3 creative ways partner teams can drive referrals back to their partners 😲
One of the biggest challenges for partner teams is reciprocating referrals to all of their active partners. The issues for these teams are usually;
- Lack of access to the customers themselves.
- Few resources.
- No buy-in from other departments.
But, any partner manager can increase the visibility of their partners in the funnel (i.e. partner directory, co-marketing content...) as well as the number of opportunities the partner has to show face and be top of mind to the entire organization... which will lead to referrals from your colleagues to these partners.
Here are a few creative ways you can and should implement to ensure your service #partners are (1) known, and (2) top of mind for your other departments like CS and Sales:
1️⃣ Have a list of agencies to refer to at specific pain points in your buyers' journey
You can create a Miro board that details your buyer journey (most of your marketing teams should have this). List out the messaging and triggered steps.
Email your agencies asking them to fill out a form with how they service shared customers at each (as well as links to contact pages and reviews, maybe what technology they service besides yours) of those steps in the funnel.
Then, create a sheet / table version of the journey with each step as tab… on each tab, add the partner's name/contact info and how their services help customers at each of those steps. Share that with your CS and sales and marketing leads. Put it in your customer newsletter.
Host an all-hands meeting to review how to use it to make referrals on customer calls when the pinpoint is mentioned… create a blog article with all of that information.
Then, get Locusive or https://huckai.com/, upload the sheet and article link... Add the locusive / Huck app to slack.
Teach your CS and sales to prompt it via slack to ask “Which of our partners can help with ____ (customer pain point)?”
Here's an example Miro board you can use to help with your partner messaging journey:
2️⃣ Auto-Generate "better together" stories for specific partners
Using OpenAI + Zapier - trigger the prompt "How does {{partner URL}} enable our customers to succeed?"
Fill in that blank with a trigger from your Partnerhub® account when you accept a new partner - then push that better-together story + the partner's contact info to a slack channel your salespeople and/or CS people are in.
3️⃣ Reverse lunch & learns
You don't always have to present your program and product to them... Why not have experts at these agency or tech partners come present to a given department something they are an expert in that would help that department?
Examples:
- Present to our sales team on HubSpot best practices
- Present to our CS team on how to leverage Ai to better support customers
- Present to our Product team on Customer Experience tools and optimizations
Pick a day of the week or month to allow any of your agency partners the chance to present to your sales or CS team on a topic of choice they know those teams probably struggle with.
Put this opportunity into your partner newsletter.
Have it approved by your CEO and put into the normal work hours so your teammates don't have to use a lunch break to show up. Maybe get approval to use the budget to buy your team lunch for showing up. This works wonders for helping generate ideas for which customers can be referred to that partner.
Tools mentioned:
I hope this helps!