In our 2019 World-Class Sales Practices Study, almost 70% of participants said they leverage a third-party channel to drive revenue. This level of reliance on channel partners has remained relatively consistent over the past two years. Yet when we looked at organizations’ use of sales technology with their channel partners, it was limited to less than one-quarter of respondents.
In B2B selling environments, many sales leaders see adding a third-party channel as a way to grow their business or enter new markets without the overhead of hiring, onboarding and developing additional in-house sales staff. In many cases, channel partners are often considered an extension of their sales force.
As such, one might expect them to provide their channel partners with sales technology as well. When channel is added as a go-to-market approach to grow business, for example, a common channel sales technology use might be to share information on customers and prospects.