Partnerships, they are hard enough as it is but how do you get referrals that are actually useful? This was a question I asked myself very early on when doing another SaaS startup. Partnerships were relatively new for me and nearly every adjacent business in our industry had a Partner manager of some kind promising webinars, blog features, directory placements and a myriad of others things which at the time I had no idea if they were:
- Worth the time and effort
- Got the exposure we needed
- Going to generate the leads we needed ie. a clear road to MRR
After some experimentation with various partners like Airwallex, Payoneer, WorldFirst and other large organisations I discovered that it was possible to simply ask them directly for introductions.
Directly asking for referrals (or introductions) was a game changer, by cutting through all the noise of partnership activities we were able to get heaps of value from these partnership managers.
So how does it work?
There are a couple of components to this and I’ll detail each one as best I can, but here is a quick list.
- Kicking-off the relationship
- The first ‘exchange’
- Go-forward plan
Kicking-off the relationship
In my first SaaS business, we got a ton of inbound from partnership managers asking us for the ‘usual’ partnership opportunities, webinars, director listing, podcast, blog posts etc etc, once we had our ‘goal’ (of getting referrals) identified, our key to extracting the maximum amount of introductions was all centered on how we would kick-off the relationship.
Now, if you want to embark on getting referrals and introductions, then you need to start accepting every meeting you can get with partnership managers.
Here was our check-list to ensure we were always successfully kicking off the relationship and setting the scene for extracting referrals.
- Be prepared to listen to everything they have to say
- Do you have a client up your sleeve you can refer them. I.e. come prepared with a gift!
- Do you have a list of questions to ask them to understand if they talk to your ICP (couple of ways to do this, which I will cover off in another blog post)
- Do you have a back-up offering in case you need to build some trust before going straight into a referral exchange relationship (Sometimes partner managers want to build some trust with you before going straight into referrals, this is ok if the other company has some great clients for you!)
Now for the play-by-play
Doing the meeting:
So when you do the meeting, start with a quick agenda in mind as you need to take control of the conversation before it goes down a rabbit hole. My agenda always looked like this:
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Explain what they do
Get the other party to explain what they do and if need be let them do an extensive demo of their product or service. The more they believe that you are interested the better.
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Ask questions
The goal here is to understand ‘Who’ uses it as you never know who you might be able to refer (gift) them.
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Explain what you do (the magic part)
DO NOT go overboard, limit yourself to a 1min 30 sec demo at the most, try and segue as quickly as possible into offering them a customer.
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Offer them a customer
As soon as you wrap up your demo, straight away say to them that you would like to refer one of your customers. Now, if you have looked at the checklist you would have come prepared with at least one you could introduce, usually when you do this you are building an incomprehensible level of trust and puts you in a better position for the final step.
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Ask for an intro exchange
After you have presented your referral, ask them right there for an exchange. It’s better to be as direct as possible at this point so they know exactly what you want.
Now what?
90% of the time the other party will be more than happy to facilitate an exchange or reciprocal introduction, but on the off chance they don't this is where you can start talking about podcasts, blogs, webinars, video content etc.
If they are open to an exchange, try and agree to getting an intro to one of their contacts that matches your ICP right there on the call, this will allow you to be super specific when following up and sound less pushy.
The first ‘exchange’
So assuming the first meeting went well and partner is willing to exchange intros, fire off the first referral to them within 5 minutes of completing the call, this is the STRONGEST signal you can send to the partner. It also puts them in the ‘I owe them’ frame of mind as quickly as possible.
Once you fire off the first intro, write a second email and schedule it for a day later prompting them to refer an intro back to you, it can go something like this:
"Brad,
How are you mate?
How did you go with Steven, I reckon he’s a good fit for your product man.
Keen to keep the traction on this, looking forward to receiving an intro to Tom!
Cheers mate
Ray"
Go-Forward Plan
So at this point you would have done your first intro and well into having a real deal with one of their customers.
So the go-forward plan is pretty simple and is designed to keep traction on the flow of intro exchanges.
So here are the components to it:
- Identify a long list of contacts you can refer them (remember these dont necessarily have to be your customers, they could literally be anyone)
- Setup a cadence of conversation, set-it up for monthly so you always have a time to chat ‘formally’ as you want to keep this relationship professional
- Get their cell phone number (optional), if this particular partner does business alot of your potential customers you’ll want to start a human relationship with them and the key to this is texting!
Final words
I am just scratching the surface here and in my mind I probably have 1,000 other things I want to share on extracting value (referrals) from partnerships. So this will be one of many blogs that I write. As we move forward I will be talking more about how Scayul will help with introduction exchanges. If you have any questions hit us up on email ray@scayul.com