Why you should consider affiliate marketing, often known as partnership marketing, is because you’re only paying commission once you know that customer has paid and become a registered customer of yours.
Dylis: Hi there and welcome to the inspired selling podcast with me Dylis Guyan from dylisguyan.com. The place where business owners and salespeople who sell to bigger businesses discover how to attract, convert and retain more of their ideal clients quicker and easier than they ever would on their own. I’ve got a super guest once again.
I’ve got Phil Gibbs with me today and we’re going to be talking about partnership marketing. Listen to this all the way through because Phil has got some really good giveaways for you at the end, some freebies. So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Phil. Hi Phil!
Phil: Hey Dylis how are you?
Dylis: I’m good thank you, really good to see you.
Phil: Thank you so much for the invite as well to come on here. I feel quite honoured to be on your podcast.
Dylis: No, It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much. I only have the best, so of course you would be part of that.
Phil: Aww bless you.
Dylis: Phil, just give us a synopsis of your background as to how you got to where you are today and to be the expert that you are in partnership marketing.
Phil: Yeah.
Dylis: Which of course people may know as affiliate marketing or joint venture partnering, so over to you.
Phil: Yeah, I know people like to get into the content of these, so we’ll keep this brief. There’s loads of information on my website. In a nutshell, I jumped from the corporate role in 2004 to 2008. I was really fortunate to build a physical business. It was a golf country club, quite a large exercise but the guys wanted to build it and sell it in four years and they gave me the project to do. Now, I played golf since a little boy so that was like super cool for me to go and work in my hobby, right?
Dylis: Yeah, great.
Phil: That was great. I loved that too ‘cause it was a real-time…set timeframe and it really gave me the opportunity to put into practice all the things that I’d studied and learned in the previous corporate world. You know being at the coal face of it running your own enterprise and what have you, I mean it’s a different animal, right? So….
Dylis: Yeah completely.
Phil: That was great fun and then as we exited that I really needed to sort of….I was looking around for what to do next and I realised that the marketing and the partnership marketing and the collaborations were really the things that floated my boat and filled me with joy if you like, made me jump out of bed in the morning.
So, from 2008 onwards, I’ve done a lot of mentoring and one on one work and what have you, but It’s really been right around business growth and latterly much more targeted on affiliate partnerships, partnership marketing. So yeah that’s my background I’ve got a range of courses now and lots of connections all around the world.
Dylis: Yeah, I know.
Phil: And invite me to things like this which is cool.
Dylis: You are the go-to man for partnership marketing.
Phil: Well that’s kind of you to say so yeah. I mean I like to think…we’re working hard now to really position myself as a really helpful…I like that phrase, “if it’s cool and helpful I’ll share it” If it is genuinely implementable advice that the people can do it and they can take from all the experiences what to do, what’s the best practices and perhaps more importantly what not to do you know; what are the pitfalls? What are the mistakes because I’ve made them.
Dylis: Yeah and maybe we can share some of those as we have our conversation. Tell us about what is partnership marketing? For those who maybe are not so familiar with it and some of the other terms as I mentioned before; affiliate marketing, joint venture partnering. What is it?
Phil: Yeah so that’s a really good point. They all mean a very similar thing so, in a nutshell; it’s the ability to build a commission only sales force. So it’s somebody that…if I was the affiliate, if I was the partner I’m going to partner with your company and you’re going to provide me with marketing material to sell your products.
I’m going to use my marketing knowledge and expertise to distribute that out to my audience because I know that the product that you offer is a really good fit and it has appeal to my audience. Then as I bring you sales and those sales pass through to long-term customers, you would pay me a percentage commission for bringing that customer to your business.
Dylis: Fantastic, so win-win really, isn’t it?
Phil: It absolutely is, and we should touch on this now. So a lot of people that I talk to when I ask them what their favourite marketing channel is, it’s really, particularly over the last like three years or so, a lot of people come back and say Facebook. Yeah, Facebook is my source of leads, I can get leads…it seems to be like a chest flexing, how cheap can you get leads that convert.
For me, I sort of have a little bit of a smile on my face with that because affiliate marketing, partnership marketing, you’re only paying once you know that customer has paid and become a registered customer of yours. So, you don’t have to focus on the conversion rates and all that sort of…waste if you like, that you get from the leads and conversions because your partners are dealing with that part for you.
Dylis: Yes.
Phil: So really, you’re just focused on…and you’re only paying out and you might be paying out slightly more but you’re only paying out a percentage of the sale that you make. So its guaranteed results which is why I love it. It’s my go-to resource whenever I’ve been involved with a business, investing in a business or running my own. It’s my go-technique, my marketing channel if you like.
Dylis: And I have heard people say oh that’s not for me, I’m not paying out part of my income. So, let’s put some figures around this for example, let’s say that I had a product for a thousand pounds and I ask you to partner with me and promote it for me and then I’m going to give you 40% on everything that you sell so for every thousand pounds I’m going to give you four hundred.
Phil: Yes.
Dylis: But I have people who say I’m not doing that, I’m not paying out four hundred or I’m not paying out three hundred or even two hundred and that’s really short-sighted. So just give us some insights on that.
Phil: Yes, so we should just probably qualify that a little bit further. So, it’s always calculated on the margin that you have in the product, so a misconception that people do hear is…and that’s one of the reasons they sort of jump to the wrong conclusion, is they see a 50 or 40% commission and of course that’s cool if you’ve got a soft piece of software or a digital services or something where your R&D cost have been sunk a long time ago and effectively you’ve got something you could argue with so that 99, 100% margin.
Normally I work on the calculation of 40-50% of the profit margin that you have in each particular product what you should be paying because if you’re going to bring me a thousand pounds profit then I will pay you four hundred pounds every day of the week, just keep bringing me thousand pounds. Cause why not?
Dylis: Yes, of course.
Phil: I’d be stupid to not accept that. The perception that people make is that they hear the commission level and they relate that to the sale price and then they’re thinking well my margin on that is only X%. They’ve got more of a physical type product business and then they think well I can’t possibly do that because I’d be giving away all my profit. So the way they think about it really is you’re paying out at a percentage of the profit that you make on the transaction and if you can do that with zero upfront cost in marketing spend, then why would you….I’d do that every day of the week.
Dylis: Of course, you would and then, of course, you’ve got that new client that you wouldn’t have had before that you can then sell more products to.
Phil: Yeah absolutely so one of the…. so the great strategies that I rolled out….I’ve used this myself and I’ve used it with a lot of clients that I’ve consulted with, it’s actually giving… this is quite scary to some, but actually giving 100% commission on some of the lower sale products because that really motivates your partner, to come out and promote things for you because they think cool I’m going to sell this product, this piece software, this service whatever it is and I’m getting all of the profit from it. I’m getting three, five, hundred, thousand pounds whatever it is.
As long as you know that you’ve got a proven sales funnel that when that client comes in to you, that you’ve got recurring income sales funnel, you’ve got suitable up sales that come after that, so you know that a lifetime value of a customer is way in excess of that investment. Quite often I’ve done two-three hundred-pound products at the start where we pay 100% commission, motivates the partner to take action and I know at the back end of that as long as I do my stuff right, as long as the company does their stuff right, then the lifetime value of that client is way in excess of that, ten times that maybe.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: Therefore, it really pays off, so you’ve got to have the longer-term view as a marketer.
Dylis: Yes, indeed and this is a channel, partnership marketing or affiliate marketing and joint venture partnering. It’s something that not a lot of people have taken on board. Would you say that’s…. is that a fair comment?
Phil: Yes, I find a lot of that and that’s one of the reasons that I set up my Facebook group and what have you, when I share the experiences that I’ve got ’cause genuinely this is my go-to technique. I really wanna champion it because I think a lot of other businesses should be doing it. Sometimes it’s somewhat tainted by misconceptions of what Affiliate Marketing is and is it a bit associated with get rich quick online and it just absolutely isn’t. It just goes right back to the early 1900s when it was founded and first thought of that I could pay a commission in return for somebody bringing me a sale.
So, I think it is really common that people misunderstand it and therefore they dismiss it. Also, a little bit is that they think that it’s a lot more complicated than it really is and therefore it gets put on the “too hard to do” pile and they go to the more stable comfortable marketing sources that they know of. But all the time they’re missing out on the potential to partner with key influences in their industry, grow their own brand by piggybacking with others that are closely associated people in their sector. It’s a great…. can be a really exciting channel to get involved with from that side. I think people misunderstand it and they dismiss it, they put it on the “too hard to do” pile when really it isn’t at all.
Dylis: Yeah, and it’s always the same isn’t it? It’s about just knowing the steps but of course, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Phil: Yeah.
Dylis: So people can build it up into their mind to be way harder than it actually is. You mentioned earlier about some of the pitfalls so share with us some of your “woops moments” that you look back and say, oh my God, why didn’t I see that one coming?
Phil: So, I’ve learned….let’s start with commission levels because that’s always a popular topic with people. I’ve learned to start programs with a 40% commission level, that’s what I do now with every program I run and every program I set up with clients. I always start with the 40% commission level. That gives you room to grow your partnerships by getting partners to recruit partners.
So, one of my sort of first mistakes which fortunately was directly for me in my business is that I started at 50% and then somebody came along and said you know what, It would be really cool if you would award me an extra percent, an extra bonus for me to introduce you to a load of other partners that I know would work really well with your product or service.
And I was like well that’s cool but I’m already paying out 50%. Then that starts to rock even though I think about 60-65%, 70%… I don’t know, I’m giving away now more than half of what the market must be making. I basically got cornered and I did it because it made sense so that showed how much I trust it.
I did it because we agreed on 60% in this particular instance and I was still cool cause I was still getting 40% for zero upfront time or investment or money. But it did grind with me a little bit, and that was definitely one that went in the memory bank and thinking yeah, I started this program at the wrong level. So now I always start at 40%. I’ll only ever run two-tier programs. I should say that, so we only ever have two levels of affiliate partners.
Dylis: So, I’ll come back to that then. I want to just touch on this two-tier.
Phil: Sure, I’ll just talk about the commission bit finish this bit off. So, we start at 40% commission and then if partners can introduce me to other partners that will work pretty well then, we pay them an extra 10%. So, they get 10% on top of everything that their introduced partners bring in. But I don’t go anywhere further than that, this is not about multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes or anything like that at all. Which is another misconception why more people don’t get started in the first place, linking it back to your first question. So, I only ever do that and starting at 40%, that was definitely one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years.
I guess number two quickly just before we move on, it’s really a relationship game, like anything in business anything that’s really credible it is a relationship game and your friends, your contacts they go to bat for you when you want them to.
So, if you’ve got a product launch coming up or you’ve got a promotion around a particular time or you need to boost some sales for some additional cash flow in the next quarter, whatever it might be. If you really know your affiliate partners and you have a personal relationship with them, then you can text them messages.
Quite often you know a lot of the people I work with, I’m messaging them on Facebook or texting them. It’s at that level, we are mates, we are friends and if I need them to do something or sort of pull an extra little promotion out the bag to make things work then they do it for me because they know me, and we’ve got a great relationship and vice versa. It’s a two-way street, I do it for them in return. So, relationships…understanding that it’s all about relationships and starting at 40% would be my two sort of top little….
Dylis: Top tips or pitfalls to avoid thinking you can just go straight in without building the relationship and then start the commission too high.
Phil: Yeah.
Dylis: You just mentioned two-tiers so as you continued…. what I’m saying there is that I could be a number one affiliate and then I could recruit somebody as an affiliate for you but that’s it? That’s your two-tier?
Phil: Yeah that’s it. So basically, if I’m paying you 40% commission on the sales that you’re able to bring to me, then I would pay you an extra 10% on the sales that your partners also brought to me.
Dylis: Right.
Phil: Yeah, now your partners have a chance to introduce partners as well, that doesn’t mean to say that you continue to get paid commission.
Dylis: Right.
Phil: It’s just between the original partner and the people that they introduced. So, it only ever goes two-tiers deep.
Dylis: Excellent, that’s really good and you know as we’re talking it really is about win-win because when you think about it if somebody is a little bit reluctant and think, no this is not something I want to get into because I don’t want to give away commissions, but it’s…. let’s say again let’s take the thousand pounds and you giving 40% commission and so you’re giving away four hundred, you’re making six hundred that you wouldn’t necessarily have made before.
Phil: Yeah, absolutely and I think…so, my source of partners is always really looking at companies that have…so they need to have an audience where your product or services is, it’s compelling, it’s interesting to that audience but its non-competing.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: So, a great way to just sort of flash this out is, if you think about the other products or services that your target market, your avatar is also searching for, either just before or just after they’re interested in your own services. Because then you know that you are picking up on companies’ businesses that have definitely drawn in to a market of people that would be interested in your service.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: As long as you make sure that doesn’t compete in any way with the products or services that they’re offering, then they can be really beneficial partners because you can do two ways…you can a become their partner too and add value to your audience so all of a sudden this starts to sort of mushroom your income. It starts to get exponential growth on your income because not only are you reaching an audience for your own products or services that you otherwise couldn’t reach and you’re only paying on results. They’re also offering you their products or services that you know would be a great fit for your audience too.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: You know they need them and there’s another additional revenue stream.
Dylis: Yes.
Phil: So obviously this needs like building out into a really structured marketing plan and I tend to run marketing plans at least six to eighteen months in advance as a rolling marketing plan because you always need to sort of slot opportunities in. But once you get this technique rolling…I mean I’ve seen add…you know I’ve seen it three X companies really quite quickly in less than six months.
Dylis: I can imagine and if you just take you and I we’re a great example of a good fit in terms of joint venture partnering.
Phil: Yeah absolutely, yeah.
Dylis: Because I don’t do what you do, you don’t do what I do but we’re complementary to each other.
Phil: Yeah and that’s why this podcast works so well right?
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: When I was really delighted to be invited on. I was this is a no-brainer when should we do it?
Dylis: Yeah exactly. So now I know you’ve got six pillars to profitable partnerships.
Phil: I have.
Dylis: And we love that and we did P. G’s P.P.P’s.
Phil: Yes you get P. G’s P.P.P’s
Dylis: P.G. tips…so obviously we can’t take a deep dive here and I know that you’ve got some resources that people can access once we’ve finish this but just take us through the six pillars of how somebody can get started. The things that they need to consider when setting up a partnership or using partnership marketing as a channel to grow their business.
Phil: Yeah sure. So, the six pillars I have really work on…let’s just talk them over the high level so people can sort a start to…. and I have got resources available…
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: Where people can dive into this afterward cause this is going to be a little bit of a whistle-stop tour.
Dylis: Of course, yeah.
Phil: But actually…hopefully of great value to everybody that’s listening in. So, the six pillars are research; how to research your market you know how to find your partners like we sort of touched on quickly. Then how to recruit them, then tips around building the relationship with them, then how to motivate them because you want them to actually to take action. We all know that people don’t necessarily follow through on everything that they say. There are lots of tips to motivate them.
Then it’s how you’re gonna reward them and then is how you’re gonna educate them with regards to your product or services so they can genuinely hand on heart promote you, knowing a little bit about what it is that you do. So those are the six pillars that I’ve sort of…I hate all the marketing speak about proven and all that kind of stuff. But these are the….
Dylis: Proven…
Phil: Yeah so let’s say I…..
Dylis: Just cut to the chase yeah.
Phil: I’ve refined them over the years and these are really the bits that I rolled out with everybody that I consult with and then the ones that I constantly assess my own program with as well. So, let’s…
Dylis: Yes of course it makes sense…yeah go on that’s great thanks.
Phil: Sure, so let’s look at research to start with. So, we touched on basically having the mindset about being a little bit more open to working and collaborating with people that are close to what you do but don’t overlap. That is a mindset change for some people and they have all sorts of fears and objections around that.
I’ve really learned over the years that the more I share, the more I gain. And it’s not to try and think that what I do is to try keeping it too close to me. It’s a different mindset to start with. Be prepared to go to reasonably close competitors and at least assess whether you think there’s an opportunity to partner with them because more often than not, the reason that you’re in business in the first place is that you have something really unique and that’s proven, cause you have a business that’s running off the back of it.
So, to look at people that play in your space, that have your audience. So, number one would be, know who your avatar is and know who buys your product or services but that’s the same as any marketing and then look at where else they hang out, what else do they do, what else do they buy just before they buy your products or service, what else do they buy just after they bought your product or services. And look at…. build a list of those companies and consider how you could start to build relationships with the credible ones that you want to be associated with. So, this isn’t about partnering with everybody.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: Yeah, that’s the other mistake people make is that…. I wouldn’t want to partner with them. We think of the negative rather than the positive. So just think about the companies that you know offer a great service and that you would be proud to recommend to anyone of your top clients…..
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: Knowing that they would get a first-class service from them. And then those are the types of partners that you want to look at collaborating with. So that deals with a little bit of the high level of the research. There all sorts of ways that you can do this online to help you with the legwork but in my Facebook group, I talk about that kind of stuff and we’ll touch on that at the end.
So, then it’s how to recruit them. Now I like to get a bit different with this and I’ve learned over the years that people who…like things that are different so do not send emails. Nobody reads them these days, we’re all bombarded with them. My inbox is overflowing so do the opposite like in any good marketing channel you want to be the one that’s standing out so do exactly the opposite everybody else. I send gift boxes through the post.
Dylis: Nice.
Phil: So I send anything from little gifts, five, fifteen, twenty bucks/pounds whatever. Something like that, send them a Starbucks voucher for a coffee or Costa voucher for some coffee or something like that. Along with a physical letter or something generally, that’s got shelf life is what I tend to pick out, but it doesn’t need to be particularly expensive but what I would say is, try and be the best in your bracket. If you’ve read the great book actually on this is Giftology by John Ruhlin.
Dylis: Alright I’ve read that one.
Phil: That’s a great book on this. And basically, what one of the things he talks about is that you want to make sure that your gifs are about them not about you. So, do not send them something with your company logo on it cause they don’t want that they do want something with their own logo on.
Dylis: Yes.
Phil: Yeah, that’s gonna get put on the desk.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: So, make it about them, it is about them not about you. So that would be my number one tip.
Dylis: And what I’ve picked up from that Phil is, make it individual and relevant to them.
Phil: Yeah.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: I mean there are companies that will do this, so I now use a company that I give them a list of the people that I want to reach out to, they research them and come back with research a…..they research the individuals and they come back with a list of things that I think they would be interested in, based on a Facebook profile, things that they commented on. So, they kind of know if they’re a dog owner or if they’re a golfer, a fisherman….
Dylis: Right
Phil: Whatever it is.
Dylis: Yeah, great.
Phil: If you’re struggling with that …. that’s probably a little bit more advanced, yeah, but we meant…there’s lots of websites out there and there’s companies who will help you with cool things for the desk and what have you. So, as I started out I did this, but I did it with things that with their company logo because that’s not all that’s different.
Dylis: Yeah
Phil: Most people send me stuff with their own company logo on.
Dylis: So, you don’t have to know the people, you just have to know that they are a right fit and their audience would be a relevant audience to your product or service. So, it’s not about knowing people it’s about then making that first approach in a way that’s different and makes you stand out and then developing the relationship, is that what you’re saying?
Phil: Yeah absolutely, and get on a like we’re doing here, get on a get on a video call as soon as possible. And make it short, sweet five minutes. Just literally to the point, introduce yourself, say that you think there’s a great opportunity, you’d love to have a bit more time about collaborating. How did they do they feel about it, do they know of your business, can I send them access to my products and services and a few bits. Are they receptive to it overall? You’ll get to know for sure.
Dylis: Of course.
Phil: But doing something different, doing something novel up front at least it gets you a chance to have that five minutes, 10-minute call. I’ve set up five, ten minute calls that have ended up going on for 45 minutes.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: Yeah because when you get on you realize that there’s a you know…once you get the person is thinking the right way and has that open mindset to it and they can see the opportunity for both of your businesses to collaborate and joint venture then normally you know you’ll get a lot more time invested from their side and that’s when you know you’ve got a great potential partner. If they have a very quick call that’s probably a miss.
Dylis: Yeah brilliant.
Phil: Okay?
Dylis: Yeah that’s great.
Phil: So relationships is the next pillar. You need to know when their birthdays are, you know you need to know them. It’s all accessible these days, you know the day…everything is on Linkedin or Facebook or both Facebook. You know use LinkedIn a lot so you have to this part of your program it is an unbelievable resource for finding people that are either in positions in a particular company or if you know their name of course you can just search for them. I’ve done both on LinkedIn just you know job title searches.
Twitter is also a good resource for…depending on how big you’re going. If you’re more sort of a bigger SME’s then LinkedIn is really the resource. Surprisingly though at the middle to lower tier of SME’s Twitter is also an unbelievable resource just to research and get that initial connection. So yeah I use those, I use all the social platforms as much as possible. Once I’ve got that connection I get on a call with them as quickly as possible and I always try and do a video call if possible because it’s much better.
Dylis: Yeah it’s much better isn’t it?
Phil: Much better to eye ball them. They won’t want to do a physical meeting so that’s a mistake that people make. They think actually if I invited them out to lunch or a coffee or a kind of stuff that would be better and it absolutely isn’t because they don’t know you at the minute.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: They probably won’t invest that amount of time; most people will jump on a five minute video call.
Dylis: This is good as isn’t it. I’ve got ma drink here so this is…This really is the next best thing to having a face to face.
Phil: Yeah absolutely and you get…you also get…you can see the other person they can see you; yeah it’s by far the best way. So I jump on a video call as quickly as possible. I use Zoom or Skype. If people are wondering what ones; I tend to use Zoom a lot now if I’m honest.
Dylis: It’s more robust I find.
Phil: Yeah and actually a really good tip here is that with Zoom you don’t have to…you’re not reliant on the other person connecting with you. Whereas on Skype you’ve got to be a connection to make a call when on Zoom you can just send them a link that they click on and they jump on the video call straight away.
Dylis: Yeah yeah.
Phil: So it’s a simpler it’s…people feel like it’s almost like less invasive into their zone, so Zoom is a great resource for that. So the next step is motivating them, so now you’ve researched them…let’s recap you’ve research them, you’ve recruited them, you’ve built your relationship with them, they haven’t actually done anything yet. So now you need to motivate and to take action and you need to build this into your marketing channel.
Normally I’d do it around events and try to schedule around an event where you know that you’re going to be putting a lot of your own effort into marketing your particular product or service. So if you’ve got a launch we’ve got a special promotion period or whatever it is that’s normally a great time to start to build and bring partners in to be active because they’re effectively going to piggyback all your own marketing activity as well.
So they’re going to say…you’re making a push forward you’re getting the brand out there or the product or service out there and actually they’re going to be doing the same too. So you need to be providing them with all the marketing collateral that you’re going to be using with all you’re branding on it. Make it as easy as possible for them because that motivates them so give them what’s called swipe copy, it’s a pre written marketing copy that you’re going to use that they can just copy and paste and use too.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: The easier you make it for them to partner with you whether it be that they’re going to send emails, whether it be that they’re going to run Facebook posts or whether you’re going to do a joint Facebook live together. Just make it as simple as possible and as efficient as possible for them. It is all about…it’s just like marketing to the end provider but you’re marketing to the middle golden goose if you like.
Dylis: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Phil: You want to make it super efficient for them. They easier you make it the more action they’ll take so that in itself sort of motivates them.
Dylis: Can I just ask on that point then Phil would you write acopy that could be repurposed for more than one of your partners?
Phil: Yeah so that’s a really, really good question I like that a lot. I now write bespoke copy for all key partners. So we have…I’ve graded…I have influencer partners where we will do bespoke copy for them and their audience. Because you don’t want five people sending out exactly the same copy because people may be on the same emailing list so then it all looks a bit awkward.
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: So when it’s a really high level partner if you’re just building out a few…say your building out a handful of partners to help you to start with, then I would go to the trouble of understanding. Maybe you could run some polls or something to their audience to start with to find out what they’re particularly interested in and then understand their avatar and create some marketing collateral that works well for their audience. Because ultimately it’s the engagement of their audience that you’re really after so investing a little bit of time in making it personal to them really, really pays off.
It also means that if you’ve got multiple partners all playing in a fairly small niche that if a customer is on more than one list it looks like there’s just a big swell of support for your particular launch and it doesn’t look like it’s just copy and paste everywhere.
Dylis: Okay so what would you say to someone who’s selling a physical product and they’re not launching if you know they’re selling…I don’t know…printers for example.
Phil: Right.
Dylis: They could partner with someone who sells paper.
Phil: Yeah okay so they need to…I mean this is marketing full stop right. So my tactic is always create an event however you know how fabricated it you know but create an event so we’re going to have you know…August is going to be you know I mean that the sofa stores do it all the time.
Dylis: All the time yeah.
Phil: So create a month long promotion or tie it with you know something else that’s happening in the industry you know maybe it’s just stuff where it’s linked to you know national Entrepreneurship Week or Women in Business Week or you know the chiropractor firm that do ergonomics week or ergonomics month and lots of stuff.
Get creative around the opportunities that are out there and create your own promotion. If it’s just flat and there’s no special activity particularly at the start when you’re trying to get your partners on board with you then you run the risk of there being no particular push around it. Then the whole thing kind of dies on its feet because it’s just drifted and nobody knows what’s anybody’s supposed to be doing at any time and couple of months go by nothing really happens and they think this wasn’t such a bright idea and they’ll drop you.
Dylis: Yeah, yeah.
Phil: My advice there would be create one, if you haven’t got one create an event.
Dylis: Fantastic now I know we look as if we’re at the end of our time together but I’d just like you to give us the high level just the kind of strapline of the the last couple of tips and anybody who wants to find out more and dig deeper then you can cover the resources that you’ve got for people.
Phil: Yeah sure so we talked about reward actually which is a bit better so start at forty percent of your profit, be prepared to pay an extra ten percent those partners who can introduce you to other key partners yeah. That’s a really good one and then educating them so helping them promote you.
Some businesses are more advanced at this than others so if they need some education about how to physically promote you then be prepared to have some resources around that service, cheatsheets, simple step guides to say right okay, come here you go to my website you grab this link copy and paste it over here. Even do a little videos of it that’s always good.
Dylis: Fantastic that’s absolutely brilliant.
Phil: Be prepared to have a little bit of…cool. So then I will this is store at all but if people want to find out a little bit more then I run a Facebook group called Partnership Profits if you just go into Facebook and search for Partnership Profits…it’s a close group but we could probably put a link on the same page of this podcast as well.
Dylis: Indeed yes and also I know that you’ve got twenty four ways to recruit your first fifty partners.
Phil: Yeah
Dylis: So if you can give us a link to that or you could give us…do you have a U.R.L. that you can share or do you want me just to add it in this.
Phil: Yeah no problem so its Phillip Gibbs www.phillipgibbs.co.uk That’s a double L bless my mother; a double L phillipgibbs.co.uk/recruit-partners. and that takes you to the E guide and the cheat sheet and it gives you the twenty four go to ways that I use to get over that first bit of sort of researching and recruiting of partners.
Dylis: Fantastic so let me just cover that again Philip with a double L so that’s phillipgibbs with an S /recruit-partners.
Phil: Spot on.
Dylis: Brilliant and then we’ve got Partnership Profits in the Facebook group.
Phil: Yeah so just go to Facebook and search the Partnership Profits.
Dylis: Okay and I believe just going back to your twenty-four ways to recruit you first fifty partners there’s a cheat sheet and an E- guide in there.
Phil: Yeah so there’s a…I did both because we’re all short of time…you know we’re all sort of time.
Dylis: Yeah yeah.
Phil: Time hungry aren’t we, so the cheat sheet just gives you the high level detail and then there’s a thirty eight page E-guide that goes into more detail and in that Facebook group there’s also video training from me on each of the steps so you can get on and implement a model. I’m all about implementation.
Dylis: Fantastic and what I love about you Phil is how generous you are with your knowledge, with your information you know. So people really need to take advantage of this and then if they want to go further then of course they can get your bigger products and so on. So it’s been brilliant thank you so much it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you Phil.
Phil: Thank you Dylis. Yeah I’m very grateful for the invite to come on here and yeah we’ve known each other for quite a while now haven’t we?
Dylis: Yeah.
Phil: So I really appreciate the invite and it’s great to see you doing what you’re doing too and anything I can do to help you or your community I’m more than willing to do it.
Dylis: Thank you so much Phil bye for now.
Phil: Take care.
Dylis: Bye.
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