Master Business Partnerships with a 9 Figure Founder

Partnerships are one of the most overlooked components to business growth.

Next Steps: Write down what dollar amount or percent of the sale can you offer to affiliates that refer. Discuss this plan with your team and get set up in an affiliate platform if it doesn't already exist at your org.

Two good affiliate marketing platform options are Impact or Shareasale.

The key here is to align your incentives with the partner. Here’s how:

1. Sign up your company

2. Set up conversion tracking with the affiliate platform through your website. You’ll likely need to collaborate with your tech or marketing team.

3. Sign up partners onto the platform (more on this below).

4. Set up the partner to receive $___ per sale or __% per sale that they drive via their tracked link.

5. Now that you’re set up to share revenue with potential partners, outreach will be much more effective.

Next Steps: Write down 3 new potential partner names that align with your business.

Search for partners that align with your brand but don't compete directly. Their audience should have similar demographics, interests, or behaviors of your customers - these folks will be most likely to become your customers as well.

Search on Google, Instagram, and LinkedIn for keywords that are relevant to your brand.

Partner Categories:

Influencers: Where do your customers spend their time? Is it on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X? It's important to find influencers who create content relevant to your niche.

Businesses: Look for businesses that share a similar audience but don’t compete directly.

Content Creators: podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers, or authors

Determine if the partner is big enough, they will need to meet at least one of the following:

1. 400K+ followers on social media

2. 150K web traffic

3. 500K+ email list

Next Steps: Identify the first 10 companies with 1 individual at each company to reach out to today via email or LinkedIn.

Download the Prospecting PDF for this template and the upcoming templates!

Next Steps:

• Practice the below calls with a coworker, friend or spouse. Make sure you have the basics down so that you don’t have to be referencing the sheet a ton when you get calls set up.

• After your first two calls, check mark the above benefits and deliverables that resonate the most with the prospects. Hone in on those more in future calls.

The first call is one of the most critical pieces to create revenue driving partnerships. You'll be finding out how you can help the partner and tying that back to driving revenue for your org too.

Here's how to talk through the first call:

“I wanted to connect to do a quick overview to see if there are areas makes sense to collaborate”

• Talk about what you do best

• Share the benefits of your product.

“We want to help your customers be more successful. Adding value to your customer and customer success are the goal.”

Learn about their business

“I’d love to hear what you’re thinking for the next 1-2 years?” (Pay attention to how you can help solve their problems)

“Your customers will be more successful if we integrate with <prospect company>”

• Talk about a few benefits

“We have the most aggressive profit share in industry” (or something that truly sets you apart)

“What types of partnerships are you looking for?”

“How do you typically communicate with your audience?”

“Is that your strongest channel currently?”

“How many people are on your email list?”

Close

“I suggest we start small and continue to expand what works”

Here's a list of examples of how you could collaborate with a partner:

• Email blast or automation

• Social posts

• Press release

• Giveaway

• Articles or webpage links

• Influencer content creation

• Flyer inserts if a physical product

• App content integration

Once you've had your initial call, you'll want to follow up with some excitement about the partnership and hook them up in any way you can. Giving them free product, help with something, or even sharing the latest trends in the industry are great ways to get them excited and gain their trust.

After the initial call, you may be ready to get started or they still may need some more convincing. In the next section we'll go through how to onboard a partner. In this section we'll walk through an email template for when the prospect needs to be convinced to get on board:

Great to catch up with you today! It sounds like our <your product> aligns well with your <their product>.

I believe <prospect company> + <your company> could be an all-in-one solution where clients have everything they need to <goal of customers>. <Prospect company> clients get <your product solution> alongside <their product solution>. We’d be happy to do content collaboration that makes sense. We’d offer your clients and prospects <deal>. For each of those clients, we’d do a <% profit split> profit split with <prospect company>.

I went ahead and <sent out samples or signed you up for a free trial>. The name of the game is client success, and you can’t deliver results if the <product feature your sample shows well>!

Here’s an email template if the prospect is ready to start rollout:

Great to catch up with you today! It sounds like our <product> aligns well with your <product>.

I believe <prospect company> + <your company> could be an all-in-one solution where clients have everything they need to <goal of customers>.

I always suggest doing a few tests before full-scale rollout, something like this could be a good start:

<Your company> to create a co-branded landing page for <prospect company> clients to have a seamless experience when trying out the <product>.

• <Prospect company> post on social media about the new partnership to gauge interest.

• <Prospect company> integrate <your company> into a few existing blogs to gauge interest

• Assuming the above goes well, we could expand the partnership:

• <Your company> to create a blog and/or video connecting the dots between <prospect company> <your product>, and customer success.

• <Prospect company> include the above content in onboarding email workflow

• <Your company> to put out Press Release introducing partnership

We should have the landing page done shortly and I’ll shoot that over - let me know how everything else looks.

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Reporting and Analysis

Next Steps: Begin reporting on progress weekly, and ensure that you include: Partner Name and MTD Revenue.

If you have a head of marketing, collaborate with them on this. If you don’t, take the lead on everything below.

Track success using platforms like Impact Radius or ShareASale to see conversions and review the profit share.

Track success using coupon codes.

Track success by looking at overall bumps in performance on days that the partner does their deliverables.

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Develop a Robust Pipeline

Next Steps: Get started right now with 10 outreaches!

Building a business development network for referrals takes time. We're going to short-circuit this process by hitting it extremely hard.

If you’re not already well-connected, start with significant cold outreach. Moving forward, you'll need to reach out to 10 new business development opportunities every single day. You'll quickly build momentum and increase your success ratio.

Be strategic in your outreach, focusing on higher-level deals and don't be discouraged if you're only getting responses to 1 in 20.