Referral Partnerships Playbook

It’s no secret that referral partners will give you some of the best leads.

High trust factor.

Faster deal velocity.

Bigger retainers.

But the problem is – it’s so inconsistent.

The good news?

It doesn’t have to be.

I’ve put together a Partnerships Playbook to tell you exactly what you need to do.

Past results from adopting this playbook:

• $20k MRR closed per month, every month
• Over $5M revenue ARR generated
• 20 highly qualified leads per month

Ready to crank referrals?

Jump straight into it.

Good luck

Was

1. Identify past partners

→ Who has sent you leads in the past?
→ What verticals and industries did they come from?

2. Find lookalikes

→ Using 1 above, create a list of 50 new partners for cold outreach.

3. Get some data scraping help

→ Use Upwork to find a contact scraper/list-building specialist 
→ Brief them on 1 & 2 above, hand them tools like Apollo.io & Lusha to help their research

4. Collaborate with them (don’t “outsource”)

→ Work closely with this specialist to build an extensive list of “quality” companies and contacts (don’t just palm it off, and blame them later). 
→ Include name, email, job title, LinkedIn profile, industry & other relevant details.
→ This will take a few rounds and will get better with time.
→ Build a new list, like clockwork, every month. Continue to QA the list – and offer guidance & coaching to the list builder.

5. Hit the phones (ps – this isn’t a part-time gig)

→  If you want this to work, hire a dedicated person to do this.
→ Use a sequence of emails, calls, and LinkedIn messages to each contact in the above list.
→ Attempt contact (provide value each time) at least 10-13 times per contact. Don’t give up after a couple of tries.
→ Set up an attractive commission structure for the rep – based on appointments attended, and a kicker each time a deal closes as well (incentivise the RIGHT behaviours – not just appointments booked).

Bonus: 
Get marketing to target this same list via Meta & LinkedIn Ads for accelerated results.

6. Set metrics 

For example –
→ 20 calls per day, plus 20-30 email/LinkedIn touch points, and 15-20 meetings booked for the BDM per month
→ Have clear dashboard in your CRM to track all this, as well as contacts/leads yet to be contacted.
→ There’s no right answer here – just focus on consistency. Start with a conservative number and move up with time (don’t set the person up to fail with incredibly aggressive goals) 

7. Nurture your partners

→ Getting the partnership agreement signed is the easy bit. Many will sign up, few will be active.
→ Pick your top 5-10 partners, nurture them every month – lunch, dinner, coffees etc…
→ Train them often, give them collateral they can easily slip into their presentations.
→ Build relationships, and be top of mind always. Make them like you, they’ll refer you.

Tip 
→ If you’ve built enough trust, ask you partner for their top 20 clients.
→ Then, share a teaser slide, packed with valuable CUSTOM insights, on how you can help the prospect.
→ Ask the partner to include this into their deck, and tag you in when prospects show interest.