Watch a blind live agency partnerships pitch!

We recorded this today with one of our newest agencies and three of our relevant tech partners for that agency.

The agency was: https://benzettler.com

His partners are: Klaviyo, Shopify, Facebook, Yotpo, Recharge, Smile, Tapcart...

His services: Shopify Theme Setup, Digital Advertising, Email Marketing, Social Media Strategy...

The three pitches were from: Gatsby.ai, Audioeye.com and Builder.io

The notes:

Ben's general feedback:

1. Finding alignment before reaching out. Always do your research before reaching out - frame your intro message around what services he's offering for which client types.
2. When it comes to tools that are supposed to make the website owners job easier... the agency is going to wonder "Where do we fit in?" "Are we just a salesperson for you and you take over from there?"
3. Determine what type of partnership is going to exist early in the conversation and then use the time to focus on how that's going to roll out in practice.
4. If there isn't a lot of implementation partnership interest (the agency cannot see themselves selling a service on top of your solution...), then it becomes a question of how hard the agency has to work to make it valuable for them.
   
   *A good example is an agency client of ours who admittedly does not have a relevant service for most of their tech partners to be included in, so what they did is launch their own vetted tech partner directory so they just send clients there and get commissions if they click through: https://ecommaniacs.partnerpage.io/

AudioEye:

• Tony did a great job at showcasing the need/demand for the product.
• And, how the agency would run day to day audits and manage their clients.
• But, Tony did not ask any questions around what Ben knows about ADA compliance, or if he has clients using competitors, or if he runs ongoing audits for his clients...

Gatsby:

• We liked how Brett did alignment Q/A first - asking Ben questions that would help him get into the right state of mind (as opposed to starting off with product demo/pitch).
• Also, the fact they used real world integration example opposed to showing the silo’ed product details…
• Brett's pitch was geared to get the agency to start to generate ideas around service upgrades for Klaviyo clients
• Brett didn't mention partner benefits or how they work with partners (co-selling or co-marketing)...

Builder:

• Julia decided to go through pain points first.
• Because of her product, she has to get a lot of product knowledge across, which is difficult in such a short pitch.
• She handled the question around whether Builder sells services to her clients really well. That can make or break the "partnership" conversation.

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