Pitching & Packaging for Partnerships:
How to Land Amazing Deals & Tell If They're Working
Peter Pham CEO BillShrink
Why Partner?
• Do more with less
– Focus on what you do best and what creates your competitive advantage
• Leverage each other for the benefit of both
• Traffic • Revenue • Users
You Get..
• Partners can help accelerate
– Brand awareness – Legitimize your technology – Make you seem bigger than you are..
They get to upgrade..
• “You’ve built what we’ve wanted to for years,
but just didn’t have the resources”
What to look for
• Find combination of
• small startups – nimble quicker deals • larger partners – bigger numbers but slow
• Find deals that are win-win or you will lose-lose
Examples
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Examples
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Research
– – – – upstream/downstream traffic competitors of possible partners Demographic profile Reach
• Stay on top of your space with a great RSS reader and follow your space religiously
– Techcrunch techmeme etc to find similar deals or gaps in potential partner products
Competitors
• Google Alerts is your friend
• Do the same research for your competitors as you would partners
• Find their traffic sources – SEO, SEM, partners and see how you can win
Networking
• Great list for 2009 conferences at http://andrewchenblog.com • Use your Advisors and Investors for Intro’s
Deal Hunting
• It’s never too early to start don’t wait till you’re “ready”
• Big game hunting takes months so start early
Pitch
• Find their hot button (if you did your market research you’d know) • Template, but customize the pitch based on the hot button
• Mockup, mockup, mockup (do the thinking for them)
Move the deal forward
• Know their competitors cold
– Nothing moves partners faster than knowing you are working with their competitor – Set deadlines that you need to make strategic decision on who to work with • Keep driving the deal
– Weekly status updates of who owes what to whom – Weekly or weekly calls with a PM
Legal
• Get a lawyer involved early
– Remember it’s your IP, you are NOT co-developing. – Iframes, API’s are ideal – Indemnification, who owns the user rights to market to the user), and try to avoid exclusive deals – Right to their marks, joint press release and use of their branding – Privacy policy, terms of use, etc.
And get a good lawyer…
Replicate and Scale
• Through deal flow - Learn what everyone’s needs and limitations are • Start building the scalable infrastructure early
• Build out demo sites for partners
– Nothing sells better than something they can touch
• Can you build a simple self serve version?
– Javascript, iframes, API’s etc.
Which deal to do when
• Value
– Does doing this deal increase value to the company
• Revenue
– Realistic annual revenue potential
• Reach
– How large is their reach and what % will you get
• Brand
– How much PR/brand value is this deal – Will it help you get the next deal?
• Effort
– How much time/effort vs. other thngs
Measure
• Manage by Measuring
– manage expectations consistently by providing data
• Click thru, conversions, lifetime value, revenue, uniques etc
– Send monthly reports so there’s no surprises
• Get more deals
• Case studies, references, PR all driven by numbers
peter@billshrink.com Twitter - @peterpham