Why partnerships are my favorite small business sales strategy

One of the major strategies I overlooked when I started my business was the idea of partnering with other business owners and creators. I had been doing this informally for many years before I started super easy, but I didn't realize how powerful that strategy had been in growing my career and my network.

In today's episode, we're gonna talk about how partnering with other business owners, content creators, membership operators, and communities, can help you grow your business and connect with your buyers much faster than you can do one by one. With partners, you're able to tap into an entire engaged audience that trust your partner, and by proxy, trust you.

We'll talk about why partnering has been so successful for me, how you can think about ways to partner with people and where you can find your ideal partners. I'm Lex Roman, and this is the Low Energy Leads Show.

Before we get into why partnerships are my favorite strategy, what makes for a good partner and where you can find them. I wanna start by talking about some, getting booked pitfalls. So these are things I hear over and over again. When people come to me and they say, Lex, I'm not finding my clients. I need help getting leads. Where do I go? 

The first mistake I see people make is that they think they have to do cold pitching. So cold pitching does work. Cold pitching is a strategy that you can use. Cold pitching is really a volume game. So that's why you get a ton of spammy notes in your LinkedIn inbox and in your email, because there's a bunch of lead generators out there who are just trying to pummel the market and hope that somebody responds. It will work. It has worked for me in the past to do that. But it's probably one of the least strategic ways to spend your time. If your business is not lead generation cold pitching is gonna take a lot of time to pay off. And it's just not that good a use of your time. 

If you're a small business owner you work for yourself and you don't need thousands of clients a year, you just need a few cold pitching is just not a great strategic use of your time. There are way better strategies that you can use. And that is why partnerships is such a key one to know and use. 

The second pitfall I see is focusing on individuals instead of groups. So people will go out and they will try to pitch their buyers directly. Now that's okay. But wouldn't it be better if you reach a group of qualified buyers versus one potential buyer. So one of the benefits of partnering. Is that you can reach a group of qualified leads instead of going one to one. So focusing on individuals versus focusing on gaining access to groups of potential buyers, that is the second pitfall. 

The third pitfall is building from scratch when things exist. So by this, I mean, If you're starting your business, or if you haven't started a blog or a podcast or a newsletter. When you could really be building on an audience that someone else has already created, it's a big opportunity for you. So I'm not saying that you don't wanna create and own your own channels. I think you also want to do that, but when it comes to something like SEO, Google search, if you don't have any search juice on your website, you can leverage someone else's search juice. 

If you don't have any newsletter subscribers, you can leverage someone else's newsletter subscribers. If you don't. Have any podcast listeners, you can leverage someone else's podcast listeners, and the same thing is true of referrals. So while you do wanna build your own channels, I also think you wanna leverage other people's channels. If they are willing to work with you, collaborate with you and share those channels with you. 

Let's talk about what makes for a great partner. What are partners doing? What do I mean by the word partner? To me, a partner can be someone who sends work your way a lot. I wrote a lot here because I think that. Somebody who sends work your way. One time is not necessarily a partner. They are a refer and we appreciate and value them, but we want to establish repeatable, predictable, reliable channels for work and leads. So to me, a partner is someone who sends work your way more than once. 

A partner is also someone who promotes your work. So somebody who shares your work with other people, whether they do that on social media, whether they forward newsletters to their audience, whether they promote you at a party and introduce you to people, they are promoters of your work. 

A partner is someone who offers you their platform. So we're gonna talk about newsletters, podcast blogs, communities. There's lots of ways that someone can offer you their platform and in turn access to an audience that they've built trust with. A partner can also be someone you can collaborate with. So you can, co-host an event together. You can do a blog post together. You can do a conference talk together. There's lots of ways that you can come together to share your expertise and again, bring your audiences together. 

And lastly, a partner is someone who spreads the word about you. So somebody who is avidly out there talking about what you do and amplifying you offering visibility to the work that you do and to your company. 

Why are partners so useful? Why are they one of my favorite strategies for small business owners? There's three things I really wanna highlight here. The first is that they have an engaged audience. So they've spent a lot of time cultivating their own audience, 

rather than you having to go out and cultivate relationships with every single prospect, you can tap into the work that they've already done with their own audience.

They already have an engaged audience. And if you think about the amount of work that you do building and growing your audience, they're putting that same amount of work into their audience. You can tap into that work and you can leverage what they've already built there. The engagement that they've already built, wherever they have built that engagement. And going along with that, you can also leverage the trust. A partner has already created the know like trust factor with their audience, their audience trusts their recommendations and when they recommend you or when they collaborate with you, when they highlight you, they pass on that trust factor to you. 

So their audience trusts them by proxy. They trust you. That's huge. When you are out there doing sales and marketing activities, it's pretty rare that someone will have one interaction with you and then they will be sold. You are often having multiple interactions with people. 

You're meeting them once they're getting on your email list, they're following you. Maybe you're having a conversation. There's multiple touchpoints in there. And this partner access short circuits that. So you can get around faster and build that trust faster with that new individual because of the partner relationship. 

And third efficiency partners can spot a qualified lead when they're in buy mode. So I talk a lot about finding your buyers when they are in buy mode. Partners can do this on your behalf. The reason we love referrals so much is that they come from someone who identified your buyer has a problem, and that you're the person to solve it. And partners can do the same thing. So it can be awkward to approach a buyer directly and say, Hey, do you need the thing that I'm selling? It's a lot easier to say to a partner. This is what I'm selling. If you spot anyone who needs this thing solved, please send them my way. It's also easier to keep up with your partners and make sure that they know what you're offering month by month, quarter by quarter, because they're in sales mode too, and they know what it's like to be in business. You're not gonna wear them out with that information and communication the way that you would, if you're just hitting up your clients for referrals, when you head up partners, they know that this is what it is to do business that referrals and building each other's audiences and spreading the love around that is part of being in the small business space. 

Now that we've covered who a partner is and why they're useful. I wanna talk about some of the ways that I've leveraged partners in my business. So the first, and I think probably the most important audience is business partners who refer work my way. So this is my affiliate program, friends of super easy. These are people who operate businesses in adjacent spaces to mine. 

Who identify people who need support with lead gen and send them my way. So right now, this looks like primarily referring people into my membership program, growth trackers, and also towards my course, seven steps to getting more leads. But in the past, it's also been for one-on-one services. business partners offer that trust for me. And they identify people in their audience who they believe would benefit from working with me. And they've gotten really good at that and they hone that over time. 

As they send work my way, we talk about those leads. We make sure that these are people that are gonna get value from working with me. And I communicate that back to the partner so that we can continue to make sure that the, that the right people are getting connected to me. 

I have had a couple partners that have sent work my way, where they believed that that person would be a good fit. And obviously I qualify them myself. Um, but for a variety of reasons, like those relationships didn't always work out. And so we communicate about that. Me and my business partners, so that we can make sure that we're not wasting anyone's time, including our own. 

Some of the types of business owners that I tend to work with include web designers because web designers offer digital marketing services. And I empower people who are leveraging digital marketing services to make sure that they're using those to get leads. 

Agency owners, even in the sales and marketing space, because they tend to work with bigger contracts than I do. And so they'll send smaller, early stage or independent people my way. 

And then content marketers and social media managers. So I found there are people in the marketing space that tend to operate more at a brand level and less at a growth level. And that's

There's a lot of community building that can happen with content, with blogging, with email, with social that isn't necessarily directly sales related. So for marketers who don't operate in the sales space, 

They tend to send business owners my way, particularly again, smaller business owners who need more of a generalist marketing approach. 

My second group of partners are content creators who get my name out there. So people who interview me, people who offer me their platform, this includes YouTubers and podcasters, where I guest on their show. We do an interview. we This includes bloggers who allow me to guess blog or bloggers who link to my content. 

This includes social media creators, particularly those who have really relevant followings and this includes newsletter writers, email marketing has been a huge force for a long time, but newsletters have become even more popular. Even though I hear all the time, people are wary about signing up for newsletters, but they remain a really dominant channel. 

I've had a couple newsletter writers allow me to write issues for them. And then I've had people re reaching out recently to partner and cross-promote each other's newsletters. 

The third group of partners that I've been thinking about is event, group and conference host. So these are people that are doing more live sessions. I offer a lot of live workshops. And I also love doing community events. So partnering with people who also do events online and off has been a successful visibility strategy for me. And it's also a great networking strategy. So there's a bonus here where I'm not only reaching the audience, but I'm also deepening relationships with the people that are running these events and conferences. 

The same is true of actually all of these partner categories. You're networking with the partner in addition to reaching their audience. 

In the case of local events, there's a meetup that I help run here in Atlanta called the Atlanta Solopreneurs club. And we've had other local event organizers offer to boost our events or feature us in their newsletters, which has helped boost our turnout. 

Hosting events has been a longtime Favorite strategy of mine for networking because when you host the event, people wanna meet you and it takes some of the pressure off of the networking that you do at an event. So I've had really good success throughout my whole career networking that way. 

So I love hosting those local events and I really appreciate when other local hosts like to amplify and co-host with us. Because we can tap into, again, their audience that they've already built trust with. 

Group and membership operators. So people that are running typically online groups, but it can be an in-person group where they have guest speakers. So I have guest speakers inside my program, and many membership creators offer guest speakers as part of their program. So if you can go speak to their group, that can be an effective way to highlight your expertise. 

 I've done this for a few memberships and it really helps if the membership is aligned with your audience, but they don't serve that audience in the same way that you do. 

Conferences and summit gigs. So this can include speaking. This can include putting together panels, having a table, sponsoring conferences. There's all kinds of ways that you can work with conference organizers. And if you're in the online business game, summit, organizers. 

In order to get your name out there with a talk or with an offer to that group. Again, if the conference or summit is really targeted at your buyer audience, it's a great place to show up and network and be visible and connect with people. And the bonus of conference and summit organizers is that they tend to be connectors themselves. So they will be power networkers and can help make sure that you get introduced at those events to the people you should be meeting. 

And lastly I have online community leaders. I made a little distinction here between group and membership operators, but there are people that operate online communities, Facebook groups, or in involve over at like-minded collective. Who are fostering communities around something that you might be doing? So

These can be interest based groups. They can be local groups, they can be parent groups. And you can get featured in there. If you are friends with the people that are running that group. Or you can, co-host something inside the group for the members, which offers visibility, and a funnel into what you're selling. 

By now, hopefully you're saying, wow, Lex, I'm super sold on partnering with people. This sounds like a rich space for me to spend my time. I wholeheartedly agree my friends. So let's talk now about how to find partners. When it comes to business partners. So people that will refer work your way. I would recommend starting with some introductions. asking for introductions to the types of business partners who you believe work with your same audience, but in a different way. 

One way to go about that is by cruising your LinkedIn. And looking for second degree connections within your LinkedIn profile. 

I'll show you how to do that really quick. In LinkedIn, you just searched the kind of partner that you want to work with, that you believe works with your same audience. I'm gonna type in web designer, and then you go under people. And you change connections to second degree. You can also obviously look at your first degree connections, especially if you have some folks you've forgotten about. 

And you can see who you might partner with and who you have in common with them. So you could ask that person for an introduction. So here I have 28,000 people who I am connected to through a second degree connection. Where I could ask for an introduction 

and start partnering with them. You can do something similar on any social platform. I think it's a little bit easier on LinkedIn to see if someone knows them. 

Versus Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, et cetera, but you can connect with partners on social platforms and cold outreach to partners goes over way better than cold outreach to buyers. So cold pitching a coffee chat with them, or a podcast interview or a guest blog. All those are gonna go over better than just cold pitching your service or product. 

Professional groups are another fantastic channel. If you are in an industry based group, if you're in a slack group a Facebook, a forum. Trying to identify partners in there that you might wanna work with. 

Keep in mind, you don't need that many partners. So you're not going [00:15:00] for quantity here. You are really looking for who's the right partner for me. And every time you go in there, maybe you're just trying to connect with one person 

to evaluate if that person's audience is your audience. And if there's a good mutually beneficial relationship that can be formed. 

Same thing with networking events. I think it's a winning approach to go to a networking event with the idea of meeting partners versus buyers in general, of course, if you come across someone who's in buy mode, by all means sell them. But I think rather than trying to meet people and persuade them, one-on-one. 

Going in and trying to identify potential partners can be a stronger strategy to stay in touch. There's less of a hard sell there. It makes it less awkward. And again, you're tapping into a group, not an individual. 

When you're thinking about events and groups and conferences. I would start by asking around. Ask your clients, your prospects, your peers, what kind of groups are they in? What are they participating in? What was the last conference? They went to start to put together a list and research them. See if they fit your ideal buyer target. 

You can look for local events on meetup and Eventbrite. You can look for conferences there's conference lists, especially by industry of upcoming conferences. There's paid speaking gig lists. 

In the online business owner space, there's virtual summit search where you can look up summits and summit hosts. 

And you can always Google memberships or communities around your industry or using buyer descriptors. 

If you're thinking about partnering with content creators, those folks tend to be really online you can often look through podcasts, YouTube, and different channels to find those content creators that serve your target audience. Some of my favorite platforms to check out here include pod match. Where you can find podcasts to guest on, or if you have a podcast, you can find guest speakers. 

And letter growth, which is a newsletter partnering platform. I talked about in my last episode, where you can find other newsletters to partner with convert kit is also launching a new creator network. Kari Ginsburg of uproar coaching told me about this recently, where you can partner with other creators. 

I'm not sure exactly how that works, but stay tuned for more on that. And when it comes to guest writing or showing up on someone's blog, you can always Google guest, write And your topic to find relevant blog posts. 

I like to approach partnerships as an experiment. 

Both in terms of how you find partners and how you work together. I've found that there's a lot to experiment with. And just because someone may reach your target audience doesn't mean that they're gonna be a great partner for you. And there might be unlikely partners who you don't expect. 

Being clear on who you wanna partner with and how you might wanna partner with them will really help you navigate all of the opportunity in the partner space. 

And then try on different recipes for size. Experiment with how you find partners experiment with how you work together, experiment with how you track the effectiveness of your partnerships. 

When you start networking with and solidifying some partnerships, I think you'll discover really quickly. Why partnerships are my favorite small business sales strategy. 

If you're diving into partnering with your business, I hope you'll get in touch and let me know what you're testing and what's working for you. 

Stay connected with the show at lowenergyleads.com. You can leave me a voicemail there and let me know what's working and what's not. You can also ask questions that I'll answer in a future episode, and it would mean a lot to me if you would share this episode with a friend.

Until next time, I'm Lex Roman, and this has been the Low Energy Leads Show.