Partners and clusters

Two records for the same idea at different scales. A partner already sells to the people you sell to. A cluster is a fund, accelerator or community whose portfolio does. Both are worked as channels, with their own pitch rules and their own cadence.

A partner is not a prospect and modelling one as a prospect is why partner programmes collapse into a badly-fitting CRM record. A prospect has a buying window and a close date. A partner has a client list that overlaps yours and a reason to mention you to it, and nothing in a pipeline stage describes that.

The pitch is the part most often got wrong. A partner is deciding whether to risk their own client relationship on you, which is a different question from whether your product is good. It answers three things — what their clients get, what they get, and how little work it costs them — and the third carries the most weight, because partners decline when it sounds like effort rather than when the economics are wrong.

Clusters exist because the CRM has no concept of fan-out. A fund is one relationship that yields a portfolio, and the entire value is that working the relationship once gives you a list where the fund's name does the warming.

1. 01Add partners whose clients overlap yours, and say in the record which of their clients overlap. That sentence is the pitch.
2. 02Write the pitch and let it be checked. It has to answer all three questions, and it will refuse a cold sales opener.
3. 03Log gives as well as asks. A partner who only hears from you when you want something learns what you are for.
4. 04For a cluster, offer their portfolio something free before you offer them anything. A fund has no budget line for your product and every reason to want its companies helped.
5. 05Once a cluster agrees, import their portfolio and mark which companies match what you sell.

• The warm network
• Video outreach
• Conversations