 The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode. Hello everybody and welcome to our Lunchtime Webinar Express series. We've got a great session today on partnership marketing with Dave Plunkett who will talk us through his dance framework for successful partnerships. If you've watched any of our Webinar Express sessions before, then you'll know how this works. But for those joining us for the first time today, a very warm welcome to you, it's great to have you with us. Before I hand over to Dave, I'll very quickly give you some information about the session. How you could submit your questions for the Q&A and where to go if you want to watch the session again. So we'll be hearing from Dave for around 30 to 35 minutes. We'll then move into a 10 to 15 minute Q&A to answer some of your questions. You can post your questions at any time during the session by clicking on the question mark. We've circled the question mark for you. 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We love to see your comments on the socials, so please do get involved and let us know what you think of today's session. And finally, if you're a university student attending today's webinar, then you may wish to sign up to the CIM Marketing Club. All you need to do is take a photo of the QR code that's on the screen. Alternatively, you can hop onto our website and find the Marketing Club webpage under the qualifications drop down menu. It'll keep you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry, so it's really worth taking a look and signing up. Okay, so I'd now like to introduce our guest speaker for today's session, Dave Plunkett from Collaboration Junkie. If you'd like to turn on your webcam, Dave, I'll pass things over to you in the floor is yours when you're ready. Awesome, thank you very much and a good afternoon everyone. I hope this finds you well. Let's just get these slides moving on. There we go. So welcome to Mastering the Partnership Dance and I want to start by taking you on a journey. A journey before the days of social media and pay-per-click, before direct mail, potentially before even the written word. Back in those prehistoric times even, if you wanted a new route to market or something to help you with your new brand positioning, then essentially, word of mouth and working collaboratively and in partnership was the only thing that you had available to you. Word of mouth is the oldest and I would argue still the most successful form of marketing for most brands. And yet it's one that so few of us really pay attention to and have much of a strategy around. And that's why I want to work with you and share some insights on today. So before we do that, we'll do a little bit about just a very brief bit on why it is that I'm speaking and why you might want to listen to me. So other than being a relatively cute kid, I think, I've got a bunch of background in this. But what I'm going to quickly do is while I talk to you, I'm the least important thing today. So while I talk you through a bit of my history, we're just going to pop a poll up, which would just be good for me to get some insight as to where you're at with partnerships at the moment. So while you're answering that, you may have noticed on that sheet of logos that a woman that was business seen, I've got a background in business membership, so I run my own work for the Chamber of Commerce. I then run my own membership organization, which we grew to almost 2,000 members, almost entirely through referrals and strategic partners. I then run a benefit business, working in partnership with people who have business communities to provide benefits to them through some of those logos you saw up there, some global brands such as Regis and Volvo, and Yalba's users as their access point for the SME market. So I had some successes, but also had some other made or witnessed a bunch of mistakes along the way. And I've turned those into the work that I do now at Collaboration Junkie, which is where I work with service and SaaS businesses to really help them with the skills and the strategy to get strategic partnerships right and really working for them because it's such a powerful, powerful way to work when we do get that right. So I'll leave this pot up here just a couple of seconds more. Brilliant slides back. So I kind of did a little story bit at the start and I mentioned that I normally work on lead gen, but I'm aware that there is going to be a broad range of of you on here today. And so it's not just about leads, the framework works for all different sorts of partnerships. And I'm just going to highlight some of those with some stats who doesn't love a good statistic. So I think I'm going to have to click on my mouse. So the first one up, pretty broad. We've got 97% of company surveys believe that partnerships are critical to their success. No surprise there. Getting a little bit more specific though, Harvard Business Review, companies that collaborate with external partners are more likely to be successful at developing new products and services. So innovation is a key reason to be partnering and collaborating with others. Then looking right, looking back in the on the marketing piece. We've got this one here about brand awareness of things like credibility and by association of brand awareness, another essential, really strong reason to partner and get it right. But it's not just external partnerships, kind of working collaboratively with others, particularly when we're in large organizations. So innovation is a key skill. And yeah, a report by Deloitte here showing about the that strong collaborative culture within organizations leads to higher performing teams. And then we move into a little bit more into my normal wheelhouse around revenue growth and real kind of hard ROI. We've got some stuff here on 50% more likely to report revenue growth. And if we really want to get down to the lead gen stuff, 84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral. Absolutely huge numbers there. And I think what it does show is that all saying about it's not what you know, it's who you know, really comes to the fore. And okay, I think it's more, it's not just what you know, because what you know is important, but it really needs to be seeded with and supported with who you know as well. And we live in a relationship economy, and the strength of our relationships really will enhance the strength of our business and the strength of our results and the work that we do. But we need a strategy behind it. And before I move on to my dance framework, which is going to outline that strategy, I'm just going to pop up those poll results again and see where we're at. Okay, also a pretty even spread actually so identifying. Okay, brilliant. So that we've got reasonably even spread there. And the engaging within acquiring new partners act doesn't doesn't surprise me at all actually that's what I see quite a lot, but an even spread across the other piece. Okay, right, if we could get the poll down now that'd be wonderful work for my slide to pack up. So five answers that I asked you to select from. And funny enough, they relate to the five steps in my dance framework and they are discovery, discovering who your ideal partners are assembling the systems and processes to scale. And relationships so they remain really strong, helping with that connection piece of helping your partners, activate the part activate the partnership and do what you want them to do. And last but not least, engagement going out and finding partners. What I will say before we move on though, is that that engagement piece that scored so highly on the on the poll. Actually, if you get these other bits right that that engaging with and getting new partners on board actually becomes much, much easier than we think it would be. So moving swiftly on. There's an underlying rule that's going to go right across everything that I talk about over the next 30 minutes. And that's make it easy. We are all busy people whether it's whether you're a business owner whether you're in house marketing part of team whether you're a marketing director, we're all busy people, which means we become inherently lazy. And I don't mean Netflix slobbing out on the sofa lazy I mean, if something isn't easy for us to do and it's not part of our core day to day activity. If it's not easy for us to do both physically or take too much brainpower will put it on the I'll get around to it pile. I don't know about your piles might get round to it piles. Sometimes only get touched when I'm wiping them off the proverbial desk to start again. So the easier we can make it for our partners to either engage with us or work with us or see an outcome and more likely are to do what we want them to do. So with that in mind, we'll move on to the first step of the dance framework which is discovery. And this is all about understanding who your ideal partners are. It doesn't mean we don't work with other people in whatever capacity we're looking for. But if we have a really clear image of who those ideal partners are, we're much more likely to attract them and we're much more likely to have a strong message. And the first thing we need to do here is be specific. So the first thing is about having a really clear understanding around why you're looking to partner. Is it brand awareness? Or is it leads? Or is it innovation? What is that main reason you're looking to partner? And if you have more than one reason to partner, that's fine. But it's quite rare that one partner will cover all of those bases and be the ideal partner for that. So have a really clear image in your mind around what you're looking to achieve from any given partnership so that you have a really clear understanding of what the ideal partner looks like and that specific piece. From there it's about being really targeted about what the end goal is and who the end audience is because only from there can we be really clear about who our ideal partner is. And the reason why this is so important is because it allows us to lead on to understanding what our partner value proposition is. And this is the bit that makes the going and getting partners so much easier. I mean it's not about understanding why you want to work with another partner, it's about positioning your proposition in a way that really speaks to them. If I can use kind of lead gen partners as an example, all too often people will focus on when they're talking to new partners, they'll focus on the value that they can deliver to someone's client. And all that says is I'd like to sell to your audience please. When actually there's people out there where the real driver for them wanting to work with you is that what you do in some way enhances their own product or service. And so if you can tap into that what that is and communicate that in a way that says I want to rather than I want to help your audience to do this is I want to help you to do this for your audience. Then it works that it's just it's a very subtle shift, but it immediately sets the partnership up on the right foot. What I mean with this is could be this could be a copywriter and ideal partners for copywriters could be web developers who don't do the great copy. The web developer wants to refer the copywriter in because it means ultimately the website will perform better and their clients will be happier. Is that sort of level of relationship and just positioning that it's not about as a copywriter. It's not about you delivering great copy for that web developers clients. It's about helping a web developer deliver a better website for their customers and deliver a better result. It seems obvious, but so few people position their propositions in this way. And whether it is Legion or whether it's brand awareness or whether it's internal collaborations and this really understanding what's in it for the partner. Not the end kind of recipient will absolutely allow you to set your partnerships up in the right way and get people excited about working with you. So that's the discovery piece. I knowing who ideal partners are and crafting a message that's really compelling for them to want to work with us. We then move on to assembly. Now the reason why I use this is the system and the process is the behind the scenes things. The reason why I use a festival image isn't just because I love festivals, which I do. But it's because imagine you were going to a festival, you'd seen a lineup, whatever type of music it is you like. Imagine the greatest lineup in the world at a new festival. You've got your ticket, you're super excited to go and then you get there and the queuing is a nightmare. It takes you two hours to get in. When you get there, there's only one bar and it's poorly run. And then when the music starts, the set lists are all out of sync. So it bounds on at a different time and the sounds rubbish. It's awful. Right. And it means that no matter what happens, then following in about how good the lineup is, you're probably not going to go back because the behind the scenes systems and setup was just all wrong. And you've lost trust. And having this behind the scenes stuff right. It's about building and maintaining trust with your partners, which is absolutely crucial if you want to form long term partnerships. And it's also about setting up scale. Now there's all sorts of things that go on with this, but there's one in bearing when we've only got a short amount of time. There is one key thing that I want to mention is to do with tracking. And whether that's lead gen partnerships where you're tracking leads, whether it's tracking results, whether it's tracking other commercial drivers, whatever it may be, the key metrics of your partnership. They need to be tracked. You need to be able to communicate them back to your partners quickly, efficiently and easily. Because if you can't, then one of two things happens. If there's a commercial angle to it, there's a chance that you look a little bit dodgy that something hasn't been registered before, hasn't been registered correctly in the any kind of commercial arrangement might not go through. All people think you're incompetent and you just don't know. And crook and incompetent are not good looks when we're trying to form partners, particularly where there's a commercial aspect. So it's really important to get the tracking of whatever data is happening amongst your partnership. Right. And on that note, you can spend thousands on on a monthly basis on partnership software. Or you can use a spreadsheet. I'm a big fan of CRMs, but it is better to use this is better to have a spreadsheet that you use than a fancy bit of software CRM that you don't. So just for whatever you do make sure that that key data is being tracked. The other piece that I want to cover under this kind of the setup of partnerships. Is reward and recognition. And now this is such a gray area, particularly in the referral and lead gen space because there's a there's a great book that I'm sure many of you have listened to called or read drive down pink where it talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And with things like referrals if you from your clients and customers if you're building referral programs out for your organizations. If you over incentivize a referral upfront, then it can really turn people off who would have made that referral for you anyway. There's a well known bit of accounting software that keeps sending me an email offering me 50 quid a pro for someone to them. And it's just so off the market. It's ridiculous. Where we're looking at strategic partners, a commercial angle helps elevate the relationship from a friendly handshake to something much more formal and serious. But whatever your type of partnership, one thing that is goes throughout everything is people like to be shown gratitude. So if there's been a good result, if something's happened, then make sure you're saying thank you. And if there is if providing something else on top is appropriate, then the more personal you can be the better create those kind of wow moments those special moments right because at their core partnerships are based on relationships. And so building those the building that relationship by going the extra mile doing the personal piece. They're only little things but they go a long, long way. So, we know who ideal partners are. We've got the systems and the setup there. The next piece to make sure we do is that once they're on board is that we nurture those relationships in the right way. As I just said, it's that that relationship piece sits it's very cool. And there can be a danger in some partnerships to over automate and over systemize everything. And in my mind that doesn't work. There are different reasons to communicate. Sometimes it is transactional. It's about keeping your partners informed about what's going on within that partnership, whether it's results, whether it's progress on particular milestones that have been hit. The reason for partnerships, there will be milestones that are transactional things that keep everyone else informed. And because of that there's different styles for doing it. So if it is that more transactional piece, then fine the things can be semi automated or even self serve as a dashboard somewhere wonderful. But equally we need to make sure that we're building and maintaining those human relationships. And that needs a different type of approach. Yes, we can absolutely have systems behind the scenes to remind us to do this stuff. So behind the scenes it can be super formal, but it needs to feel informal and personal to your partners. And there's three key communication points that I want to that I want to run through and these are absolutely universal across all partnership types. And setting expectations particularly as one that I think is the number one reason where if you've had a partnership and it's not really hit the level of success it should have done, fizzled out or even worse ended acrimoniously. A lot of the time it's because expectations haven't been set at outset. And this can be quite a tricky thing to do. But when we're all excited about a new partnership, and we're going to conquer the world to be think we're on exactly the same page, kind of sitting down and taking a step back can be a hard thing to do. But it is so, so powerful if we do do it. And there's three things you want to do within the expectation setting. That's look at the long term goals. What do you want? So long term expectations setting. Because even if you're just five or 10% out in your long term thinking you, if you don't pick that up then over time that that gap between your thinking is bigger and bigger. And some suddenly the partnership doesn't feel right and you wonder why and it's because you've sat out on slightly different trajectories. There's then the midterm around what does this, what do the nuts and bolts of this look like as we activate it. The other expectation to be setting is what can we do right now to get things going. Momentum is powerful in all types of work and life, but it's particularly powerful in a partnership, particularly where there's huge scope within a partnership to actually focus on what we can do to just get going is really powerful because potentially things never really kick off because you just get stuck in that planning stage. So what's that simple thing you can do? Because as well as building momentum, it also kind of gives everyone a dip in the toe in the water on what people are like to work with. So it's really important to set expectations and communicate those expectations once they've been set, either in a formal partnership agreement, if that's appropriate or at the very least a one page or an email that everyone buys into and goes, yes, that is how we are going to work together. These are the goals. This is what we're doing. Absolutely crucial. The second thing is keeping your partners informed. Now this may seem obvious, but so often it doesn't happen. And I am going to use lead gen partnerships again as a specific one in this, in that when someone makes a referral or an introduction to you, and this could be a lead or it could be any type of introduction. But what they're doing is they're not just making an introduction. They are giving you a little bit of their reputation and reputation is the the most important thing any of us have. And so it's up to us as partners to treat that little bit of reputation with the trust and the respect that it deserves. Your partners should never be left wondering what's happening with their reputation. Keep your partners informed at every step of the way. And that goes so it's especially true when there's any kind of leads or data being passed. But it's true across all types of partnerships. Let people know what's going on. If there's been a hold up because there's an internal discussion going on. Let your partners know. Let them know what's going on. Don't leave them wondering. And then the final piece I'm going to mention on the on the nurturing and the building and maintaining relationships is about having formal reviews. Now I use the word formal in terms of we want to get them scheduled in but they should still feel friendly and informal and relationship building. But this is about no matter how much you're talking with your partners on a day to day basis around what's going on around activating the partnership. Setting time aside to have formal reviews is so so powerful. Particularly if we set our expectations at the start because number one. We can look at those expectations. If things aren't going quite as well. The fact that we've had those expectations set means that potentially difficult conversations become much much easier to have. It's not about beating people around a stick around the head with a stick with these expectations. It's about keeping dialogue open and making those trickier conversations easy. The second thing we can do is we can ask our partners what we could be doing better. Because we all like to think that we're greater what we do. I'm sure we can all admit that we're not always perfect. And so there may be things that we're doing. They just niggle our partners. So they're not bad enough for them to pick up the phone to us or drop us an email. But they do niggle and we don't want niggles in our partnership. We want everything to just be smooth and easy. And so by asking the question is there anything else we could be doing or what could we do that's better. So often your partners will say I don't know what I wasn't going to mention it but there is this thing. We want that. We want those comments because then we can rectify them and really be delivering value to our partners. The third thing and it's my absolute favorite is when we have these review meetings we can take the time to ask our partners what's going on in their world. Because so often when we do that when we're curious about what's going on in our partner's world we find you opportunities. Curiosity is the birthplace of opportunity. And so by taking that time to find out what's going on with our partners so often we uncover other opportunities for us or people that we know. And that collaborative effect is builds and builds. So really, really recommend having formal reviews. It's something that so many people don't. But it's a massively powerful tool to use. Okay. So we know who our partners are. You've discovered that we've set up all behind the scene system. We've got the processes in place to communicate with our partners effectively. The next thing now is actually activating the partnership, tying it all together and helping our partners connect us to whatever it is we need them to do. And there's two aspects of this. There is partner facing. So this could be, this could be sales support. If it's a, if it's a lead gen partnership or brand awareness partnership, it's sales and marketing support. In terms of giving them the knowledge that's in our heads as to how they can best, how they internally can best position it is what they do. It could be technical support. It could be support with internal conversations that you can have that would be much easier for you to do than it would be for your partners. It's about understanding the touch points that your partner has with whoever the end recipient or the end goal is and looking at is there anything that I can do that will make my partner's life easier or make the result more effective. And so often we don't do this stuff. And then we think that we worry that we might be either we don't think about it, or we worry that we might be kind of teaching people to suck eggs. But we're not. There's a saying that I like to use all the time. It's not common sense experience. We all think what we do is common sense because we do it day in and day out. And it's not common sense. It's experience. So if we've got that clear in our mind that what we all do is uniquely great to us, if we can share that experience with our partners and help them along the way, then they are much more likely to help us deliver the end result that we're looking for. So it's a really, really key one to do that. The other piece is customer facing or end user facing is in a broader sense. And this would be in marketing terms or well all the different marketing stuff we could do essentially so there's a bunch of them up there. And if it's if we're looking at a lead gen partnership or a brand awareness partnership, then it's all about making sure that you not only have all the stuff that you can proactively provide your partners, but actually take the time to ask them what they're doing. What are they doing at the moment that that you can support and you can add more value to where you can add real value to the end audience in a way that remember if we've got that partner value proposition piece at the start right, then our partners want to do this stuff for us. So the easier we make it for them to do that by offering this range of additional support. Then the, then the more likely are to do it. Now on that ease piece. It's also important to provide our partners with the right level of support with materials so there's easy for them to do it. And what I mean by that is, if you've got materials that are set up to be kind of direct to market. Then maybe they're not appropriate for your partners to be using maybe they're going to need to tweak them slightly. And so I would always suggest that you do that heavy lifting. And I say that because I was responsible for writing hundreds of thousands of leads to some of the some of the brands and various others that you saw on that slide right at the start. So I dealt with a number of large organizations marketing teams, and we were sending out regular communications on behalf of other path of our clients from the promoting these other other products. And the amount of times that I got content in, and I had to either completely adapt it or me or someone in the team I had to completely adapt it because it was written from a for a corporate market, not an SME market and then send it back for approval. Well, even if the content was right, but I had to top and tail it differently to so it read that it was coming from a partner. It was just annoying. And remember what we said before we don't want annoying we want smooth partnerships. So when you're thinking about the content you provide your partners that they may be sending out. Think about giving it to them in a way that's going to be easy, easiest for them just to lift it and use it as much as they possibly can. And again, this also works really well when you've got multiple partners, because you have to do that work once and then send out multiple times, rather than each individual partner going in and making those tweaks, potentially sending it back to you for revisions, which is more time on you to do the heavy lifting, make it easy. Okay, so we're on there in the end now there in the end of our dance together. So we've got we know who our deal partners are and what our value proposition is. We know what we know that we need to set up the right systems behind the scenes. We know that we need to communicate in them, both from a transactional point of view and a relationship point of view, setting expectations, one of those on ongoing basis. And we're doing all we can to help our partners actually activate the partnership and do what they need to do. The final piece is going out there and getting new partners. Now, there's two things to remember here. But first of all, on the subject of partners, depending on your partner types, it may be a kind of a phased approach to a partnership program, particularly if you're in the kind of the external partnership space and it's around getting more visibility or getting more leads or driving more engagement. Your ideal partner, if you're just starting out on your partnership journey, your ideal partner for right now is not your ideal partner for all time. If you know what I mean. If you get too large potentially if you get too large a partner in early doors, they could break your system they might deliver more leads and you need whatever it may be. Quite often, our early adopter partners, we want them to be people that maybe we know, or at least at the very least, are friendly and sympathetic and so we can build our partner programs out with minimal stress and minimal pressure. So finding those early adopter partners, and then building out from there once we've got case study and testimony and we've tested all our systems and we know what works can be a much, much stronger play. It also means getting those larger partners becomes much easier because we've got proven case study and testimony. But the key thing the key thing hill push the button the wrong way key thing here is to is first of all really remember that partner value proposition. If you can get that piece right around the value delivered to the partner, not the value to the end audience, then immediately they are going to engage with you because you'll stand out from the other messages that everyone that everyone gets. The second thing that I really recommend everyone does is is usual network. I do outside of the partnership piece I do a lot of work with people on on their own kind of referral strategy as well, some from customers and clients. And one of the things I say always say to people when I do this work is that is that remembering referrals aren't just for leads. How often we referrals are every part of our life aren't they we look for restaurant recommendations what to watch on TV. And the same is true within the business environment, and it's especially true with partners. So, when you're asking for an introduction for potential lead or a sale from someone, then there is there can be a hesitance there because the person making that referral is kind of knows that the person is going to. There can be some kind of pitch on the other end so unless they're absolutely certain they need the service that can sometimes be a hesitance. But if you're looking for a referral introduction to a potential partner, well there's no sell there. It's an opportunity. And if it sounds like a sell then you need to go back and look at your partner value proposition again because you should never have to sell a partnership opportunity is an opportunity. And so by looking at what we've got on our network, most of the time we've got within our either directly or in our first circle, we've got the people that are right for those early adopter partners to see where we're going. And a nice little extra tip here for you on that use your network on if there's someone that you that you know that you think could be a good partner for whatever reason in your business, but you're unsure around how to approach them. And if you're just starting out asking them for feedback on your partner program is a really good way thing to do, because most people are quite nice. And so then they like and most people like to give advice they'd like to be thought of that they'd like that their opinion counts. And so if you ask someone for help, if you say look, we're building this partner program, you fit within our demographic, I'd really appreciate your feedback on whether we've kind of hit the nail on the head here. The most people will say yes. And what you'll get off the back of that is you'll either get some some good feedback that there's stuff that needs improving, or you'll get good feedback that it is right and hopefully potentially a partner of it as well. So really remembering that value proposition and using your network should get you the conversations that you need. And at that point it's doing all it's it's knowing you've got the value from the all those other bits of the framework. And making sure you make it easy for people to say yes, let them know how easy it's going to be to work with you how easy it's going to be to on board and setting those expectations that's that that's the crucial piece. Okay, so I think I've been about bang on half an hour I think so as a recap, be crystal clear on why you're partnering and who your ideal part and therefore who your ideal partner is, and what that partner value proposition is. Make sure that you've you've set up the systems behind the scenes so that you can build trust and you can scale your partnerships as you go. Have the communication processes in place, particularly around setting expectations, keeping your partners informed and the formal reviews. All you can, both in terms of internal support and external facing materials, do all you can to help your partners activate the partnership and get that connection between them and their audience. And then finally, remember, think about who the right partner is for you right now, focus on that partner value proposition and use the networks that we all have to help grow those partner channels and whatever partnerships it is you're looking for. So that's me that's my partnership dance. If you would like to know any more about the work that I do, you can scan that QR code there or take your food to a page on my site where we can connect. Also, you can look me up on LinkedIn and Dave Plunkett collaboration junkie, you can jump onto the collaboration junkie website, or you can you can drop me an email to Dave at collaboration junkie.com. I absolutely love to connect to people. It's at the very core of who I am and what I do. It excites me. I love people stories. So please do connect reach out if any of this is resonated. You've got any questions or you'd like to know more about the work that I do. Yeah, would love to connect. Thank you all for listening. I guess it's over to Q&A now. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Dave. Yes, over to the Q&A and we've already had some great questions, which will get underway in just a second. Please do continue to post any questions you might have and we'll try and get through as many as we can in the next 15 minutes or so. Just a little reminder that if you want to comment on the socials about today's webinar, you can use the hashtag CIM events and we've just popped that up on the screen again for you. So just heading into our first question. Very first to ask was a clarification, actually Dave, because the sound momentarily dropped out when you were talking about the title of a particular book. I just wondered if you could repeat that for us as there were a few people that wanted to get the title of the book. Yeah, okay, it's Drive by Dan Pink and it talks all about motivation. I mean, I listen. I'm an audible person and he does the narration, I think. Or if he doesn't do it, it's someone good. So yeah, Drive by Dan Pink. Fabulous, thank you so much. So some of the other questions that came up, we had one that's asking if you could provide an example of two lesser known brands who have collaborated with a partnership that's benefited both brands. Is there anything you can think of examples wise? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's the work that I do day in day out so I can use some client examples. One of the people that I work with, what I did some work with was a marketing agency, actually, and they were trying to lead their partner program by pushing on their commission and referral fee, which kind of as I mentioned, it didn't excite people. So we switched up the partner value proposition. So they started working with and partnering with people who did inbound leads. So SEO, pay-per-click, that type of search based marketing, because where that partnership works really well for the search and inbound marketing, search marketing agencies is, yes, they should really only be judged on the number of leads and the quality of leads that they provide, but really the end result that the client wants is new customers. But the problem for the people that providing the leads were was once they've handed them over to the customer, they've lost all control over them. So by then referring in and working with someone who was going to follow up those leads really efficiently and well meant that more of the leads got converted, which meant the clients were stickier and actually started investing more in more search and more inbound requirements because they were seeing more end results. And so that's that that that's that it's looking at who's in that chain and going, right, well, they're the right they're the ideal partner to me because they fit into this chain. I'm working with someone I'm working with right now actually, which is completely on a on a different on a different angle. I'm just thinking because I had a session with them earlier earlier this morning. They're a construction consultant. So they're like a quantity surveyor, but for when big civil engineering projects are going really, really wrong. They step in. They actually partner with with normal quantity surveyors who are typically the first port of call here. And the reason why that partnership works really well is because the quantity the quantity surveyors they partner with, they're out of their depth a little bit when this stuff starts going wrong, it's a unique skill set. And so rather than them take the extra time and effort to work through this stuff, they'd rather hand that over to someone who's a bit more specialist, take a commission fee, and get back to doing higher margin, higher value day to day stuff. So it's really about looking at where your services and thinking about, well, whose product or service comes directly, either directly before mine or overlaps with mine, because typically that is where you've got some extra value to add. Fantastic. Thank you. And looking from that end of the spectrum to another end of the spectrum, one of the questions is asked if you're looking at really large organizations, e.g. Microsoft. The relationships can be quite a challenge as there's a lot of people involved and lots of things to try and connect. How would you recommend from a marketing director perspective to help shape experience when you have relatively limited control over such a large organization as a whole? Yeah. And yeah, obviously the more moving parts that are the trickier, the trickier it is. I think from that point of view, the framework is still valid and it really comes down to the expectations at the start. So there was a really, really clear common objective for everyone involved, no matter what it is, this is our overriding objective despite, because where there are people working on little bits of it is remembering what that goal is. And then I would say it's about, and it kind of links in with a formal review piece, but it's about what big events could you do? What things are there where you can get everyone involved? Is there a big kickoff event? Is there a big review event? Is there anything that can be done that just periodically brings everyone together, reminds of what that overall goal is, and how important every individual's units or people's role is within that and just kind of recalibrates everyone and gets them back on track. So I think it really does come down to that. The nurturing piece I think is more important than ever in that, both on a granular level and then as I said, is that big picture community piece. Fantastic. Thank you. And sharing win, I should have added that story, and sharing successes, kind of celebrating the wins. We don't do that often enough, I don't think in business in general, and particularly in partnerships. So it's all too often we move to the next thing and sharing wins and successes is a great way of inspiring people to keep going. Perfect. Thank you. Another question we had was, how would you recommend launching a referral program? Right, grey area. It really does depend on your business, right, because this comes back down to actually what we were talking about, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. If you are a sales led organization or your audience is kind of sales growth focused D type of people who are going to be extrinsically so it's kind of reward motivated people. They're great. Launch a referral program and have a have a reward, have a reward there that drives it. I would always position it as a thank you for referring though, rather than the reason someone will refer you. The reason why someone is going to refer you is because they know, like and trust you, and they want to increase their reputation either with the person they're making a referral, or with you as the person they're referring to. In most cases that will be the driver. So the reward piece though absolutely can be crucial if people are that way incentivized, but do it as a thank you rather than the reason. For some brands though, particularly with smaller businesses doing that, doing it that way doesn't always work doing it more organically. And rather than launching a program just being much, much more intentional about what you do on a day to day basis at the right points in your customer journey where you get wow moments, which often happen much sooner in someone's customer journey than they traditionally ask for referral. Just being more intentional about we are going to ask for referrals more can often have a greater impact than sending a mass email out offering people an Amazon voucher if they refer you. And so I appreciate I've not been very specific there, but that's because it is a, it really does vary from business to business and what you're looking to achieve. Whoever that is if they want to connect with me then I'm more than happy to kind of give them a bit more, a bit more detail when I know a little bit more context. Great, thank you. Sticking with the referral partnerships. Another question is asked whether or not you have got or can share any examples of successful referral partnerships between professional services firms, for example accountants, solicitors, banks. Yeah, so this is an interesting one and the on the and it comes down to the connection piece, I think, because the accountant solicitor one is kind of a is it's kind of a very traditional one, I would say in terms of there's a handshake agreement between a couple of people and I'm being really stereotypical here by the way so I apologize in advance because I appreciate what I'm doing here, but they, they know each other from Rotary or chamber or something like that. And it's handshake agreement that there's a partnership here but but stuff doesn't really happen. That's where the connection piece in the framework really, really comes to its own. That's where both giving training each other's teams. So just going in and doing a session with the other person's team around identifying the triggers and the moments in time when it's right to make a referral. So, if a client if you've got a client that's suffering this pain point or they're saying this thing or at this stage in their journey to make them this right time to make an introduction so kind of putting some process behind that. And then looking at the creative things you can do together so can you run a joint event. Can you run an event each other's offices can you do a webinar can you share blog posts it's that it's the it's about elevating the informal relationship to a more structured partnership. And that's exactly what that connection that connection pieces. It is all about. Fantastic and I think we've got time for just one more question that asked. Are there any common pitfalls with establishing partnerships or any golden rules to ensuring the gain maximum value from the partnership. Yeah, absolutely so the number one pitfall, the number one pitfall is that is the expectation piece. I honestly cannot stress that enough that definitely the number one pitfall is getting all excited, and they're not setting any expectations around where we headed and what we're going to do right now that is the number one pitfall above any other. The second one though and it's something and it fits into the discovery piece. And I didn't cover it then because it's a quite a big subject is one around values. And again this is something that becomes the varies depending on the size of organization around whether you're looking at organizational values. But when it's small businesses often it's personal values as well that and it's like going with a gut like sometimes that the audience match can be right the products and service match can be right. But somebody just doesn't feel right. And if there's a if there's a mismatch in values or and how that how that outwardly affects how we treat our customers and typically that partnership isn't going to be long term and something's going to kind of typically something breaks along the way or the the transition of customers doesn't quite work so so yes setting expectations but then also just making sure that because they are based on a human relationship that that values piece that feels right and it's and it's an enjoyable experience I suppose. Brilliant thank you so much Dave. Unfortunately that's it for our webinar today. So I would like to say a huge thank you to Dave for the fantastic presentation and answering all of those questions for us. And also thanks to the CIM Southwest and Channel Islands Group for organizing the webinar. We do hope you've enjoyed the session and found it interesting and worthwhile. We'll be sending out a short survey in the next few hours and we'd love to hear your feedback will only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous so please do let us know your thoughts on the session and what you would like to see from our webinar series in the future. We'll be back with our next webinar express Thursday the fourth of May with Patty Sanchez from Duarte. So head on over to our events page website and find further details and you can register for this session if you'd like to. So that just leaves me to say a final thank you for joining us today and we hope you enjoyed the webinar. Take care everyone and we look forward to seeing you again soon.