Services partners: a template, or a person

A few weeks ago I told you about a production company that sent us the occasional name, and how the referral was not the value, it was how I found the value. Here is the second half.

Once we saw what their work did to a deal, we stopped waiting for them to send us names and started attaching them to deals on purpose. A customer buying our platform for a big event got their production team as part of the proposal. Not as an option on page nine. As the way the thing got done.

The average event deal went from tens of thousands of dollars to about half a million. Roughly fifteen times. The platform did not change. The partner did not change. What changed was that the partner's work was now inside our sale instead of beside it.

And here is the part nobody puts on a slide. What made it repeatable was not the relationship. It was the paperwork. A proposal template every seller could use. A pricing sheet that already had the partner's line on it. A one-page description of what the partner did that a seller could paste into an email without calling me first. Boring, and the whole reason it scaled.

Before the paperwork, one seller knew how to do it, because we had figured it out together on one deal. The rest of the team had heard about it and did not do it, because doing it meant a phone call and a custom quote and an argument with finance. That is the failure mode of every services partnership I have seen. The play lives in one person, and it dies the day that person leaves.

So the test is simple and a little uncomfortable. Is there a template, or is there a person? If a new seller could attach your services partner to a deal in their second week without asking anyone, you have a partnership. If they would have to find the one person who knows how, you have a favor, and favors do not scale.

Second question, the one for the partner leader. What share of your sellers attached the partner's work in the last two quarters? If it is one or two names, you already know the answer to the first question.

Thursday: OEM, the highest ceiling and the longest runway.

How many of your sellers could attach your services partner to a deal tomorrow without calling you?

Part 9 of 15 in the Which Partnership series.