Partnerships that send work, not business cards

Strategic partnerships sound like the kind of thing bigger companies do. In a business with twenty staff it usually means the owner met an electrician at a chamber of commerce breakfast, they liked each other, and nothing has come of it since.

It can be a real channel though. Some of the work we have seen move fastest came from a handful of businesses that see the problem before you do and have your customer's ear first. The difference between one that sends work and one that sends business cards is not luck or charm. It is four conditions.

Four conditions

• They already see the problem you solve. A landscaper sees the drainage job. An installer sees the electrical. An insurer sees the rebuild. If they have to think to find a reason to send you work, they won't.
• They trust you specifically, not your industry. That comes from one or two jobs going unusually well, which is why you start with the ones you can over-deliver on.
• It costs them nothing. One phone number, one message, one name. If referring to you takes forms or a sales pitch, it will not happen.
• Something small comes back. A referral in the other direction, priority scheduling, a rate, a first look at a job. Unspoken arrangements decay.

Where to look

Find the trade that sits immediately before or after yours. Whoever is on site when the customer starts thinking about your job is worth more than any lead source we have been given a budget for. Then look at suppliers, installers, agents, accountants and anyone who touches the same customer at a different moment of their year.

In distribution and pharmaceutical work we have run this with a short list of five partners rather than fifty, and the short list is the one that produced revenue. Depth beats breadth and it is also cheaper to manage.

How to set it up so it survives

• A one-sentence offer the partner can repeat when you are not there.
• One named person on your side who picks it up, and a number that gets answered.
• A note against every job showing who sent it, so credit lands and you can see which relationships are working.
• A ten-minute check-in each quarter with each partner, in the diary, not whenever it suits.

If a partner cannot describe what you do in one sentence, they cannot refer you. Shorten the sentence before you add another partner.

When to stop

If a partnership has sent nothing across two quarters, it is a relationship, not a channel. Both are fine. Call it what it is, stop counting it in the forecast, and put the attention somewhere it gets returned. The owners who do this end up with three or four partnerships that regularly send work, which beats thirty that make the business look well connected.