# Partnerships

## When to load this mode

In sales mode and the conversation is about a *partner*, not a customer. Load on "should we partner with X," "they want a referral deal," "we're being asked to do co-marketing," "is this integration worth building," or "how do I structure a BD call." If it's a sales call dressed as partnership, drop to discovery-call mode.

## What partnerships are

A partnership is a sale with two buyers and two sellers — both sides must want it, both must deliver, value flows both ways. Motion runs 60–180 days, stakeholders are higher (sponsor each side plus doers), and getting it wrong eats focus, not just budget.

SPIN still applies — Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff — but on the *partner's* business, not the buyer's pain. The question shifts from "what does the buyer need to solve" to "what does the partner need to advance, and can our offering advance it."

## The three partnership shapes

**Referral.** Partner sends customers; you pay a fee, discount, or send back. Smallest blast radius. Unit: qualified intros per period. Fails on wrong segment or phantom volume. Test with a 30-day pilot.

**Co-marketing.** Joint content, webinars, events, co-branded campaigns. Unit: shared reach and credibility transfer. Fails on audience asymmetry or non-overlap. Verify overlap first.

**Integration.** APIs, data flow, embedded UI. Unit: retention stickiness plus marketplace inbound. Fails when one side builds and the other never markets. Tie the build to a marketing commitment, in writing.

## Procedure

**1. Fit check before the call.** Two questions, both must be yes. Does the partner have audience or capability you can't reach yourself? Does the deal earn its complexity? If either is no, decline politely.

**2. Run SPIN on the partner's business.** Situation: size, motion, partner roster. Problem: where their motion leaks — product, distribution, retention. Implication: what gaps cost — revenue, margin, churn, position. Need-payoff: what changes if our offering plugs the gap. The partner names the win in their words.

**3. Name the shape and the unit of value.** Referral, co-marketing, or integration. State the unit explicitly — "ten qualified intros per month," "a webinar to your 8,000-person audience quarterly," "an integration with a launch post from both sides." Vague partnerships fail because no one knows what was promised.

**4. Pilot before contract.** A 60–90-day pilot with measurable output beats a one-year MOU. It tests delivery, overlap, retention — before either side commits bigger.

**5. Get value-on-both-sides in writing.** What we do, what they do, what counts as success, how we measure, how either side exits. One-sided commitments are favors.

**6. Tie commitments to people, dates, and budgets.** Each side's sponsor owns the work. "The companies agree" is air. "Maya and Jordan run the joint webinar series, dates and budgets named" is a partnership.

## Decision rules

- **Partner when audience or capability is genuinely unreachable alone.** If you can build it yourself faster than the partnership cycle, build it.
- **Pilot before contract.** Always. MOU after pilot proves the thesis.
- **Name the unit of value or walk.** Without one, partnerships become PR for one side, dead weight for the other.
- **Match shape to stage.** Early: referrals. Growth: co-marketing and integrations. Mature: deeper structural.
- **Decline gracefully.** A no with a reason builds the relationship for a future fit.

## Anti-patterns

- **Press-release partnerships.** Logos on each site, no revenue, no leads, no output. Decline.
- **Partnership debt.** Five stacked MOUs, none delivered. Each commitment eats the others' focus.
- **Sales discovery in disguise.** If they wanted to buy, they'd say so. Pitching mid-call ends it.
- **The asymmetric audience trap.** A 10x-audience partner gets 10x any joint campaign. Compensate with cash, exclusivity, or product commitments — or accept asymmetry knowingly.
- **Integration without marketing commitment.** Engineering ships, no one tells customers, the integration dies in the marketplace. Marketing dates belong in the memo.

## Before / after

**Before (logo deal):**
> Partner: "We should partner — we both serve agencies."
> User: "Yes, let's list each other on our sites."

Six months later: no leads, both sides quietly remove the logo.

**After (SPIN-disciplined):**
> Partner: "We should partner — we both serve agencies."
> User: "How are agencies finding you?"
> Partner: "Inbound. We're losing larger accounts to a competitor with an integration into the PM tool agencies already use."
> User: "Deal size when you lose those?"
> Partner: "$40k–$80k ACV. A third of pipeline."
> User: "If you had that integration, what changes?"
> Partner: "Close another 15% of qualified pipeline. ~$1.2M ARR this year."
> User: "Ours ships in 60 days. Pilot: co-marketed launch — joint webinar, case study, both marketplaces. Measure inbound 90 days post-launch. Clear 30 qualified leads each direction, extend to full co-sell. Dates and owners in the memo before kickoff."
