In episode 158 of our podcast, I chat with Lindsey Miller from Liquid Web as she shares her insights and experiences with building partnerships.

Building Partnerships for Your Products and Services

We chat about:

• What a partnership means
• How companies are doing it wrong
• If your focus should be on customers or agencies
• What is a good balance of give and take
• The importance of expectations
• How to maintain a partnership

I do have to admit, partnership is a term that is loosely thrown around. And most who seek out partnerships are doing it all wrong. At least that’s been my experience. 

You may be asking what this has to do with eCommerce. Well, anyone selling anything online at some point or other will want to build partnerships. And I don’t just mean affiliates. 

Lindsey talks about how to create and build these partnerships with both customers/clients and agencies. We chat about how approaching these different audiences and how you can decide where to put your efforts. 
Most important she explains how a partnership means a good balance of give and take. It really is all about expectations on both sides.

Creating and building those partnerships take a lot of work. So does maintaining them. Lindsey tells us why this is such a critical piece and how you should make it a priority. 

If you are a WordPress eCommerce business and are just starting down the partnership road, or your efforts have been unsuccessful, this is for you. Lindsey and I, coming from both sides of the equation, bring you an interesting conversation filled with insights. 

Tips and Insights from Lindsey

What is a partnership?

A partnership is truly a partnership. You’re going to do something for me, but I’m gonna do something for you.

How to make our relationship mutually beneficial? I think to myself, if I can help somebody build their business, they’ll be helping me build my business. It feels nicer if we can all be a ship rising together as opposed to the really big ship rising and the little one, moving along a little bit at a time.

It’s about finding out what their goals are and if they align with ours, if their goals are growth, then that’s probably a pretty good fit.

The right customer for the right partnership

Traditionally in the WordPress space, everyone had partnership programs and they really were just affiliate programs. They weren’t more robust than that. Even if they were mutually beneficial, it was just a, here’s your link, here’s your coupon code, we can help you with content or whatever it was.

We go back to what are your goals, what’s the business like, your goals of your business or you as an individual that doesn’t even have a business. And then we can figure out which partner program you fit into that you’ll have the most success in and help you get set up.

Expectations

Setting expectations up from the very beginning. I let them know what I can do and what my limits are to help partners and then also on their side, what are all of the benefits and what can we help them do and succeed at or accomplish. Also, be willing to listen to what else they need.

Maintaining partnerships

I’m a relationship person. You hear that it’s not just about partnerships and it’s not just about sales, it’s about relationships.

What we do on our team is we say if there was growth, that means that our partner, the relationship we have, that they grew their business and if they grow their business, they’ve added clients to their account. That is success for us.

I have calls with people all week long who don’t have maintenance plans. It’s my favorite conversation because it’s super easy to add revenue to them. It doesn’t add revenue to us at all, but it does help them grow their business. And that makes me feel really good and that’s why I’m making a relationship and I’m making a partnership and I’m not making a sale.

Where to find Lindsey

On Twitter @LindseyMillerWP

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