Selling to A Seller. A Reseller.

As part of what I do for a living - no I don't live off my blog - I help companies recruit partners to promote the visibility and sale of their products and services. But the thought of selling indirectly always brings with it a paradox - everybody wants to do it; not everyone wants to believe how difficult it is. Thankfully, it is often the bigger challenges in life that bring the greater rewards. Selling through distribution is no different.

This though is not a post about how to sell through partners, it is instead a brief commentary on how to recruit them. It is actually rather simple. The approach is, at least. It's a sales process. Prospective partners are just that - prospective. Not unlike prospective customers are prospects. We all know - to a varying degree - what we need to do to advance a prospect through a sales process. We have to earn trust. We have to help them understand they have a business problem that can be fixed. And we have to show them that we are the ones that can fix it. Better than others. Selling to a partner is really no different.

I would go on but my colleagues over at UCStrategies recently put it better than I could, so I will direct you there instead for the last chapter of this story...Worth a read for anyone looking for new partners to grow their business.