Partner Programs

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Who Clodagh is:

Ex-HubSpotter & Digital Agency Owner.
Worked with over 500+ agencies to help them grow and scale.
Implemented EOS with over 10 agencies so far and worked with Avidly in their merger.
Author of A Happy & Healthy Digital Agency & host Podcast Agency Life.
Holds a Powerlifting National & World Record.

Takeaways:

First, who is an agency partner?

These are complicated businesses, many Agency owners start them because they like doing marketing.
They love and running the business can be time consuming when you don’t have a strategy.
Incredible drive, passion, creative, made tremendous sacrifice to start and keep their agency.
The best agencies have a story around why they chose to build their agency.
They are wanting to do more creative, but they have to do more operations and sales (which they do not enjoy).

What does it mean from the agencies side to “partner” with you:

- Emotional decision

- Huge risk in the aligning with your software

- The time, training, resources they have to invest

- They have to KNOW your software inside and out

- They assume they will get leads from you

What does it look like in practice?

- Hubspot

- Culture

- The partner manager position

- Materials

- Events

- Closed groups

Partnerships draw on support:

- Less than launching a new product

- Circumvent the support draw with groups (facebook or LinkedIn)

- Having the documentation in place prior to the onboarding of any partners

Partner onboarding:

- Empathy questionnaire on intro call

- Documentation handoff

- Invites to the private group

- Links to various training webinars and group CS calls

- Checklist for the agency of what to do with time expectations (i.e. agency founder/rep completes ___ = 3 hours, must be completed by ___ day).

- Similar checklist for what their clients should expect from a program.

Empathetic agency interview questionnaire for you and your team - in your class folder.

What stage are you in as a business - growth, mature…?
Why did you start your agency - was it a means to an end between jobs, or did you have the intention to build a successful agency?
What motivates you to do your best work and remain an agency each day?
Are you trying to keep this for years, or sell soon?
[If keeping] Are you happy with your current size, or are you planning to grow the team?
Who are you targeting now?
Verticals?
ICPs?
What are your core services?
Are all of those services performed in house, or do you white label / outsource?
Are there any new services you are exploring as we speak?
What is the goal for those new services - horizontal to get more revenue from your current target clients? Or vertically to go upstream or into a new vertical?
What would a successful year look like for you (what KPIs, what growth %)?
Who are you aligned with now to help you reach those KPIs? (other agencies, tech partners, social groups even committees…?)
*Note, it’s important to get links to their social networking groups.
Do you have any guest posting or co-marketing relationships with any of those companies?
Are you co-selling with anyone to put you in front of more ICPs?

1st 90 days:

- Group CS calls

- Tons of information

- Checklists

- Intros

3 - 6 months:

- Building and onboarding

- Referrals are coming in, but they are 'test' referrals the agency is bringing in to guage the process.

6-12 months:

- Onboarded agencies have tested the process and are ready to do more selling

- you are ready to bring in more support for your program manager

Example partner track from Smith.ai:

Selling to agencies:

Understand these agencies are using their own money to buy your software and not a company credit card backed by VC's or otherwise.
Professional services are run by non-business-savvy creatives (typically)
How to earn respect and avoid Imposter syndrome
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