How LeanData Makes it Easy for Reps to Close Partner-Sourced Revenue

LeanData’s Ecosystem Profile

Standing at the center of Salesforce CRM, LeanData’s family of solutions orchestrate and automate the go-to-market process to help revenue teams close more deals and drive more revenue, faster.

CUSTOMER SINCE

2020

PARTNER PROGRAMS

system integrators, solution, integrations, technology, and platform partners

PARTNERS

45+

partner team size

2-5 people

USE CASES

Prioritizing accounts for sales
Accelerating co-selling
Improving outbound outreach
Driving integration adoption
Reducing churn risks

Sure, most companies can identify overlapping prospects, customers, and open opportunities with partners. But to do it at scale? That’s where real ecosystem-led revenue growth happens.

Before using Crossbeam, the partnerships team at LeanData, a Revenue Orchestration Platform, was stuck mapping accounts in spreadsheets. Data often went stale, leading to inaccuracies and co-selling blindspots. The partnerships team struggled to efficiently get partner data in front of their sales and customer success teams.

“Every minute wasted on manual account mapping was time that could be otherwise spent on other revenue-generating activities,” says Derek Safko, Director of Partnerships at LeanData.

That’s why Safko and his team invested in Crossbeam, its Salesforce Widget, Salesforce Custom Object, and Slack integration in 2020. Their goal was to make partner data more visible and accessible to their go-to-market (GTM) teams. Today, LeanData’s SDRs, AEs, and CSMs self-serve partner data from partnerships reports and ecosystem dashboards to activate co-selling and prioritize where and how they spend their time.

“Crossbeam gives us more efficiency by identifying partner overlap data, taking action, and either winning or losing with that partner. There’s no excuse for any of our internal team members not to leverage partners because there’s such a light lift involved,” says Safko.

As a result of making partner data more actionable with Crossbeam, the LeanData team:

In this story, you’ll learn how LeanData’s partnerships team activates Crossbeam data for their AEs, SDRs, and CSMs in the tools they use most often: Salesforce, Slack, and LeanData itself.

“Partner-influenced revenue has exploded across our business and Crossbeam has become critical to how we operate and how I function as a partner leader,” says Safko. “Our leadership team had always valued partners and encouraged teams to leverage these relationships. Once we brought in Crossbeam, developed mechanisms to activate this data, and witnessed the growth, our leadership began seeing partners as more of a requisite than an option,” he adds.

Table of Contents:

Since LeanData’s AEs use Slack to collaborate internally and externally, Safko has Slack notifications to keep new overlaps top of mind for reps. 

“With Crossbeam’s Slack notifications, we drive awareness directly to the AE the moment their account overlaps with a partner,” says Safko.

Safko and his team own an internal “partnerships” Slack channel reserved for LeanData’s partner managers and AEs. Safko has Slack notifications for specific reports in Crossbeam, like:

As new overlaps emerge in these reports, Slack notifications will fire off into this internal channel to give AEs visibility into overlaps with partners whom they don’t have a Slack Connect channel with.

For example: When an AE receives a notification about an open opportunity that overlaps with a partner’s customer, they know to include the partner’s joint value proposition into one of the first few calls they have with the prospect.

Additionally, the LeanData team has Slack Connect channels set up with nearly all of their integration partners to keep collaboration flowing between partnership teams. Safko will also add AEs to shared channels with LeanData’s top five integration partners to encourage rep-to-rep co-selling. 

For example, more than 200 reps are part of the Slack Connect channel shared between LeanData and their partner 6sense.

“At 6sense, we find Crossbeam to be an essential tool for collaboration and deal acceleration with our partners like LeanData,” says Elliot Smith, Head of Partnerships, at 6sense.

Each Crossbeam notification in that channel will tag the assigned AE from LeanData so they can jump-start collaboration with 6sense’s rep directly in a thread.

“Uncovering overlaps that exist between our companies plays a crucial role in strengthening our strategic partnership with 6sense,” says Safko.

Seize new shared opportunities as soon as they emerge. Notify and mention account executives on new overlaps in Slack Connect channels so you and your partners can discover and discuss new overlapping opportunities as they happen.

Safko and his team are helping LeanData’s AEs amplify deal sizes and increase win rates by making it easier to identify which partners they can collaborate with. In their first year with Crossbeam, partner-influenced new business deals were 24% larger and win rates climbed more than 120% compared to deals without partners involved.

“We’ve seen the value of bringing partners into deals, time and time again. Whether it be to salvage an ‘at-risk’ deal or a customer that’s likely to churn,” says Safko.

LeanData’s partnerships team has built customized partnership reports and ecosystem dashboards for their AEs, SDRs, and customer success teams by sending partner data from Crossbeam into a Salesforce Custom Object.

“When it comes to account selection and prioritization for our AEs and SDRs, we reference these Crossbeam-powered dashboards to make sure we’re working accounts that already use our partners’ products. We want to make sure we’re actively reaching out to those accounts with that ‘1+1=3’ story,” says Rob Simmons, VP of Sales at LeanData.

“It’s important for sales leadership to play an active role in learning these dashboards and reports and incorporating the data into their team’s motions” says Simmons.

The partner team has bi-weekly calls with every AE. During these calls, the partner team will review an AE’s current deals and compare them against the AE’s personalized dashboard in Salesforce. The dashboard details:

LeanData’s AEs use this dashboard to see how partners overlap with their open opportunities. They use this data during their Pipeline Review meetings. Image courtesy of LeanData.

If the AE has an open opportunity that is stalled, they can use the dashboard above to identify a few different tactics to get the deal back on track, including:

“I’m responsible for driving a revenue number and there are a lot of deals that get stuck for various reasons. Being able to leverage our partner ecosystem during these sales cycles really keeps the momentum going for these deals,” says Simmons.

AEs and SDRs use partner dashboards to prioritize the accounts and partnerships they pursue based on the volume of overlaps that exist. For example, if a target account overlaps with multiple integration partners’ customers, that account will likely be high on the priority list for the assigned reps. 

Safko has coached AEs to track partner influence on existing deals in Salesforce, too. LeanData has fields in Salesforce to identify which partner account an AE has interacted with to support their deal. The AE will tag the partner so Safko and his team can track the volume of influence by partner name, partner type, and the overall partner influence on revenue for LeanData. 

The fields LeanData uses to track details on partner-influence deals. Image courtesy of LeanData.

💡 Pro Tip: While 1:1 meetings are a great way to train and enable AEs on how to work with partners and use partner data, they can be a significant time commitment. Unless your organization is ready to make this commitment, Safko recommends holding calls with 2-3 AEs to collectively review their deals and educate them in small teams versus one at a time. It’s much more scalable.

Curious how you can action overlap data in Salesforce? Get step-by-step instructions for building Salesforce reports and dashboards in “How to Activate Ecosystem Insights in Salesforce,” featuring Gdaly Berlin, Solutions Consultant at Crossbeam.

Boost partner ecosystem collaboration and communication by making partner data available on Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities in Salesforce. Crossbeam’s Salesforce Widget.

“Every two months, we get in front of our SDR teams and do a recap of Crossbeam best practices to maximize their pipeline. Repetition is key to transition partners into a subconscious part of their sales motion,” says Safko.

The SDRs have email series specific to each integration partner in their sales engagement platform. When an SDR sees a target account that overlaps with a partner’s customer, they’ll enroll those contacts in that specific sequence. The LeanData partnerships team doesn’t auto-enroll contacts in a sequence because they want their SDRs to review the overlaps to make sure there aren’t conflicts with existing email sequences scheduled in their sales engagement platform.

The email sequence is made of a few emails that introduce LeanData, their integration with the integration partner, and the joint value of the integration.

“I’m a big believer in this play for SDRs. I think about how much outreach I personally get, and the stuff that catches my eye is either highly personalized and/or it mentions a tool that I’m already using,” says Simmons. 

Safko emphasizes the importance of being tactful when using this messaging approach. Don’t directly call out that you know the contact is a customer of an integration partner. Instead, focus on the problems you’re solving with your integration and your “better together” story with that partner.

LeanData’s CSMs use this integration adoption dashboard to identify integration activation opportunities for customers. Image courtesy of LeanData.

As soon as the CSM is assigned a new customer, they’ll view the dashboard to see which integration partners share that customer.

There are two ways LeanData’s CSM might use this information to drive integration adoption:

“Without Crossbeam’s insights into overlaps with our integration partners, it would be next to impossible to drive success around our integration adoption the way that we are today,” says Safko.

Psst…Want to learn how you too can automate and scale your partnership motions? Join partnership pros from Cognism, Crossbeam, and LeanData for a webinar discussion on how you can surface the right partner data for your revenue team at the right time. You’ll learn how to:

Register here.

This workflow is triggered any time a new opportunity is opened in LeanData’s CRM. This image is courtesy of LeanData.

If the overlap is with an integration partner, the assigned AE receives a custom notification in Slack so they know which integration(s) to include in their sales pitch. The integration might be another selling point and value proposition for the customer to consider. 

If the overlap is with a consulting partner, the AE and the partner account manager receive a Slack notification and an assigned task in Salesforce with clear next steps (see image below).

LeanData’s AE (opportunity owner) and partner account manager receive this Slack notification when an open opportunity overlaps with a consulting partner’s customer. This image is courtesy of LeanData.

The consulting partner will also receive an automated email detailing information about the account, the opportunity, and when they can expect to hear from LeanData’s AE.

LeanData’s consulting partner and partner account manager receive this automated email. This image is courtesy of LeanData.

This approach keeps collaboration flowing between LeanData’s sales reps and consulting partners, and it makes it easy for LeanData’s partnerships team to get credit for their involvement in deal cycles.

Driving collaboration between partners and CSMs is another way to identify “at-risk” accounts and prevent potential churn.

Safko built a workflow that notifies a CSM in Slack when a customer’s account health is in the “red” and also overlaps with a consulting partner.

“Consultants are trusted advisors for their clients. Leveraging these relationships provides the greatest potential to retain at-risk customer accounts,” say Safko.

A Salesforce task is assigned to the CSM with the following details:

LeanData’s CSM and CSM Slack channel receive this notification when an account’s “customer health score” drops to “red” and overlaps with a consulting partner. This image is courtesy of LeanData.

This approach makes it easy for CSMs to identify at-risk accounts and quickly identify which partners they should collaborate with to get the account back on track. 

“Just like AEs, our CSMs are being hit with a ton of noise. My goal is to add guardrails to this noise and ensure they know exactly which partner to collaborate with, at exactly the right time. Being prescriptive in this guidance is key,” says Safko.

To drive partner-sourced revenue, the LeanData team uses an automated workflow that harnesses 6sense Intent Data. If a LeanData consulting partner’s client (who is a prospect of LeanData) shows a certain level of intent, notifications are triggered for the partner account manager and the consulting partner.

This workflow is triggered any time an account with a specific intent score also overlaps with a partner’s customer. This image is courtesy of LeanData.

Let’s say a target prospect (who is also a customer of a consulting partner) visits LeanData’s website multiple times. The partner account manager will receive a notification in Slack and an automated email will trigger for the consulting partner asking them to provide a warm introduction.

Notice how the automated email makes it clear on “what’s in it” for the consulting partner: getting credit for the deal and the potential to support the implementation. This approach sparks collaboration between LeanData and their consulting partners, and it enables Safko to source new deals for his sales team.

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Safko and his team built these workflows using LeanData’s Revenue Orchestration Platform to support ecosystem-led growth in a more scalable and automated way. They plan to iterate each workflow by learning what’s working or not working, and incorporate feedback from their sales and customer success teams. 

“LeanData has seen tremendous success over the last two years through partnerships. We are entering the next phase of ecosystem growth by incorporating automations into how our teams leverage Crossbeam insights. Not only am I excited to drive this growth for LeanData, but I’m equally excited to see my peers’ success multiply as they activate their company’s ecosystems,” says Safko.