What we Learned at a G Suite Partner Event

Breaking the CRM adoption curse

The Chicago Cubs may have broken their 108-year losing streak with a World Series win this week, but CRM hasn’t really been able to overcome its lack of adoption over the last 20 years. Here at Copper, we’re trying to lift the CRM adoption curse with a solution that sales team actually love to use.

While people were preparing to watch the Cubs take on the Cleveland Indians in the last MLB game of the season, crowds also gathered at Google Tech Corners for the G Suite Mid-Market Partner Meetup. The event brought together more than 100 North America G Suite partners, including resellers and independent software vendors (ISVs), to better understand the needs of mid-market customers. Google has historically done very well with the SMB segment, and have also landed very large accounts with the help of G Suite in the past few years. However, the mid-market segment has proven to be more challenging.

Defining the mid-market segment

Composed of 100-1000 employees, the mid-market demographic has particular characteristics, needs, and pains that Google wanted to showcase for their partners to sell more efficiently. Deployments of these companies typically have the same complexity as large enterprises, but mid-market budgets are often more limited. Google revealed that the cost and value behind a solution matter most to mid-market customers, alongside ease of use and security. Additionally, mid-market companies often find change management is critical for growth, as they tend to be older and struggle with adapting.

How can resellers be successful?

As shared by Google at the event, successful resellers find ways to add value beyond just a reselling solution. Industry average gross margins for resellers typically fall in these ranges:

15%: Recurring margin on products sold

35%: Professional services

45%: Managed services

75%: Packaged Intellectual Property

Earlier this year, Copper made the strategic decision to invest in the success of its channel ecosystem. We have been busy recruiting and onboarding the right channel partners who share the same values and vision as us to deliver exceptional value to our customers. Like Google, we encourage our partners to fully leverage our solution to add value via onboarding, migration, and integration services in order to optimize customers’ sales and marketing processes.

What’s next for resellers?

The next step for our partner program is to fully enable every one of them to develop an intellectual property on top of Copper. As a result, they will be able to resolve more and more sophisticated client problems, while packaging the IP to offer it to a larger client base.

The Copper Win-Win-Win

Through our partner program, we continue to fuel our growth and reinvest in a CRM solution that end users want to adopt. Our partners develop added value and IP that can address pain points in specific verticals or provide integrations with solutions such as ERP, email marketing or ticketing systems. Most of our partners are increasingly able to provide sales consulting by sharing sales best practices and methodology.

In a short amount of time, the majority of our most successful resellers have already adopted Copper for their own sales & marketing efforts. Customers now benefit from their experience, as they can share firsthand how they have been able to optimize sales efficiency while establishing repeatable sales processes with increased visibility.

Are you a reseller, affiliate or association that would like to partner with Copper? We want to partner with you, too! Get connected with our Business Development team by signing up at https://www.copper.com/partners