consulting survey, 80% believe this would create significant value for their company. Yet, only 25% of those surveyed believe that their CRM system provides a complete picture of the customer, across all departments and inputs.
The current state of affairs is far from ideal. Silos negatively impact the quality of data, reducing efficiency and understanding. This has negative repercussions on the experiences of customers and prospects.
This problem affects sales teams. From the sales perspective, silos lead to siloed data.
There must be a better way.
In fact, there is. CoSell is the ideal solution for breaking down the walls between partner CRMs. With CoSell, partners can easily share insights-without CRM silos.
By understanding sales strategies, you can design the best solution for your sales team, products, and customer preferences. Find the right strategy, and you’ll be in a good position to get exceptional results.
An exceptional sales organization requires the best tools-and the knowledge of how to use them. Selecting the right sales strategy is essential to high impact Partner Co-Selling. With Partner Co-Selling, achieving your sales goals is easier than ever before.
Using a platform like is the simplest way to get your sales team on board and focused on results. CoSell is a robust platform that makes it easy and fast to help automate and scale co-selling across sales teams.
Originally published at https://www.blog.cosell.io on June 17, 2020.
