Dan Martell - How To Recruit a Network of Partners Promoting Your SaaS Product

00:00:00.000 Hi, my name's Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor,

00:00:02.460 and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video I'm gonna teach you

00:00:05.260 how to recruit incredible partners that want to promote your product.

00:00:10.060 Be sure to stay to the end where I share with you my partner pipeline

00:00:13.180 process that includes email scripts and a tracking grid to make it simple.

00:00:30.000 So getting partners is probably the most efficient way

00:00:33.300 to grow your business and the reason why is you can

00:00:35.580 essentially outsource your cost-acquire customer

00:00:38.100 through those partners.

00:00:39.100 For many partners, you only pay them once they bring you

00:00:42.520 customers with credit cards on file.

00:00:44.240 When I was starting my company, Flowtown.com,

00:00:46.780 that was our initial strategy.

00:00:48.960 We signed up 13 partners, companies like MailChimp,

00:00:52.720 WooFoo, Constant Contact, iContact.

00:00:55.020 Essentially our question was who had email addresses

00:00:58.460 out in the market because Flowtown was a social email

00:01:00.520 marketing tool and how could we create win-win scenarios

00:01:04.840 with those partners to get them to promote it

00:01:06.700 to their existing customers.

00:01:08.540 I recently had one of my coaching clients do the exact

00:01:11.000 same thing for accountants.

00:01:13.140 Their software is in payroll which it makes an obvious

00:01:16.720 correlation that they would approach accountants

00:01:18.440 and they recruited 2,000 accountants out there,

00:01:22.020 continually send them new customers for trials

00:01:25.180 that are converting at 90% of their trials.

00:01:28.520 So the partnership model is the most powerful way

00:01:32.180 from a cost point of view and speed

00:01:34.180 to get your business scaling,

00:01:36.020 but you need to know these five steps

00:01:37.460 to make it work for you.

00:01:38.500 Step number one, find shared customers.

00:01:41.860 It's very important when you're thinking

00:01:43.800 of companies to approach.

00:01:44.900 Typically founders do this wrong

00:01:46.240 is because they are reactive to inbound interest.

00:01:49.800 Companies out of the blue reaching out to them

00:01:51.680 and saying, hey, I really love your product,

00:01:53.140 we'd love to partner.

00:01:54.300 What you want to do instead is be proactive

00:01:56.560 and strategic outbound and say what are the big pockets

00:02:00.200 or industries or types of tools or companies

00:02:03.840 that would have a shared ideal customer profile?

00:02:07.320 What I mean by that is if you look at your customers,

00:02:09.880 you've got ones that you don't like to work with at all,

00:02:12.520 you have those that are okay but I wish they would spend more

00:02:15.160 and then you have your ideal customers,

00:02:16.980 the ones that not only love your product,

00:02:19.060 they get your product and they want to expand.

00:02:21.320 Take those, think about the five top ones you have today,

00:02:24.360 and go find partners that have shared customers

00:02:27.300 around those perfect customers because if you don't do that,

00:02:30.600 you can do a lot of work building the partnership structure,

00:02:32.900 the agreements, et cetera, only to find out

00:02:35.060 that their audience was not perfect for you.

00:02:37.360 Step number two, profile partners for growth.

00:02:40.240 This is a simple concept that if you're gonna spend the time

00:02:43.240 to reach out to people to partner with,

00:02:45.380 to promote your product, you need to make sure

00:02:47.480 they're a rising star.

00:02:48.880 The way I think about it is high tides rise all boats.

00:02:51.720 If you can hook yourself into a partner

00:02:54.840 that's growing 20, 30, 40% per year,

00:02:58.160 some of them 100, 300%,

00:03:00.060 if you can find a dozen of those kind of partners

00:03:02.860 that are investing in their business,

00:03:04.520 their lead gen, their marketing,

00:03:05.600 so that they grow and they promote your product

00:03:08.600 just by the high rise concept,

00:03:11.480 you're going to grow your business.

00:03:13.300 So make sure they're in growth mode,

00:03:15.120 not in survival mode in their business.

00:03:17.680 Step number three, create a hit list.

00:03:20.920 It's very important.

00:03:21.760 I believe that everything in life comes down to a funnel

00:03:24.080 from recruiting to marketing to reaching out to partners

00:03:28.060 and the only way to make this work is to build a hit list

00:03:31.860 of customers or potential partners because you don't want

00:03:34.900 to feel like that one Microsoft partner,

00:03:37.860 that one Salesforce partner, that one Facebook partner

00:03:40.780 is gonna make or break your business.

00:03:42.640 There's no silver bullets in partnerships.

00:03:45.600 You want to find a model that works, a framework.

00:03:48.140 You want to identify a cluster of potential industries of

00:03:52.180 companies that would work best and build that hit list of at

00:03:55.880 least 20 companies and work through it just like any other

00:03:59.720 pipeline in your business.

00:04:01.040 Step number four, connect to fit.

00:04:03.820 Make sure that when you approach these partners,

00:04:06.280 the nuance in the language is not that,

00:04:09.100 hey, we want to talk about a partnership.

00:04:10.820 It's, hey, we're doing some really cool stuff.

00:04:12.660 We think it might be a fit for your customers.

00:04:14.300 do you have 15 minutes to jump on a quick call

00:04:16.240 to see if that might be interesting to you?

00:04:18.340 It's not saying that you're asking for anything.

00:04:20.480 You're saying, I don't even know

00:04:22.380 if this would make sense for us, for you.

00:04:25.040 Why don't we just have a quick exploratory call

00:04:27.020 to see if our technology would make a lot of sense

00:04:30.140 for your customers?

00:04:31.180 And you can hint to the potential reciprocation

00:04:34.380 of what they offer and you could add it to your customers.

00:04:38.260 But really in the early days,

00:04:39.360 especially if you have a unique workflow,

00:04:40.920 a unique innovation, a unique approach to what you do,

00:04:43.860 some kind of technology, they're probably more in need

00:04:48.460 of you to do that deal than you need of them.

00:04:51.940 If you have something innovative and unique in the market

00:04:54.540 and you can make them look different than their competitors,

00:04:57.500 then that's what they need from you.

00:04:59.040 So make sure that you connect to fit, not connect to sell.

00:05:02.820 They'll feel that, they'll say no,

00:05:04.540 whereas an exploratory call usually gets a warm reception.

00:05:07.880 Step number five, invest in the channel.

00:05:10.720 This is the most important thing.

00:05:12.120 I was recently talking to one of my clients

00:05:14.260 and they had a partnership structure

00:05:17.400 they created in the past, three years prior.

00:05:19.720 And they had, I think they said a couple dozen partners.

00:05:22.400 But it was really just like,

00:05:25.160 kind of like get a referral link.

00:05:27.300 It was more of a referral system versus a partnership model.

00:05:30.740 And what I suggested is that they invest in that channel.

00:05:33.700 And what that means is that if you can get a partner

00:05:35.980 to add, I mean just think about this,

00:05:37.780 add an email to an onboarding sequence.

00:05:40.480 after a customer achieves some level of success

00:05:42.880 in their solution or their product that they hit,

00:05:44.900 some success milestone, offering your solution

00:05:47.520 as a way to enhance their business or experience,

00:05:50.640 if you can add that as a reoccurring activity

00:05:53.960 in that partner's kind of customer life cycle,

00:05:57.000 then the more they grow, the more you grow.

00:05:59.100 So that requires somebody on your team

00:06:01.120 to actively work with those partners

00:06:03.120 to make sure that happens.

00:06:04.280 Giving them the assets that they need

00:06:06.480 to create maybe marketing materials, banners,

00:06:08.960 landing pages, maybe do a joint webinar with that partner

00:06:12.300 to really make sure that you support them

00:06:14.360 in promoting your product and get commitments.

00:06:17.460 You know, like to me, if you don't have somebody at scale,

00:06:20.460 this is at scale, flying around, meeting with your partners

00:06:23.360 to make sure that you can get commitments from them

00:06:25.360 from a promotional schedule in the next 12 months

00:06:28.200 and asking them how you can support them better

00:06:30.560 to promote your product, then you're missing

00:06:32.560 the huge opportunity.

00:06:33.760 I know some of the top companies in the space,

00:06:35.760 Leadpages, ConvertKit, that 20 to 30% of their growth

00:06:39.540 came specifically from partnerships

00:06:41.400 and it's in you to go get that

00:06:44.000 if you invest in the channel.

00:06:45.900 So quick recap, step number one, find shared customers.

00:06:49.760 Step number two, profile partners for growth.

00:06:52.820 Step number three, create a hit list.

00:06:55.220 Four, connect to fit for sale.

00:06:57.220 And step number five, invest in the channel.

00:07:00.720 As I mentioned earlier, I wanna share with you

00:07:02.380 an exclusive download, My Partner Pipeline Framework,

00:07:06.180 which comes with email scripts for reaching out

00:07:08.780 and a tracking grid so that you can make sure

00:07:11.180 that you monitor and move those partnership conversations

00:07:14.620 forward, you can click the link below in the description

00:07:16.720 to download that.

00:07:17.860 If you like this video, be sure to click the like button,

00:07:19.900 subscribe to my channel, and share this video with a friend.

00:07:24.260 Thanks for watchin', I'll see you in the next week.

00:07:26.480 Boo! 0.83

00:07:28.900 Oh, that gets them to say yes.

00:07:31.840 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:07:33.420 Did you change your shirt, though?

00:07:35.000 That's always a good thing.

Dan Martell - April 23, 2018

How To Recruit a Network of Partners Promoting Your SaaS Product

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