How to enable resellers to maximise sales in a "Land and Expand" sales model

Captain Obvious: "Meet the KPIs." In addition: - don't give them the secret sauce, what makes you "you" - do things they don't want to do - demonstrate positive ROI. Keep the details of your technical expertise, how you do what you do, to yourself. That way they won't be able to simply hire someone and duplicate your process in-house. By doing tasks they find distasteful or outside their comfort zone, you make yourself indispensable. Clearly show, in measures they give you themselves ("If they say it, it's true; if you say it, you have to defend it"), that your efforts have brought in new revenue, saved them money, or both. Finally, ASK THEM. Get them to clearly state under what circumstances they would declare continuing to work with you 12 months from now a "No-Brainer." Don't leave it fuzzy. If you want my help with this, book a call to discuss.

If you are really investing in a strategic partner (one that will provide mutual benefit in the end, either in terms of revenues, access to financing or other resources) then revenue sharing isn't absolutely necessary. In the partnerships I help to form, they are often around shared value (http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/WhatisSharedValue.aspx) which means shared revenue isn't the absolute aim. What is the aim, however, is sharing information, knowledge, technical assistance, operational help, etc) and build a lasting framework for engagement together into the future that will benefit both parties. I am happy to help you negotiate these types of partnerships (it's what I do!) so feel free to get in touch.

Organisationally, the resellers would have to match the potential volume. The organisation needed to support Software and Services are different that resellers of SaaS. With a target of 250k annually in volume, would only leave room for a few employees, depending on where you are in the world, so I would think that the head count of resellers would be high. But I would consider one of the following, when approaching your question "How best could an organisation support resellers to reach their targets (min 250k annually) with such small margins?": 1. "Land and Expand" is apparently not a unified approach. See this link about strategy - think about product strategy first. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/land-expand-sales-strategy-mike-pilcher 2. Make it easy for the resellers. Have some infrastructure ready, f.eks. Suggested templates for website design, scripts for calling, marketing material, etc. Make it as easy as possible for them to execute. 3. This also goes for monitoring how the sales are going, which would also be of your interest. Build something unified in salesforce.com or develop your own platform. Build in benchmarking of the resellers - either for an overview for you, or for informing them how they are doing compared to their peers. Noting motivates sales people as knowing their position compared to others. 4. Build a feedback loop to you - have the resellers feed back, what works and what doesn't in the dialogue, and change the material accordingly. 5. You could also build a lead generation infrastructure somewhere, where costs are lower, if a generic sales approach to your product would work. This could be an offshore callcenter, or lead generation from your website. That also depends on whether the resellers should visit the customers physically or not. But anything to avoid the resellers to cold call - that destroys their motivation. 6. Create a sense of community among the resellers, and do anything to keep motivation up. Help them share best practise across the resellers, give them new products or sales approaches to work with. Give prizes to those, who share best practise. 7. Give them a portfolio commission. That would signal that you trust them and you want to partner with them in the long haul. They could also take part in portfolio maintenance work down the road, if they get customer "ownership" - f.ex. Through service visits, retention calls or similar activities. You could also consider giving them all customer facing contact, so you don't have any direct contact with anybody other than the resellers. That may be a little risky, but it would signal, that you trust them, and want to share your success with them. 8. Develop added services, that are integrated with the end customers usage of your product. So your SaaS would only be part of what the reseller was offering to the client. This could be information products about your software, best practice, consulting opportunities or similar. Anything, that can make your value proposition to the reseller more attractive. This was some of the characteristics, that I have thought of with regards to making it attractive for the resellers to work for you. Feel free to schedule a call, where we can discuss the ideas, and develop some more, so you create an approach, that will be successful. Good luck with your distribution. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

There are several factors to consider: 1. Profit share does not have to equal equity. As an example, two people can agree to split net profits 50/50 even though the percentage of equity is split 60/40. Just get it in writing. So find out their expectations for long term income and equity. Are they expecting a share of net profits or just the ability to recoup their investment when you sell the business? 2. What value do they bring to your business? Are they funding? Are they bringing significant contacts or the ability to secure contracts? Are they helping with infrastructure or product development? What would you pay someone in salary with no equity to do the same exact thing? 3. Are the short term or long term? In other words, once they help you launch, do they continue to have value in building the company? Or, are they no longer needed? There is no right answer to how you compensate them for helping you get started. But, try to look at all the value variables. Maybe that will help you identify what they are ultimately worth and what a fair, win-win offer would be. It sounds like they are very reasonable and you have a good opportunity to get their help for a reasonable compensation package. Good luck. If you would like to talk more about this at no charge, I offer a one time free call to new callers. Just use this link to schedule a call. https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult

I am a corporate lawyer and business adviser for over 7 years. I worked mainly in Israel, "the startup nation" and at least twice a year an entrepreneur comes over with a similar question. Don't know how to say it better but straight forward - no one EVER starts as a billion dollar company. Did you try your idea on a small market first and saw that it's working? A lot of experts (ask Dan Martell the founder of Clarity) will tell you that you cannot take the whole world by a storm at once. You start small and you scale it little by little. I'm not saying your idea is not good or that it cannot kick out Uber, what I'm saying is that since you don't have to start big, you can take a co-founder that complete your skills - if you are good in developing and lack the marketing, take someone that is great in marketing. If you cannot pitch, take someone who can talk and sell. But first of all - show a proof of concept. By the way, if you didn't do it till now, I recommend you read Zero to One by Peter Thiel one of the founders of PayPal. It's a great book where he discusses the creation of something new - from 0 to 1 in oppose to from 1 to n, i.e. adding more of something familiar. Don't define who you are by others, say what's unique about you. If you wish to elaborate, just give me a call. Y