One of the biggest growth challenges for business owners is finding new clients. One of the best ways to do this is through partnerships, but how do you identify and approach potential partners? And once you’ve found them, what’s the best way to form a partnership that benefits both parties?
In this episode of Influence By Design, Samantha and Tim talk about how you can scale with partnerships. They share their insights on what to look for when choosing partners, how to build relationships with them, and how to negotiate deals that work for all parties.
We also discuss some of the challenges that can come up when working with partners, and share our thoughts on how to handle and avoid these challenges..
Scaling with partnerships doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right approach, it can be a great way to grow your business, and one of the most effective ways to scale your business.
If you’re looking for ways to scale your business, this episode is a must-listen.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Why should you use partnerships in your business? (02:19)
- How to leverage partner relationships (04:47)
- The Four Step CRM Strategy (08:02)
- How to increase your referrals (12:47)
- Finding partners at the right places (16:07)
QUOTES:
- “When we look at leveraging our partner relationships, it’s like anything else. We have to work it.” -Tim Hyde
- “Educate your partner on how to introduce you. The better the introduction, the higher the chance of conversion.” -Samantha Riley
SHOW SPONSOR
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WHERE TO FIND TIM HYDE
- Website: https://winmoreclients.com.au/
- Facebook: Win More Clients
- LinkedIn: Tim Hyde
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
- Facebook: Samantha Riley
- Instagram: @thesamriley
- LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
- Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Tim Hyde 00:00
When we look at leveraging our partner relationships, it’s like anything else, we have to work it. And that’s where we have to have a strategy and a system in place to make sure that our referral strategy and our partner strategy is really going to work for us.
Samantha Riley 00:13
Educate your partner on how to introduce you, because the better the introduction, so the person that’s receiving the introduction, when they can know straight away, okay, I feel like I know what this person does, it’s a lot less weird to get on the phone to them when you know who they are and why you’re potentially being introduced. My name is Samantha Riley, and this is the podcast for experts who want to be the unapologetic leader in their industry. We’re going to share the latest business growth, marketing and leadership strategies, as well as discussing how you can use your human design to create success in business and life. Inside and out. It’s time to take your influence, income and impact to the level you know you’re capable of. Are you ready to make a bigger difference and scale up? This is the influence by design podcast. Welcome to today’s episode of influence by design, I’m your co host for today’s summit, the Reilly joined by my lovely co host, who joins me every Thursday, Tim Hyde, how are you Tim?
Tim Hyde 01:16
I am doing fabulous, Sam, thank you for asking Soylent.
Samantha Riley 01:20
Very good to hear.
Tim Hyde 01:21
Glad to hear you are over your ailments as well.
Samantha Riley 01:24
Oh, my goodness, I’m out the other side of COVID Thank goodness did not enjoy it. It was like having the worst man flu ever. That’s I didn’t enjoy it at all. But anyway, I’ve made it
Tim Hyde 01:36
out the other side of my head man flu. Oh, no, Leon,
Samantha Riley 01:39
And I joke all the time, I always get man flu I am I am hopeless. I am the world’s most hopeless person when I’m sick. So today, we’re going to talk about partnerships, and specifically, how you’re using partnerships to scale. You and I have talked a lot on the podcast around partnerships, different joint ventures, different ways to partner with people to grow and scale your business. And I’m super interested to dive in today because you have just come up with a new strategy. But before we jump into that, I’d love your take, Tim? Like why do you love that using partnerships so much in your business?
Tim Hyde 02:19
Ah, look, it’s free. It’s free and simple. And I think compared to any other channel that we can use to bring opportunities into our pipeline. This one comes with an inherent referred to trust, that makes it much easier to do sales conversations. Now I know, a lot of our listeners are absolutely terrified of doing sales. If you’re really, you know, let’s, let’s do air quotes here. eKey, doing sales. And if you think that you’re pushing something on someone, the great thing I think about our partner channel is when we get introductions and referrals from someone who’s already got a relationship with a particular prospect for us, and often a client for them, it comes with his referred trust, and it becomes less about sales. And more the sales conversation becomes more about seeing whether that person is a good fit for what it is that you can do for them. Very subtle shift in the dynamic that you have when you’re on a sales call.
Samantha Riley 03:28
I love that. I personally love partnerships, for a couple of reasons. I’m an extrovert, I love to do business with people, I don’t enjoy doing business. In the state you live in solitary confinement in my office, I don’t I don’t get excited by that. I much prefer to speak with people and come up with, you know, lots of fun, lots of excitement with people, new ideas. And the other thing I love about partnerships is that we’re generally having some sort of one to many conversation, because we’re talking with a partner on how we can roll something out at scale, rather than having one on one sort of sales prospect sort of conversation. You’re like
Tim Hyde 04:17
Me, Sam, you know, you get a lot of energy from other people. Yeah. And being able to see and interact with people, both partners and clients, I think is a really important part of what what otherwise couldn’t be a very isolating existence.
Samantha Riley 04:31
Absolutely. So why don’t you give us a quick overview on this new strategy that you have recently just rolled out because I think that this is I really liked the idea that you’ve come up with.
Tim Hyde 04:47
Okay, so let me know as I said, we know referrals, referrals from clients, referrals from partners is incredibly important, in fact, is one of our Go twos. As for us as buyers, aren’t we are ask the opinion of trusted people in our world. And so, you know, so we talk about different tools, and you say, Hey, you should really check this out. And because I value your opinion, I’m gonna go in and check out that particular thing. And we can leverage that same process in our business, because it’s, you know, potentially up to 80 times more effective than advertising in terms of attracting clients. The thing that I see a lot, sort of where partners don’t work for people, is we have this initial conversation, and then go our separate directions. Hey, Sam, we should refer each other business. And you go, that sounds like a great idea to you. And I think that’s a good fit, and yeah, right. And then you go your way, and I go my way, and six months later, we’re kind of wondering whether you know, who you are, and, and, you know, why isn’t any business coming from this relationship,
Samantha Riley 05:55
Potentially have forgotten who that person even is? You know, I’ve had these conversations before. And the second the call finishes, it’s just like, nothing, there’s sort of no follow up or, or no, you know, coming together to to discuss how is this going to work? Yeah.
Tim Hyde 06:13
And that’s because that’s because when we look at leveraging our our partner relationships, that we it’s like anything else, we have to work it right now, if you’re thinking that your social media is going to work without you doing anything, it’s not going to get any results. If you think your advertising strategy is going to work with you without continuing to work or advertising, and can even refine and optimize, it’s not going to work, our partner channels very much the same. And that’s why we have to have a strategy and our system in place to make sure that our referral strategy and our partner strategy is really going to work for us. Absolutely. So let me share with you what I’ve been doing. And with great success lately, I’ve set my goal to have 20 Key referral partners, okay, now that individual referral partners might chop and change from time to time, because what I’m doing what I’m trying to do, and I don’t want to try and build 20, all at once, because 20 at once is quite difficult. You might say, in this month, I’m going to do five, next month, another five, next month five after that, and then four months to now I’m going to add my last five partners to use to find people either upstream or downstream from you. And what I mean by that, and if you look at, you know, just draw a circle and say this is and right in the middle of that circle, what is the thing that I do? If you look, what is the thing that someone needs after me? And if we’re looking at Systemising, and automating your sales pipeline, which is the work that we do someone after me, what’s the impact of the work that I do? Well, they might need someone to provide a VA. Okay, so that’s downstream from me, someone upstream will be a business coach, because a business coach says, go and get a CRM, but doesn’t do the CRM work on that those people and then we can start to reach out to them. Right? Now, we’re gonna look at this sort of four step strategy. The first one is to once you identify these people in your world, we need to ask, and just something sort of simple as saying, Hey, Sam just sort of reached out, wanted to see if you’re open to finding ways that we can refer each other business. Alright, so that’s the first thing, right? We want to get a yes, yes, I’m open to that, or not, no, not as open as an eye cancer, take that person off and on to the next person on your list. The second stage is educate, alright, we need to really show people and educate our referral partners, what it is that we do and how we do it. Models, this is a really fantastic place to sort of put in the models and make it really easy to for people to understand what it is to do. Now, most importantly, we want to record this information somewhere. So if you’ve got a CRM that can do some custom fields, awesome, if you’ve got a little black book, motioning to fantastic, because again, if we don’t remember what it is that our partner does, and how to introduce them, it’s very difficult for us to do so.
Samantha Riley 09:11
Can I just touch on something you said there, how to introduce them? I think that’s, that’s something that’s really important is to educate your partner on how to introduce you, because the better the introduction, so the person that’s receiving the introduction, when they can know straight away, okay, I feel like I know what this person does. It’s a lot less weird to get on the phone to them when you know who they are and why you’re potentially being introduced. So I think that that’s a really important point
Tim Hyde 09:40
Yeah. Okay. Now, the third part of this strategy, once we’ve educated our partner, because quite, you know, clearly we could still walk away for six months and not see each other very much. I’m staying top of mind. Now, if you read four hour workweek from Tim Ferriss,
Samantha Riley 09:59
You which most of us have is like the Bible of entrepreneurial dreams.
Tim Hyde 10:05
This is where we can actually fit almost our entire week into four hours. Right now what you want to do is set a 10 minute phone call with your referral partners each week. Now, presuming you can fit that in, you might do it every fortnight if you want to slowly but don’t make it monthly. We want it on a really regular basis. And this is about staying top of mind. Because now on our 10 minute phone call, it’s not. Hey, Sam, how’s the weather? Sam, who have you met this week, that would be a good introduction for me. What you’re going to do is open up your calendar, and literally scroll through all the appointments that you’ve had with people. And then you’ll talk to each other about who’s more intrusive, an introduction to make between between you aren’t, and then you’ll make that introduction based on how you’ve taught your referral partner tend to introduce you. Okay, now, last step, my Windows math in a second, just to sort of illustrate how this works. The last step is what we call the referral loop. Because we’re gonna acronym ask, educate, stave off sites of the mind. And t for the referral loop, is that we need to go back to the people who introduced us, and say, Thank you. And the main loop of the introduction they’ve made for you. Okay, now again, this is where your CRM can come in super valuable, because you can literally as those email introductions have been sent out, you can actually put them into a column in your plug, individual pipeline, or a tag or something that says these people have been introduced to that I’m waiting to come back to me. Okay, so that the next time you catch up, you can say, Hey, Sam, I’m still waiting on Danny. Right? Danny hasn’t come back to me yet. Right. But I’ll follow up, or Danny has come back. And we’ve booked a sales meeting for, you know, Wednesday, the third.
Samantha Riley 12:04
Totally, right. Now,
Tim Hyde 12:06
Let’s look at some math as we overlay this. So that’s our strategy. This is how we’re gonna roll it out. We’re gonna have potentially 20, you know, 10 to 20 phone calls a week, just 10 minutes each each, and then you’re on on the rest of your day, or the next phone call as the case may be. Now, if we had 20 referral partners, and that’s just you, that those 20 phone calls each week, right, we’re probably alone. Me, Sam, how many? How many meetings have you had this week? So far?
Samantha Riley 12:35
Um, a lot. A lot.
Tim Hyde 12:40
Yeah, it’s, let’s go.
Samantha Riley 12:43
Going to say I generally do 20 to 30 meetings a week.
Tim Hyde 12:47
That’s quite a few. That’s a lot of meetings this week. Alright, let’s be really conservative. And say there’s only five meetings that you have each week, chances out of those five meetings, that and let’s assume that all of our referral partners are the same, they’re just having five meetings a week, that one person out of those five is a good fit for what it is we do Now bear in mind, we’ve looked upstream and downstream to know that it’s a natural progression from business coach to need a CRM. Alright, so we should find one person each week. Now, again, so that’s potentially 20 referrals per week, conservative, and say, there’s only half of those, right? Because you only get one referral every two weeks from one of your partners. Right, so we’re now down to 10. Right 10 meetings booked? Let’s assume that we only close half of those can we know we’re going to close at a higher rate, right? Well, you’re gonna close far higher than a Facebook ad because again, it comes with that referred trust. Yeah. And so it was five of those appointments, right into new clients. will congratulate Congratulations, you’ve just signed a new client every single weekday.
Samantha Riley 13:58
Yeah. And that’s with five partners. And
Tim Hyde 14:01
That’s what that’s for 20 partners. 20. Again, with 20 partners. Now, again, we’re probably being a little bit conservative in terms of the number of opportunities that those partners could create for you. But even at five or even add a new client every single day. Well, you know, what’s your program look like? You know, is it $1,000 $2,000 $3,000? You know, is it $12,000 Over 12 months? Is it $25,000 Over 12 months? You’re closing a new client, every sentence, but that’s that’s the one, right? Presumably those clients also come back and stay with you. Long term if you’re doing what you need to be doing with them. Presumably those clients also then refer you more business themselves. And so without spending a single cent on anything, you’ve got a really robust strategy in your business. That continues to pay off over and over and over again.
Samantha Riley 14:57
Totally, well, just going off there with those numbers. If you aren’t getting where you were just talking then one client a week, just by having these phone calls, and you had a 20. Let’s say you were charging 2500 a month for a client, you’ve got a million dollar business in less than a year, because it’s only 40. You only need 40 clients at two and a half 1000 a month to have a million dollar business. So no, we don’t do it. Yeah, no, no. And that, that’s super easy. So when people say, oh, you know, that sounds like a lot of phone calls. Would you? If you knew, then in 40 weeks, you would have a million dollar business? Would you commit to getting on 2010 minute phone calls every single week? I know my answer
Tim Hyde 15:50
My hand up right now. Because yes.
Samantha Riley 15:54
Okay, oh, do that. Totally. I love this strategy. I love that you’ve put a framework around it to make it super, super easy. Let’s talk really quickly about some of the places that that we find partners, you and I both have a lot of partnerships or joint venture partners, referral partners, however you want to talk about it. Some of the places that I find partners, or have found partners in the past is by connecting with people on LinkedIn. And this isn’t just, we’re going to connect into a 10 minute call. And all of a sudden, we’re referral partners. With with someone that you’ve met on LinkedIn, it’s generally and I’d love your with this is the same for you, Tim. But I would find it’s generally multiple conversations, it’s something that you need to warm up to, if it’s someone that you haven’t met before, or hasn’t been in your network before, but definitely have got partners from LinkedIn. A lot of most of my partners come from people that are in mastermind communities that I’m part of. And the reason that they’re the people that I always go to very first is for a couple of reasons. Generally, we’re in the same mastermind, there’s a lot of the same values, because we’re kind of in the same community. And we generally have the same sort of mindset. And normally the, you know, a similar kind of business size or experience. So they’re really great people to do partnerships with over and above that, where are some of the places that you find your partners,
Tim Hyde 17:31
Networking groups is another one, in any community is a great place to find stuff, even if you’ve got a business coach yourself, you know, so I know Sam, a lot of law, your listeners are also, you know, clients of yours as well. Just look around you and say, Okay, we’re all here for the same purpose. We’re all here to grow our business, you know, what is it you do? And just ask the questions, what is it you do? And who do you serve? And if the same if the, you know, as a rule, right? If they’re the same, in the same space, having the same conversations with the same people, but don’t do what you do, that is a great opportunity to say, hey, just open one on one, if you’re open to collaborating and seeing how we might be able to help each other grow, right, we serve the same people, right, we have a similar conversation with the same clients, but don’t do the same thing. And if we both did it for a client, they would be better off. Let’s make it easy for our client to get better results.
Samantha Riley 18:32
That those two questions are the first two questions I ask anyone, what do you do? And who do you serve there? The first few questions I ask anyone. And even if I’m having a potential partnership call with someone that does do something similar to what I do and does serve a similar kind of client. If it’s someone that I gel with, I will still generally do something with them to build our audience and see what we can do together or introduce each other to potential partners. So don’t just write someone off because at first thought they may be a competitor, because you just you know, if there’s a values alignment, and this you know, you’re excited to be talking with that person, just start to explore where could this go that could turn into different partnerships down the track? Yeah,
Tim Hyde 19:25
I’m channeling my year 12 economics here with effective specialization. But it’ll have that conversation. And if someone’s not quite ready, put them into another funnel of potential partnerships. Right? It’s a nurture that relationship. So then someone drops off your active referral partner group, that you can tap into that potential group and say, Alright, we’ve been building a relationship for you know, six months, 12 months, two years, whatever. I you open to that conversation now and being more active partners again. up with that 10 minutes, right? Well, that’s where we want to get to we want to build. That’s why I say, you know, just work on five per month, don’t don’t try and build 20 all at once. But you know, if we start if you start out just by saying, you know, are you open to this? What would this look like for you? What would it look like for me? Right? Do a cross referral, do a podcast with each other to start with and see whether that’s that values alignment, right? share each other’s posts to start with, right? And if you share their posts, and they share yours, disagree, there’s a good opportunity there to say, Okay, we’re already starting to collaborate on different ways. Let’s take that to the next level.
Samantha Riley 20:42
So we’ll put the challenge out over the next four months, at five partners a month, getting to the point of having 20 partnerships 10 minute calls per week, that within a minimum of 40 weeks, I’ll say minimum because I think that it could definitely go faster than that. You’ll have a million dollar business. I think this is a fabulous strategy to scale and I highly recommend you jump on and do this. Tim, thanks for sharing your strategy. Really appreciate it. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone else in your world that also would like to build a million dollar business. And while you’re at it, please follow or subscribe to this episode, so you are notified every time another episode drops, which is every Tuesday and Thursday. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll catch you next week on the influence by design podcast. Ciao. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the influence by design podcast. If you want more head over to influence by design podcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com.
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