Follow this guide to efficiently utilize partner intelligence in Salesforce. Learn to generate reports for sales and marketing teams and create visual dashboards for your GTM team.
In this article:
❗️Important
To create Reports & Dashboards: a user will need to have the Crossbeam Reports User or Crossbeam Setup User Permission Set in Salesforce.
To create Workflows and Automations: a user will need to be a system admin in Salesforce.
Create a Basic Crossbeam Overlap Report
Use Reports to identify overlapping accounts with partners to facilitate warm introductions, accelerate deals, prioritize integrations, and gain other strategic advantages for your organization.
First, click the Reports tab in Salesforce
Select New Report
On the Create Report screen, make sure you select All on the left-hand side before next steps
Next, type in the word Crossbeam
Then select Crossbeam Overlaps with Account and hit Continue
Now that you’re in the report view, click the Filters tab on the left-hand side
Now change the filter selection within the Show Me drop-down from My Crossbeam Overlaps to All Crossbeam Overlaps in order to see all of your organization’s accounts where an overlap occurs with your partners.
Next, click on the Outline tab on the left-hand side to start bringing data into the report
In the columns section on the bottom left, bring in the fields (adjust as needed): Partner Name, Partner Population, Partner AE Name, and Partner AE Email
You can bring these fields in by simply typing in Partner, and you’ll see the options appear.
Hit Run to generate the report
Example Report:
Add more filers as needed.
For example, if we want to look at one specific partner based on mutual accounts that are a customer of that partner, we can apply a filter:
Within the report, click Edit on the top right
If you prefer to preserve the original report - Select Save As then follow the steps below
Go into the Filters tab again
And add the filter Partner Name and select contains followed by the name of that partner
Next, add the filter Partner Population and select contains followed by customers
Click Run, now you’ve automatically surfaced all the mutual customer overlaps across the partner you were curious about.
In this example, we’re now looking at all accounts that are customers of our partner Bozala:
✍️ Note
You can remove the column Crossbeam Overlap Name. This is a unique ID for that specific overlap and is not compelling for revenue reporting purposes.
Create a Crossbeam Overlap Report for Account Executives
Create a Crossbeam Overlap Report for Account Executives to prioritize target accounts and potential co-selling partners based on partner intelligence for specific time frames.
Continue with the Report you created in the above section
If you prefer to preserve the original report - Select Save As then follow the steps below
In the Group Rows section, type in Account Owner
Next, click Run
In the example below, we’re now looking at a report that’s segmented by Account Executive/Owner. We can see all of Brandon’s accounts that are currently customers of our partner, Bozala.
Common Use Cases
SDR Prospecting Reports
How do our prospects overlap with our partners' customers?
Can we use that partner intelligence for more personalized messaging?
How can we leverage those partners to bridge warm introductions?
AE Target Account Reports
How do our prospects overlap with our partners' customers?
Can we use that intel for more personalized messaging?
Can we leverage those partners to bridge warm introductions?
Marketing Campaign Reports
Who are the shared customers across our partners?
Can we leverage a list of overlapping accounts with a specific partner to highlight our recently launched integration to boost retention?
Can we target a list of shared customers that haven’t adopted our integration yet to boost activation?
Can we combine partner data with intent data to create a targeted list of accounts where we can generate extremely personalized messaging to drive high-quality pipe gen?
Guide to Dashboards
Dashboards effectively guide GTM teams in analyzing Crossbeam overlaps, helping them identify where, who, and how to allocate their time strategically.
Get started by saving a report, similar to the one we built earlier.
Let’s take the below Target Account Report as an example:
We’re looking at a report grouped by both Account Owner and Partner. We’ve applied the filter to only look at accounts that are mutual customers of these partners using the Custom Overlap Object, as well as specific account tiers.
In the columns, we’ve added: Account Name, Partner Population, Account Tier, Account Region, Partner AE Name, Partner AE Email, and Revenue Bands (note - this is all illustrative data).
Now, as a quick refresher, below is the Outline of the report and associated Filters:
To save this Report:
Click the Dashboards tab in Salesforce and click New Dashboard
Give your Dashboard a name and then proceed from there.
Click + Component, which is a big blue button at the top right
Select the Report you want to bring into the dashboard. This may be front and center, or you can use the search bar to find the exact report you want.
Add a display Component. You can choose how you want the visualization to be displayed, whether that’s a bar graph, linear graph, pie chart, etc.:
Click Add and you have the first step towards building out a Dashboard:
Below are a few examples of Dashboards the sales team uses here at Crossbeam to help identify the right partners to engage with and where to prioritize our time.
We think about the following information to help with co-selling:
Open Opportunities that are Customers of our Partners
Named Accounts that are Customers of our Partners
One really powerful set of data to dive into--which Partner AEs should our AEs be working with based on the highest number of overlaps between the two?
Similar to the report above, you can create a new report that’s grouped by:
Account Owner
Partner AE Name
Partner Name
Example Dashboard:
With this Dashboard, you can now see:
AEs vs. Partner AEs with regard to number of overlapping accounts
Example: Brandon has the majority of his overlaps with Tom
Example: Tracy has the majority of her overlaps with both Tom and Murphy
This will enable you to identify the right partners to engage with and where to prioritize your time.
Salesforce Workflows and Automations
Explore the flexibility of Crossbeam’s overlap data and harness the vast capabilities of Salesforce through automation and workflows for enhanced efficiency.
Create Alert in Salesforce
When activity is happening on an account, this is a great time to connect with that partner to get insight on what’s happening/happened with that account.
For example:
If a partner opened up a new opportunity, it’s helpful to understand:
Who are they working with?
How far along are they in the sales cycle?
What’s the use case?
Have integrations (i.e. your product) been brought up in conversations?
What’s the overall solution they’re looking to implement?
Is there a joint solution opportunity for co-selling?
Or, if a partner just closed the account as a customer, it’s helpful to know:
What did procurement look like?
Is there anything from a legal, security, or finance perspective that we should know?
Who was involved from an influencer/champion perspective?
Who tends to be the final signer?
What does implementation look like and the rollout plan? (many times you need both products to complete the full-end solution)
Did they bring up a need for where our solution could help out/complement this?
Partnership Introduction Requests
Getting warm partner data into the hands of your GTM teams is great, but maybe you want to create a more formalized process?
It’s important (especially for tracking influenced revenue) to:
Centralize control of introduction requests vs. granting Account Executives full autonomy
Have visibility into which partners have more influence & prioritize introduction requests accordingly (i.e.: account overlaps with multiple partners)
Manage the volume of introduction requests to a given partner(s)
These are all important things to consider, depending on your approach to partner introductions and the processes you have in place to support.
Create a Task (sometimes Tasks are placed beneath Crossbeam’s Salesforce App)
When a rep sees an overlap in the App/Widget, they can kick off a request by filling in a Subject, some additional comments/context, and the Partner they want to be introduced to.
Those requests can then be sent into a Report where the partnership/alliance teams can track and manage everything in one single location.
The tasks will be assigned to the relevant Partner Manager to execute on, as well as relevant dates associated to those requests.
As partner teams track partner sourced and influenced revenue, conversions, and deals, there will be an entire report that allows them to see each and every account where requests were made. This is not to say it covers everything 100%, but does provide a more succinct workflow and process.
That’s it! You’re now a pro in building reports for your sales and marketing teams and creating visual dashboards for your entire GTM team.
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