Hey, what’s up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got this email from Aaron about giving away stuff for free.
He says, “My company has a software as a service subscription service and the distribution
is done through our network of partners who sell to end users.
Recently we’ve had new partners join up and we give them a 30-day demo account during
the stage where we convince them the product is solid and they should become a partner.
After they sign up as a partner their next question is often, ‘Can you continue to
give us the demo account for free?
It would allow us to get to know the service better and in turn start closing deals.’
All accounts we set up do cost us money and we’re still at a stage where we have to
watch every dollar carefully so we’ve been hesitant to agree to this partners with no
sales history to justify giving it away for free.
What advice would you give for this chicken and egg situation during the honeymoon stage
of the partnership?
Thanks.
Aaron.”
Aaron, there’s a lot of ways that you could play this.
First of all I’d say that make sure that you don’t have that whole—you’ve got
to separate the feelings here of is someone taking advantage of me, because it doesn’t
matter.
It doesn’t matter if they are or not and this is purely a business decision and transaction.
The reason why I’m saying that is because if it honestly doesn’t cost you anything
to keep them on, if it’s really cheap, you know what I mean, then just do it.
It doesn’t matter.
There’s a simple solution, Don’t get all upset about it and think that they’re taking
advantage.
So what?
I mean if they benefit you then maybe they’ll bring in some sales and maybe they won’t.
If it honestly is costing you revenue and resources and it really is a concern and it’s
not just an emotional reaction to what you perceive as someone trying to take advantage
of you then we have more to talk about.
In that case, what I would recommend is that you want to make sure that first of all you
need to be doing filtering.
In sales we call this qualifying the lead.
Don’t just accept anyone in as a partner, qualify them.
Make sure that you have some kind of criteria.
Look at your most successful partners and see what kind of criteria do they have and
how can I qualify new leads coming in so that either they meet this criteria or I get rid
of them, because you don’t want to waste time and effort and resources with leads that
are probably never going to amount to anything.
That’s the first step is I would say is that you can prequalify the leads and maybe
instead of having 100 new partners come in, you only have 10 but they’re all quality
good ones.
You don’t waste your time on the other 90.
That’s going to be just good business sense.
The second thing I would say is that when you do bring them in have an onboarding process
in order to make them successful.
You can’t just expect them to take initiative.
Set them up for as much success as possible.
Tell them how they can distribute your product or how to get customers and give them step
by step guides.
Look at some of your existing partners, again, for success, the most successful ones and
interview them and ask them what do they do and what steps do they take and maybe even
offer to split some kind of revenue with them if they create some training materials to
help new partners come on.
That’s going to help you and your business overall.
You want to have these good processes in place.
The more standard operating procedures/processes that you have in place that work the better
off you’re going to be and the more consistent of a result that you’re going to get.
Again, just to summarize, make sure that it’s not an emotional decision that that doesn’t
factor in there.
If it doesn’t cost you anything then just do it, it doesn’t matter.
Still get that process in place because it’s going to help you, but I wouldn’t worry
about it.
I wouldn’t cut them out.
I would still try and, at least the existing partners, but I would try and filter that
from the beginning and then work it along the pipe.
Try to figure out what is being successful and try to get more people that match that
criteria.
It’s going to make the field smaller but that’s what’s going to happen anyway.
If you have a big wide mouth and you funnel and you get 1000 people but only 10 of them
are actually going to do anything, it would be better to just have taken in 50 people
that maybe meet that criteria.
It’s an illusion if you feel like you’re getting a lot of leads but those leads aren’t
doing anything.
Anyway, hopefully that helps you.
If you’ve got a question for me, email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
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Take care.