Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 4 minutes.

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When things are plodding along, growth and sales are “OK”, many founders are tempted by wholesale changes: new channels, new products, or new audiences.

And experimentation is great. However, at the micro scale, elite sellers learn what works and double down day after day, month after month.

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Today we’ll cover:

• Storytime
• Focus on Strengths​
• Partnerships

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Storytime

A friend runs an agency that recruits, trains, onboards, and part-manages cold callers for clients.

The outcome clients buy is seamless delivery of qualified leads, ready for a sales conversation.

Going further, the agency specialises in businesses that have yet to make cold calling work.

Meaning clients get to experiment with a new channel with massive potential and limited risk.

It also means there is systemic failure baked into the business model, as cold calling works but not for every offer, product, or business.

After all, clients are investing in a cold calling experiment.

When we last spoke, my friend asked me (paraphrased):

In the above statement, there is a lot to unpack:

1. A cold-calling agency can obviously book many cold meetings for itself
2. 2-3% means outbound is failing at every level. Probably unqualified leads, a poor offer, wrong timing, and any number of other issues
3. There is irony that a cold calling agency can’t close outbound meetings
4. However, 20-30% is a strong close rate for inbound and partner referrals, and
5. With a mid-6-figure turnover and lots of happy clients, the agency is doing something right.

For this agency, it is easy to book another 10-20 sales meetings from outbound cold calling, but if they aren’t closing AND another channel is closing, they should double down on inbound and partner referrals.

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Focus on Strengths

The above is a classic mistake I see with founders who want something to work, without stopping to think about the why behind it all.

It would be amazing if outbound meetings turned into clients. It would mean the agency can scale faster and help many more businesses struggling with lead generation.

But at micro scale, the market sets the rules and you get to adapt.

And my friend’s goal is to close more deals.

Therefore, the market is telling my friend that his strengths are inbound and partner referrals - so get more of them.

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Cheat Code

The more sales leadership experience I have, the more I am convinced that partner referrals are a cheat code.

Partner leads close at a much higher rate than any other lead generation, and they also:

• Cost less marketing spend
• Rely on personal relationships with referrers, which are defensible, and
• The partner pre-vets the buyers, so they’re much more likely to be qualified.

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Risk for Partner Referrals

However, partner leads are harder to earn (at first) as the majority of the benefit is shared between the seller and lead, while the majority of the risk falls on the partner’s shoulders.

The risk is that the partner already has a trusting relationship with the lead, and if anything goes wrong, the partner could lose that trust.

Therefore, partner referrals are a slower lead-generation strategy that requires building significant confidence from the partner, enough to mitigate their risk.

Once the partner trusts you, they should send 10, 20, or 100 customers over the coming days/weeks/months. So it is worth the investment.

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Partnership Outreach

If you’re like the agency at the beginning of the newsletter - can generate outbound interest but struggle to close anything that isn’t inbound - I suggest you flip your outbound from targeting customers to targeting referral partners.

This is a medium-term strategy. It will take a minimum of 3 sales cycles for you to see much return.

Once it starts working, it grows exponentially, and the relationships you have to build are difficult for others to copy; therefore, it is a highly defensible lead-generation strategy.

Great partner outreach has a few key criteria:

• Highly targeted
• Clarity
• Low Risk

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Highly Targeted

Partner outreach needs to be highly targeted. Only reach out to those with enough potential referrals to justify the time and energy investment.

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Clarity

Sellers overuse the word partner. Before you reach out to anyone, you need a great answer for “Who does what, for whom, and how is it compensated?”

Once you have your answer for “Who does what, for whom, and how is it compensated?”, then make sure you know the timeline and structure you’re expecting the partnership to take.

Any lack of clarity will kill your momentum.

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Low Risk

Before formalising any partnerships, make it easy for both sides to test each other out.

The best version of this I have ever seen is a firm that sells a website widget. Their sales channel is via referrals from marketing agencies, and they pay the agencies ~10% of revenue on any deal, for life.

Before formalising a partnership, the first step is a “Proof of Concept Client,” in which the agency introduces a single client to the firm.

Then they go through the whole onboarding cycle and provide significant value for the client before asking the agency to sign an agreement formalising future introductions.

Lowering the risk makes it easy to say yes at first and make the ask easy to achieve.

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Ultimately, the best partnerships result in your doubling down on those introductions and making it easy for new partners to begin introducing.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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