Siebel Partner Relationship Management Administration Guide > Managing Sales > Scenarios for Collaborative Selling >

Partner Creates Opportunities and Brand Owner and Partner Work Together on Them

In this scenario, opportunities are created by the partner companies, and the partners then invoke help from sales agents at the brand owner company, so they can work in a joint selling effort.

This scenario is appropriate for you if your partners generate opportunities and need help working on the opportunity. For example, your partners may generate opportunities by attending trade shows, and when they follow up on these opportunities, they may need help from your sales agents who have special product knowledge.

This scenario consists of the following steps:

• Step 1. The brand owner uses Assignment Manager to add its employees to the sales team.
• Step 2. Partners enter opportunities.
• Step 3. The brand owner and partner work together on opportunities.

Step 1: The brand owner uses Assignment Manager to add its employees to the sales team

To make it easier to work with your partner, set up Siebel Assignment Manager so it automatically adds the appropriate employees from your company whenever partners enter new opportunities. You would probably want to add the following employees from your company:

• Channel manager. Add the channel managers who are responsible for the partner companies that entered each opportunity, so they can track the opportunities. Because the channel managers are on the sales team of the opportunities generated by the partner companies they work with, they will be able to track these opportunities by displaying the My Opportunities view.
• Sales agents. Add the appropriate sales agents to work with the partner sales agent who entered the opportunity. Assignment Manager can choose which of your sales agents to add to each opportunity based on your agents' location, product expertise, workload and availability, and other criteria.

For more information about Siebel Assignment Manager, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

Step 2: Partners enter opportunities

Partners develop new opportunities and enter them into the Siebel Partner Portal. When a partner enters the opportunity, that partner is automatically added to the sales team as primary.

You can set up Siebel Assignment Manager so the channel manager and appropriate sales agents at the brand owner company are also added to the sales team automatically when the partner enters the record. Alternatively, the partner can assign the opportunity to these people manually.

To enter a new opportunity through the Partner Portal

1. Navigate to the Opportunities screen.
2. In the Opportunities list, the partner clicks New to add a new record to that list.
3. The partner enters information about the opportunity in the new record.
4. The opportunity can be assigned to appropriate sales agents manually or automatically:
   1. The partner can assign the opportunity to appropriate sales agents at the partner company and to the channel manager at the brand owner company by adding these people to the Sales Team field manually. Then the channel manager would add sales agents at the brand owner company to the sales team.
   2. You can set up Siebel Assignment Manager to add these people to the Sales Team field automatically.

Step 3: The brand owner and partners work together on opportunities

Having both your sales agents and partner sales agents on the sales team makes it easier to work together on the opportunity.

Whenever your sales agent displays the My Opportunities view in the Siebel application or the partner displays the My Opportunities view in the Siebel Partner Portal, this opportunity will be included in the list. Both your agents and your partner can select the Opportunity record and:

• Share files. You and the partner can share files (such as Microsoft Word documents) that are useful for this opportunity by clicking the Attachments view tab and adding records to the Shared Attachments list.
• Share activities. You and the partner can log the activities you have done to work on this opportunities by clicking the Activities view plan and adding records to the Activities list. You and the partner will always be up to date about each other's activities. You can also add future activities to the Activities view tab or add activity plans to the Activity Plans view tab for this opportunity, in order to invite other members of the sales team to work on these activities.
• Share notes. You and your partner can share notes by adding activities to the opportunity and choosing the Note activity type.
• Share revenue line items. As the partner sales agents learn more about the opportunity, they can add to it revenue line items, which indicate the potential revenue, chance of success, and sales stage. These will be visible to both partner companies.
• Create customized sales tools. You can use the brand owner's prebuilt proposal, presentation, and correspondence templates to create proposals, presentations, and letters based on this opportunity, giving you selling tools that are automatically customized for this opportunity and account.