Annnnd Action!
You’ve had great initial meetings.
Met for lunch, bonded and formed a close personal relationship.
You’ve been in and spent time with the wider team.
Everyone agrees about the level of synergies and the size of the opportunity.
Everyone’s excited.
The partnership is kicked off.
Then nothing.
Still nothing.
Nope.
The excitement is long gone, and the potentially beautiful relationship fizzles out.
I hear this all too often.
When I delve deeper sometimes there’s a logical reason and, despite the parties involved liking each other, a referral partnership had a slim chance of success.
But all too often a great partnership on paper doesn’t come close to the promise it once held.
And it’s all about activation.
Helping your partners to help you and take action.
The sales and marketing support you give your partners is key here, it’s the ‘C’ in my DANCE framework (connection) and sadly lacking in most partnership programmes. But there’s things throughout the set-up of your programme that will impact the effectiveness of any relationship.
So, let’s take a boogie through the whole framework so you can set yourself up for success next time.
D is for Discovery
(Who your ideal partners are, and why they would want to work with you – your Partner Value Proposition)
It may seem obvious but working with the right partner is key.
To find your ideal partner there’s much more to it than what I’m going to suggest now, but for the purpose of this piece there’s 3 crucial things to consider when looking at your potential partners.
Audience – are they talking to the right people, in the right businesses, of the right size.
Congruence – and are they talking to them about something relevant to what you do?
Authority – and finally, do they hold a trusted enough position that them introducing you will hold any sway?
Unless you can answer yes to all 3 of these things then you’re fishing in the wrong pond.
A is for Assembly
(The systems needed to deliver a consistent level of service, build trust, and scale)
It's important to make it easy for your partners at every step.
And this includes how you ask them to make introductions to you.
You might prefer a personal introduction – but if most of the communication with their clients is via digital channels that’s not going to work.
Just as requesting leads via sign up forms when all the partners client interaction is in person probably isn’t the best idea.
You’ll be amazed how often I see this. The golden rule here is to never assume and check with your partners for their preference.
N is for Nurture
(How we communicate with our partners to build rock solid relationships)
Communication is key in receiving leads on an ongoing basis, but for kicking off relationships I’m going to focus on setting expectations at the outset.
And in this instance specifically, short-term expectations.
Get a marketing plan agreed that includes something small you can get going with and build momentum.
And then agree who’s doing what and when. And document it.
C is for Connection
(How you help your partners connect you to their audience)
This is the biggy for activating your partnerships. And there’s two sides to the story.
First up is partner facing support.
All the things you inherently know about when to position you, how to position you, what triggers (buying signals) to listen out for – even where in your partners customer journey you’d be best positioned.
This stuff may seem like common sense to you, but it typically won’t be to your partner, especially where there’s a team who’s responsible for activating the partnership.
So share this stuff with them, remember…
It’s not common sense, it’s experience.
The second part is audience facing.
We mentioned getting a marketing plan in place, well then make sure you provide your partners with all they need to fulfil it.
And make it easy for them.
Adjust your standard copy so it sounds like it’s coming from them. Provide it in the format they want. Anything you can do to make their lives easier means the activity is more likely to happen, and happen on time.
E is for Engagement
(How we go out there and get new partners)
This one’s got me thinking but if you want to see action quickly then extra level of selection criteria on top of those mentioned during the Discovery part is working with people who are already used to partnership marketing.
It means they’re much more geared up to the type of activity we’ve mentioned and likely to get going much faster.
So there we go.
Hopefully you’ve found this useful and there’s some things you can begin to implement in your own business or partner programme.
Dave
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