Podcast Transcript

[00:02:16] Sean Steele: G'day everybody, and welcome back to this week's episode of the ScaleHQ Podcast. Welcome back to our regular listeners, we are so thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for your continued loyalty and hopefully you are continuing to get value every week, which is, I guess, while you were coming back. I'm sure you're not coming back to see my smiling face on video or just listen to my sultry chocolate tones auditorily. But to anyone joining us for the first time, so thrilled to have you. Welcome aboard. We're welcoming back this week, which means you're probably already going to have to go back and listen to two other episodes. You don't have to, but I would recommend that you do because we're welcoming back Talila Kroy, Co-Founder and Director of Emple – A business that helps Australian companies build scalable sales engines. Talila, welcome back. How are you?

[00:02:58] Talila Kroy: Thank you, Sean. A pleasure to be here again. Starting to feel like deja-vu. 

[00:03:04] Sean Steele: It is. And actually, you are the only guest that I've had on more than twice. So, there have been numerous two-time guests, but you are actually the first-time for three and who knows, we're just laughing offline, maybe there's going to be more. I mean, this to me is just such a critical area, and because your business is so dedicated, seven-figures, there's a big difference between looking at people who do sales engines or sales funnels or whatever for startup businesses, and those that primarily focus on sort of mid-market or enterprise businesses. And I feel like the seven-figure Founder space is actually the most difficult because they don't have a lot of resources, they don't have heaps of money, but I know they need to build a sales team. They've never done it before. They don't know how to manage salespeople. They try to get one person that solves everything and there's all these problems and it's such a minefield. And so really valued our first two episodes on one, setting up the sales foundations for how do you make sure they're going to have what they need to succeed when they start. Second episode was about, okay, let's assume we've got that in place. How do we recruit? How do we do a better job on recruiting and stacking the deck on getting the right person in the room once we've got the pieces together. And this time, I wanted to chat to you about partnerships because I know that you focus on all the other things. And I like to say, your job as Emple and I'm just telling you what your job is, but you can tell me that that's wrong, is that you focus on getting the processes, the recruitment strategies, the sales management techniques, the reporting, the systems enablement, all the things that need to happen to ensure that any lead a company gets is optimised for the highest possible conversion rate. Is that fair?

[00:04:43] Talila Kroy: That is absolutely spot on.

[00:04:46] Sean Steele: Great. And then the question comes up, okay, that's great. I've got that in place now, Talila, I need more leads. And then now you're back into the world of marketing. , not so much sales and there's a gazillion different ways to generate leads from paid inbound strategies to direct LinkedIn outrage and cold emails and cold phone calls and events. Like I just unpacked with Morgan Ingram a couple of weeks ago, but one of your key strategies that you guys really like and you employ yourselves and you teach your clients, is partnerships. I don't know if you call them strategic partnerships or is there a fancy word for partnership? Are they just partnerships?

[00:05:19] Talila Kroy: Strategic partnerships. Value partnerships. There are a few different names that you can use, but you're right. We have never touched lead generation itself, that's what we have, you know, that's a partnership space for us, but there's two ways that we can help clients. We do touch outbound, but we're very careful with that because we feel like outbound is not a very good strategy. We love partnerships because it is a process, a very easy process, one that any Founder can do and any high-level salesperson can do. And it's more like planting an orchard rather than fishing fish individually. You get one good partner, you get lots of fruit.  

[00:05:59] Sean Steele: Well, no, I like that. And the thing that actually I like the most about it is that you've learned to stay in your lane, so to speak, because actually it troubles me when people would try to become experts and everything. And you've also kind of gone - Okay, so maybe we don't love all those other strategies, but also, we're not the best people to generate them. So, if you know, if you've got a client who's got leads coming from the wazoo, because they've got some amazing paid marketing strategy, and they're doing a terrible job on actually converting them. That's where you guys step in and you're not trying to teach them how to do a better job on their lead generation. However, partnerships for me, I've done a lot of strategic partnership development in large companies and small ones, and building them in a way that actually generates mutual value, real business opportunities, and that are enduring, and they're not random, and they're not ad-hoc takes, real thinking, there's a lot of ingredients to make it work, and so today I want to extract as much as possible from your brain on the brain on why partnerships versus other strategies? What difference does it actually make to conversion from your perspective? What foundations have you got to get in place? What are the things that go wrong and some stories of some of the ones that you've seen really work so that we can kind of hear; I think this will be a really inspiring episode for Founders who maybe really struggle on the lead generation side and haven't really thought about partnerships as a strategy, which they're probably far more comfortable developing on the way up anyway, because they don't need as much sort of lead generation expertise. They're actually leveraging this partnership to help bring opportunities. So, are you happy with that?

[00:07:25] Talila Kroy: Yeah, absolutely. And let's get people excited about the ‘why’, because then they'll listen to the ‘how’, and I think too that, there's a lot of how not to do it, which I've experienced through mistakes as well as experiences of success. So, if we go through all that, we can fast track the people listening.

[00:07:46] Sean Steele: Let's start with the ‘Why’. Why partnerships?

[00:07:48] Talila Kroy: Well, the ‘Why’, the first why is it's effective. It's very easy to do and the conversion metric is very high. So, one of the things we do a lot and we've got a little product called the ramp sales suitcase and ramp is setting up a business for a new sales hire and it's remuneration alignment metrics and pipeline projections. And one of the things we always do is we get them to analyse what are your lead source is for your latest leads and how did they convert. And every single time, you know, they usually have several sources. We have, client might have mentioned us partner, referral, organic; they looked us up on the website or some paid traffic or prep, funnel. Now, the conversion metrics are wildly different

. 

[00:08:35] Sean Steele: Yes.

[00:08:36] Talila Kroy: I hardly know a business that doesn't convert at least 50% of their referrals, and it's more around sitting around the 70 to 80% mark. Because the partner already knows that the client needs what they have. They've already talked about it in depth, explored the client's paid need goals. The client trusts the partner. The client will therefore trust you. And as long as you are not somehow mismatched to what the partner recommended, they're like ‘Yes, just get me the solution.’ It's just obvious. It's just an immediate fit.

[00:09:06] Sean Steele: And if you're listening to this and you think about, because the moment you hear, the moment I hear 70 to 80% conversion, like, geez, that sounds high, ridiculous, you know, that's marketing, that's sales fluff. But actually just try that on yourself and think about either leads that you've received from people who already know you, or vice versa. Referrals you've provided to other people where your trust has been imbued in that. Because, you know, you're putting your personal brand behind it. And so, but we'll obviously have to talk about that, but you can see why the conversion rates are super high. The question always comes back to volume, but let's come back to that. So, anything else on ‘why’?

[00:09:45] Talila Kroy: Before we do that, let me qualify that a little bit. Part of how well it converts is how well you do the introduction and the whole partner piece. So, we'll talk about that. But those who have that pat conversion, like we've had in the last month, we would've had four leads from client partners, three partners, and all 100% converted, and they were a short sale cycle too. So, it's absolutely doable. And when we look at the other lead sources, it's 20%, 25%, 30% conversion. So, you're going to have to do a lot more work to get the same results because you're talking to strangers, right? And there's a lot of work to do.

[00:10:26] Sean Steele: So, what then, why don't we get straight into the guts of it? Like what are some of the success factors, if you like, or the foundations that you think you've got to have in place to make a strategic partnership that's going to bring real business opportunities work?

[00:10:43] Talila Kroy: Yeah. So, if you want to jump into the ‘How’, and there's a lot more 'Why’, if I can just quickly summarise the ‘why’ one more minute.

[00:10:48] Sean Steele: Oh, sorry. I thought you'd already just rapidly given to me and I was moving straight on. 

[00:10:54] Talila Kroy: I made a couple of notes, so I'm just going to just do a rapid fire of some ’Whys’ for you.

[00:10:58] Sean Steele: Go for it. 

[00:10:59] Talila Kroy: One of the things we find with our partners is that we often get clients that are aligned with our values and they're also nicer people and it's a warmer fit. And that's because some of our partners have a no D head policy or a niceness factor is one of their own qualifiers. So, they work with nice people. That means that you get nice people. Another thing about it is that there's a sense of working together in a connected net. So, we can actually work with our partner for our client and get them a force multiplier. And a good example you gave us would have been what we just said, which is someone's working on lead gen. We're working on conversion. Together we put our heads together and we make the perfect process for the client. That's a really good example of that. Another benefit is that it's going to come up if you're a good supplier, if you're good at what you do and you make your clients really happy and solve their problems, they will ask you, they will say, ‘Hey, do you know anyone who does X?’ And you're going to look like a champion if you can pull out that someone who does X and does it really well. So, it's valuable. Another one is from a competitive point of view. If you're very similar to some other competitors, but you've identified parts of the client problem that competitors aren't solving, you can bring in value partners to offer that very quickly without having to increase your cost of expenditure and the whole infrastructure of delivery. So those are a couple. And I think if you want to add to that a little bit. It doesn't feel like selling. So, and it doesn't have an upfront cost. You don't have to spend three to four months trying all these different digital strategies before you know what's converting. There is still a time lag. It's still a process, but it's doesn't cost more than your time and your energy and some focus and some strategy.

[00:12:51] Sean Steele: One of the things that you jumped out at me in terms of what you were saying is yeah, in B2B, I always say to my clients - You don't have to be all of the solution for your client because, you know, you always want to solve more problems for them. And that's a valuable headspace to be in. What are the problems that they got? How do I add more value? If you can bring them the solution with other partners, that makes them very happy because they don't want to see you trying to stretch yourself into areas that you actually know nothing about. It's far more exciting for them to have a credible, referred quality source come in to help you sort of jointly solve a problem. I saw this the other day in an education landscape where I've got an old friend and a very, very capable sales,  no question, the most experienced person in education sales training has done, you know, listen to many, many, many thousands of calls and knows exactly what's going on in the mind of a student. Has seen an opportunity and a real need in the market where there are a whole bunch of international education providers trying to move into domestic education. And that is an entirely different students, entirely different sales process. It's not an intermediated sale with an agents, now directly with the students, like everything is different about it. And he can do an incredible job of training the salespeople, but they don't actually have any of the reporting. They need a different CRM. They need different, like the whole model is entirely different. It is much higher lead volume, lower conversion stuff than just receiving completely enrolled students from an agent. So, we had a big conversation about a partnership model, like why don't you take this technology partner who actually knows how to set up the technology piece and has no idea how to sell to education students and you know how to sell, why don't you put that together in some kind of a thing and take it to the clients together? Because then all of a sudden you're solving the two biggest problems they've got. They're going to prevent them getting real traction and it's a great example.

[00:14:38] Talila Kroy: And from what you've said, we can infer a lot of insights, which I would also reinforce. One is it all starts with the client. We're here to serve the client. Whatever we can do to help the client, serve the client better is where our partnerships should go. That's the focus. And when we talk about strategy, we'll talk about how we map that out. Another one, which you have said is. It's very tempting as a business to try something that you're good at, but not great at and stay and suddenly get out of your sweet spot of genius. And what that does internally is cause burnout, externally means your clients, instead of being raving fans might be so-so or happy. And look, I'm speaking from experience. I like to take on the world. I've done some things like it wasn't my sweet spot, so I know now this is what we're best at. And actually, it all comes down to knowing who you want and what's the problem you want to solve and what else they need. And if we want to talk about strategy now, we can now dig into it from that insight. 

[00:15:39] Sean Steele: Love that and completely resonates with me. And that's, like I've had to build a whole bunch of corporate advisor, M&A specialist partnerships because. That is not my, whilst I've done heaps of it, that's not where I spend 24 hours a day, every day. So, somebody is going to do a far better job at representing that client in a transaction than I am. But I want to make sure they end up working with the right person because it's a massive risk and or cost to them. So, they absolutely value my recommendation to people that have been screened and I know a quality, and then they choose who they want to work with, but it helps them a lot because otherwise it's a sea of lots of different people that choose from. 

[00:16:20] Talila Kroy: M&A space is a real big one. 

[00:16:23] Sean Steele: Well, it's huge return, right? If you get it right,

[00:16:26] Talila Kroy: It's something we're looking at. I'll have to talk to you after this session, get your recommendations.

[00:16:29] Sean Steele: Please do. I've got some fantastic strategic partners that I can talk to.

[00:16:35] Talila Kroy: And speaking of, I'll just drop two more ‘whys’ in there. Sometimes like when we started business, we started hiring salespeople and then we pivoted in year, in our third year, we started with the playbook creation and the sales hire ready place to solve our own problem of the salespeople not getting traction. And we were in a new phase and we went out to market by I think year four with a pretty expensive package. Like, you know, it was, how many figures is it? You know, quite a few zeros after it. And it was a 12-month commitment and it was a big thing. And we'd certainly didn't have anything online or anything…We didn't have like the substantive proof that you would need to go out to market and do this in a lead generation fashion. But because I knew a couple of client/partners, I had a very good friend of mine, dear friend of mine, personally, a leadership coach to the superstars, like to the CEOs of large companies, she made us two major introductions in our fourth year and our sixth year to very large companies that we wouldn't have otherwise, we wouldn't have even come on their radar and supported that, and we were able to do huge, you know, really good pieces of work with them for everyone's benefit. And that's the power of trust and the power of getting past all the marketing stuff. Actually, we have a new marketing client who is really good in the marketing space, just started with her. And she said something to me like, if you have to market a lot, that means you've got too much time on your hands. I like people that don't have to market very much. It means they're busy. So, from a marketing company, that was interesting, and I agree. 

[00:18:15] Sean Steele: Okay, so let's, we've got lots of ‘why’s’ now. People are going; okay, yeah, I want to get involved in that. I would love to have partnerships that deliver those kinds of benefits. What do we got to do? What are the things that actually make it work? And then let's talk about the things that go wrong, that you have to really watch out for.

[00:18:30] Talila Kroy: Let's do that. So, I think the things that make it work is starting with the client. So, if you take your ideal client. And you really map out what problems does my client have and what are their goals and think holistically beyond what we ourselves solve and think - Well, if they need our service, what comes before our service, what comes after our service, what goes around our service? So, for example, if you take our service, you just said it. People need leads sometimes, they need lead generation or they need branding or they need web spaces or they need brochures or all that sort of stuff. After us, they need salespeople, but they also need other kinds of people because they're increasing, when their sales increase, they're increasing their team, need more delivery team, then they possibly need HR. Often they need contracts, they need legal stuff, they need CFO type services or someone who helps them with the finances. There's a whole bunch of stuff they need as they're growing that using us will increase or needs to be in place to get the best value out of us. And all of that circle are the potential partners that we have. So, we've got the same client with overlap, with non-competing, different solutions, which contribute to the same outcome or solve the same problems. So that's the first thing we do. We take that client, we break down their journey and their problems and their goals and who comes before and after them. And that becomes who we need to connect with. So, that's step one.

[00:20:06] Sean Steele: Yeah, as another example of that, and you mentioned it in your dialogue there, you know, I'm always working with people on their growth strategy and they get to a stage, usually somewhere between 5 and 10 million where they really need a virtual CFO skillset because they can't model, they can't forecast, and no one's thinking about their capital structure, and no one's looking at working out all, their cashflow is not optimised. They've got all this sort of kind of low hanging fruit and they don't have any KPIs. I don't have a good sort of management dashboards. All that sort of stuff starts to become really irrelevant. So, you know, I spent a fair bit of time talking with virtual CFOs to make sure that I've got the right sets available that suit the right clients because they're not all the same. That's a good example. 

[00:20:44] Talila Kroy: It's a perfect example. 

[00:20:44] Sean Steele: Exactly what you just said.

[00:20:46] Talila Kroy: And you think about the service that we're providing to the client. If the client had to go out on their own, they don't know who to choose. They have to do all that time and effort trying to screen them. They feel nervous, and it will take them longer to solve the problem. So, having that partner in place solves their problem quickly, safely, and effectively. And they get the result that they need. So, that's how we, the partnerships must come about. And that's how we also hold the conversation. We also need to understand our own lane, like you said. This is an area where we made our share of mistakes, because the clearer you are about who you serve and why, the easier it is to say to the partner, ‘If the client has this, this, this problem, and this, this, this quality, send them to me. I can fix that problem and this is the solution I can provide.’ When we started off, we were, because we have the three areas about business, you know, we have hiring people and we have process and we have performance management. We were spanning the six-figures, the seven-figures, a little bit of the eight-figures as well, and we were targeting and trying to provide solutions to too many types of clients. That's the best way to put it. Now we're really focused on that seven-figure space and it's much easier for us because they have different problems. They have different goals. As you said, it's that expansion piece where suddenly they have to think of everything that they didn't before in order to get to that next stage. So, getting clear on that is really important. You know, what you want, who you want to work with and why. If you're not clear on that, and this has happened to us, you will get sent the wrong people, then you have to…It's awkward. Someone sent you someone, you don't want to…

[00:22:31] Sean Steele: You're like, I don't know how to really help you with that. I can't. Maybe I know somebody else now. Like, now I'm just like being passed around. Like a baton.

[00:22:39] Talila Kroy: Well, yeah. And that's the thing. Either you've got to say no, which makes the partner feel bad and the client feel bad and move them on again, or you take them on and they're not a good fit, and that's really bad too. So, once we've got to the stage where we're clear on those two pieces and it's not really that hard to do, we should have a list. We should have a list of here are all the potential areas that we need to fill in our black book of, you know, potential partner slots and why our clients need them and even at what stage of the journey they need them. And then we can also go, who do I know, who do I trust and start with the people we know like and trust that we know are good and fill that first before we go hunting for the wider people. 

[00:23:26] Sean Steele: Yeah. That makes sense. Because ultimately it's going to take you longer. You're going to be doing a lot more screening, I imagine there's a lot more dancing and getting to know them and testing and trialling, but you absolutely, when you think about your influential space, you're going to have a whole bunch of people that you know, you can just rely on straight away. They’re just excellent at what they do, they just get it done. 

[00:23:46] Talila Kroy: And that's what we need. And so, we choose those that we know are excellent at what they do. And sometimes we've been their clients already, or they've been ours, and that's a good way. Another way is asking the people that are excellent at what they do. If they know anyone who's excellent at what they do at those areas. So, partners introduce you to partners and you keep that ecosystem of trust. And I'm not going to say that…yeah, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it's very effective. And it's not particularly hard as long as you stick to certain rules and guidelines that we'll get into. So, what we do there is we want to talk to people and it's just like a sales process. We wanted to have a process, a series of steps from, I know you fairly well. I know you're good at what you do, and this is the problem you solve. We solve to let's align ourselves. Let's create trust. Let's create a set of ground rules to work together and then let's test it out and then let's expand it from there. So, we have kind of a step strategy for that. And it's been due to trial and error, as I said before, don't leap in too fast. That's a bad idea, but have a step strategy. 

[00:25:03] Sean Steele: And are you going to talk about some of those ground rules? Like, you know, like we're setting up some ground rules for each other you're going to come to that, I'm assuming. 

[00:25:10] Talila Kroy: So, let's. 

[00:25:11] Sean Steele: Great. I won't take you on a tangent then. I don't know if you want to go into it. Yeah. Let's go into it.

[00:25:14] Talila Kroy: I think also before we have the conversation, it's important to know what are we offering to partners because it's not always the same thing. So, for example, we don't work with high volumes of clients ourselves. So, we can't offer partner X that I will send you six of these a week or a month or whatever. We just can't. we don't have that. So, a lot of our partners actually have a much larger quantity of clients at smaller transactional values than we do, and therefore they can send more people our way. So that means that there can be an imbalance and we need to think strategically about what can we offer the partners that's beyond just referrals. Now, some people are comfortable with a fee, like a referral introduction fee. Other people can’t stand that and feel that it muddies the water of the integrity of the client. And so, it's really important that values are aligned in how the partner's going to reward each other for thinking of each other and helping each other. 

[00:26:19] Sean Steele: What would be some examples of that, if you weren't comfortable with the referral fee or the partner's not comfortable with the referral fee, whatever the reason, what would you consider some of the alternatives that you've seen work in terms of how you reward each other?

[00:26:33] Talila Kroy: Offering value to the client. For example, when you give me a client, I will do X for your client for free. I'll give them a free strategy session plus this, this, this worth this amount of money. You can spend it on any client you want. Or I'll provide you with a piece of content, a tool, a service, something that is exclusive to you, which enriches your business ecosystem, without it being a financial transaction. Another example would be, I mean, you and I are not yet partners. I think there's a partnership to explore there, but doing things like this, marketing, or content materials that is beneficial to our communities, those sorts of things, for sure. Running campaigns for each other, building each other into steps of our process. There's a number of things that can be done. I'll try to give you some concrete examples. I didn't write a few down. So let's just, maybe start with the flow of value. Let me give you an example. We have a client who started off as a partner conversation. We didn't do much with them as partners, but they became a client recently. They're very, very good in the tendering space, probably nationally, absolutely the best. And they're very smart because they've identified certain problems that clients have with tendering, which exists before and after writing the tender, like the whole cycle. And they were ahead of competitors, I'd say, because they've identified that and they've created solutions in that space and some of those solutions are partnerships. And I think this is a perfect example of how it works. And it doesn't mean it's just referrals so much, it can be built into your system even. It can be built into your service. So, there's so many different models that can occur there successfully. 

[00:28:29] Sean Steele: And when you say that, so you mean like whilst the clients being delivered that service, it's visible to them if they've got this kind of problem that they can almost sort of self-select partners to be part if it… 

[00:28:40] Talila Kroy: Absolutely, do it self-select. We have a client that does mechanical engineering and one of the partnerships they have are air conditioning companies, plumbers, electricians. We have another one that was in the business building management, asset management space. And they similarly had partners that were in cleaning or security, et cetera, et cetera. We've helped clients to actually put when they were creating, you know, like a capability statement, put their partners into there. So, it makes them look bigger, but also introduces the partner service as part of their overall package.

[00:29:18] Sean Steele: Yeah. I mean, if you think about that, it's also for those who may not spend much time in tendering. That's a very common thing that you do in tendering. You know, you're going, okay, their tender requires these 17 things. I can do 11 of them. How am I going to fill the other six? You've got to go and find other parties that can do the six and you bring them all into one deal, and you choose how that's going to be remunerated or awarded or whatever, but your application is stronger because now you can be the point of solving the problem rather than saying, 'Well, I can do a bit, but you got to go and find somebody else to do what that, there's somebody else to do the other bit.’ And now the clients got more work to do.

[00:29:53] Talila Kroy: Exactly. So, tenders do it all the time. It's quite easy to do it in your business, B2B business as a structure. 

[00:30:01] Sean Steele: You mentioned Talila, some like, whether it's the mechanical engineering or those sorts of, the air conditioning or the building management services. What kind of partnerships did they develop? Like, was there something built into the process? Was it just when they spy an opportunity, they've got a structured way of doing their sort of maybe a light touch sort of qualification and the way they provide their referral. Like how deep do those go in terms of the, the architecture of their existing processes versus just when they see something.

[00:30:30] Talila Kroy: And I think this again comes down to the process of building the partnership. In the beginning, of course, we're being tentative. It's like a new relationship. So, we don't want to give each other a ring, right? We're still having coffees and then we're having a date, et cetera. So, in the very first, the earlier stages, it's usually a casual referral or what we recommend and what we do is choose someone to work on together. I'll give you a client that I want to look after. We'll work on them together. You give me a client that you want to work on after, and we'll work on them together. And then from there, once that's done, we not only have a case study, we understand each other better. But then we can move on to, let's set up something a little bit more official. From now on, I'm going to look for clients who have this problem, or, in my life cycle, the client usually has this problem when this happens, this happens, this happens. So, I'll ask a few questions, and if that occurs, I'll know who to send them to. And then you have a system for that, which I'll talk about later. So that becomes, then we build the client into either our initial sale or our ongoing client management piece. So, we can mention the partner when the right thing comes up. Then we're taking control and we're not waiting for the client to express that problem. We're checking if they have that problem and solving it preemptively. Then the next step of that is we can actually build it in to our own client's journey. Like, this is how you're going to grow. And these are the things you're probably going to need. And here are the solutions that we have. We can even preempt that conversation further. You can create partnerships that work together all the time, like a JV, things like that. And that's pretty rare because you really need to know, like trust someone, understand that company and really mesh. And I mean, I can think of one partner that we're doing that with consistently out of the, about five or six that we have that are very active.  

[00:33:33] Sean Steele: One of the things I noticed in putting together a lot of partnerships, in one of my roles where we had quite a number of them was, you know, some were deeper than others. Some were more, you know, I wouldn't say transactional, but some were almost a bit more one way. Like they would get, we were both getting mutual value, but ultimately it was a lighter touch partnership. And then some were like, really deep integrated in lots of different ways in lots of different levels where we had a proper operating framework and we'd go through the organisation and we'd match people. It was, you know, in the core documents, like your relationship is with this person and your relationship with that person. And so we'd literally kind of build, which made a lot of sense because one of the things that I've noticed is that, and you know, maybe it's not as big of an issue when you're in seven figures, but it's certainly a bigger issue when you get into larger businesses and you're scaling up because you don't want that partnership to fail because someone moves on, whoever the kind of lead person is, if it's built into the fabric of the way the two businesses operate and the relationships are at multiple levels, not just at the top, you end up with something that's far more enduring and you don't end up losing the value of the time that you've invested in getting it to that stage to start with.

[00:34:40] Talila Kroy: And that's the systemisation of the partnership, which is at the stronger end of when the partnership is formed well, and you know this, you want to co-deliver and that's very true. I mean, there's a lesson I learned this week, which is in stakeholder management, which is, we had a new product that a partner introduced us to for a client and it kind of overlapped one of their services. And we didn't communicate enough what parts we were handling and how it impacted one of the team members of the partner. And there was a number of people involved and our failure to communicate caused angst and discomfort to a partner member. So, stakeholder management is a whole other piece that, you know, particularly the bigger you get need to make sure you're communicating everything about your solution to everyone and keeping them engaged in that early unification stage so that that does not happen. 

[00:35:32] Sean Steele: And, you know, as mechanical as it might sound, that's actually about just having, you know, meeting rhythms that are rhythmic and are built into your operating model and have structured agendas that ensure that those things get thought about. Right... You don't just catch up for coffee and kind of have the fun part, but kind of forget all the important things. It's like, to your point, if you're going to be providing updates both ways, well, updates on product development, you know, current and future product development pipeline is going to be one of the agenda items on both people's in that meeting so that you're, those things are connected.

[00:36:08] Talila Kroy: And also, how we work together, like if a client's working with us in tandem, these are all the things we're touching on. These are all the things you're touching on. Let's just make sure we're all like, we look like one perfect machine to the client, I think very important. That's usually like at the establishment of that, you know, unification stage where it's beyond referral and it's becoming systemised that that does occur. And then, as you say, the meeting rhythms is what keeps it alive because what's happened with us in the past and with many of the people we know is, you put all your focus on your partnerships when you need new clients, then they send you some and you send some, everyone is super busy and then there's no time to talk to each other. Right? And then, you know, it all dies down and you're like, I've got to connect with that person again. I haven't spoken to them so many months. So, this is hard. And I think the only way to solve it is meeting rhythms and visibility. And that's where once you know each other and you know what problems you solve for each other, the frequency and stuff, you can set some KPIs. And actually go, well, I've got this many of these that I expect to be able to give you in a quarter and this many of these that you expect for me and no, I can't give you any. So, let's me give you this, this and this and this quarter instead. It's also the power of bringing in more than one partner to a group having building that ecosystem so that there might be 3 or 4 partners collaborating because I might not be able to provide a lot of leads, but I might be able to introduce a partner who can provide leads to another partner. And the three of us together might be able to provide each other with more bits and pieces for support than it just a two-way connection. 

[00:37:47] Sean Steele: Can you give me an example of that with three partners involved or four partners, as to how that might occur?

[00:37:54] Talila Kroy: Okay. So, a good example for us would be a recruitment company, a leadership coaching type company and ourselves, for example. So, the problems that we solve. Would be to make sure that any sales people that they hire as they grow and help them build the sales engine, their hires will not fail at the usual 50% rate. They can get the best people in the world and it will still fail because the client doesn't have the setup. We've talked about that in the previous session. So that's the problem we solve for the partner and client. We can help them grow and that means they have more money to build their team. At the same time, we're helping the leadership coach because they're talking to the leaders about strategy and, you know, how to build stuff. And that has to be enacted into the sales process. So, the strategy to process piece is an area that we work in. So, the leadership coach can give us clients and the recruitment partner can give us clients, possibly at more of a level than we can give them back. But by having them together in the same pod, they can give each other clients. And probably because there's a lot more recruitment leads than there is, like for a client with us, we do have recruitment clients, but most of them go on quite a long journey. So, we don't have a lot of them at a time and we focus deeply. Whereas with our recruitment partners, they have a lot of recruitments every month. So, there's lots of opportunities there. And sometimes they're talking to heads like CFOs, CEOs, Board members, etc. So, that's an immediate connect for the leadership coach. So, I hope that's a good enough example.

[00:39:35] Sean Steele: Yeah, no, that's good. So, conscious of how much time we've got. Are there any more of the foundations or do we talk about some of the things that can go wrong?

[00:39:44] Talila Kroy: Yes. Before that, I'd just say too, that I think that, one good thing about putting people into little groups is how hard it is to meet up with people, if you can meet with two sets of people instead of one on a regular basis, it just saves a little bit of time. It's something I'm still working on to get right. Problems, things that can go wrong. Okay. The first one I'd say is leaping in too fast. I think once we were referred to one HubSpot partner by… actually HubSpot, and we thought the person was amazing, turned out to be really terrible at everything, burned us and destroyed our relationship with the client, and that was what, three years ago, and it was just an incredibly painful experience. 

[00:40:34] Sean Steele: And so, with each of those, is there something that you could have done in hindsight or that you've already talked about in the foundations that would have solved that, stopped it from happening?

[00:40:42] Talila Kroy: Yes, I think what we should have done there was follow our regular process. So, just because someone you trust introduces you to someone you trust, you still need to build your own trust and don't stop the steps from happening. 

[00:40:56] Sean Steele: Yeah. Got it. 

[00:40:58] Talila Kroy: And from our point of view, the steps are. I do a discovery with you, I find out who your clients are, what the problems you solve are, how we would solve them, talk about metrics, KPIs, show you what we do, so you experience our sales process, ask you to show me what you do, so I experience your sales process, then ideally we'd offer you one of our services for free, like possibly a taste tester or initial service, and you offer us one of yours, because then we're clients of each other. One of the things that would stop me from referring someone is if I didn't fully trust the solution or understand the solution of the partner. It's important that we understand each other and we have real faith. And then from there, the test case, you know, where we've got all eyes on this and making sure it's working. And then from there, ongoing referral. And from there are those weekly rhythms and meetings and KPIs.

[00:41:55] Sean Steele: And do you, in your, prior to the test case, do you do much contacting of their clients or do you use the test case just as your sort of litmus test?

[00:42:06] Talila Kroy: I think that friend of mine, who's the leadership coach really showed me the best way of doing this. She spoke to the client about us. She spoke to us about the client and she arranged a meeting for all of us and got us to talk together. And then she was present in the first two or three delivery sessions. And then she, in the background, connected with them all of the time to see how things were going. I can't fault that model. It was perfect. And it's the one I'd certainly recommend and it's hard to do time wise, but it's absolutely the right way to go. And if you don't do that, if you don't understand everything the client is thinking and feeling, then there will be a lack of, I think, a lack of trust to move forward with that partner wholeheartedly. It's also an opportunity, don't you think, to iron out any problems that can occur early on. Like this is where we'll find different working styles, different values. You know, one of my favourite spaces is the purpose-led space, solving sustainability issues, things like that. And the beauty of that is everyone's got similar values. Like if you solve a sustainability issue for your client and another partner solves another one, you've got the same client and you're helping them to get, become more sustainable. The value alignment is fantastic, and I think that's really important. And sometimes only comes out in a test-case, or client-case.

[00:43:29] Sean Steele: Yeah. I like that, and ultimately, you know, if you're going to be putting your brand reputation behind this referral, you want to get as much comfort as you can. I mean, I guess the idea is you're doing enough of your screening up front to try to make sure that you don't risk that going poorly, but you stay close enough to your client that you've referred to this new partner to make sure they realised that like – Hey, I may not have experienced them before, so if you're experiencing them for the first time, I'm going to stay right beside you, and let's make sure that it's going to work for you, and if it doesn't work for you, then I'll help you find somebody else. But don't sort of oversell if you don't actually have the evidence, you know?

[00:44:00] Talila Kroy: Yes. Never oversell. And I think the best straight framework to come from is I've actually tried their services and I tried this part of their services and they were great. So, I can trust them and I will, as you say, be beside you and be open about the level of knowledge that we have about the partner. I think that's important. I think too that, and look, it can be tempting to sound like you know them better than you do, in that case with that HubSpot partner, I felt so much confidence from what HubSpot themselves had told me that I beefed it up too much and man, did that burn me. So, you have to be… 

[00:44:42] Sean Steele: What else can go wrong?

[00:44:45] Talila Kroy: Another thing I think that can go wrong is there can be, I think it's worth having a written document, a partnership agreement, not because you're ever going to take each other to court. That's useless. But because that way everyone's aligned on all the little things. Like, if the client, something goes wrong for the client, we're going to meet and we're going to do this, for example. Or if I introduce the client to you, the client remains my client, and you're not going to send the client elsewhere for things that I do, like basic stuff like that, have it all written down, agree on it, walk through it, et cetera, and also talk about everything that could go wrong. I haven't learned all of this stuff for myself, there's several business coaches and leaders that I've sort of pieced all of this stuff from over time, as well as a lot of personal experience, I certainly can't claim authority for all of those pieces of knowledge that I am now sharing. I think another one is when you introduce the client. So, if a client only has this much wallet or… 

[00:45:41] Sean Steele: Sorry, just to go back one step to the other, because I think that I would highly encourage people not to leave that, use the partnership document, because I've done, you know, I set up a lot of joint ventures, a lot of different partnerships and help clients do the same. And the very first thing we do is go - Let's get what we think, our intentions, our goals, how we think it's going to work. Let's get it out on the page. Let's. If we want to draft it, give them something to respond to, or we want to leave their side blank, or however you want to do it. And I'm sure these days, ChatGBT would give you a cracking table, pre filled table that'll at least get you started on something that's pretty sensible. But it's actually the thing that fleshes out what conversations need to be had. And that's a beautiful thing because the worst thing about partnerships is investing a whole bunch of time and then realising you both had a whole bunch of things that you had in your head that was going to be delivered or you had intentions for or whatever, and that doesn't happen, and then everybody's disappointed and then you got resentment and all the rest. You've got to get that stuff out early, even if you think it could be a bit uncomfortable, great, get all the uncomfortable conversations out early and you're going to have a lot less difficulty later on if things go haywire or et cetera. It's a core document, like for my clients, it's like an advisory board charter. It's the thing that says; this is what successes are going to look like for both of us. Let's talk about kind of what the criteria is and what do we do if things aren't working?

[00:47:02] Talila Kroy: It's so spot on and it's the same with salespeople, that's why it's so important to do the performance measurement agreement. We as humans all think differently and we can say the same thing and mean something that's slightly different by what we say. And there's this misunderstanding that can occur on many subtextual levels. And that's where the precision of that written agreement, really walking through it and talking around it is so powerful, and then referring back to it. And again, ours has evolved over time. 

[00:47:31] Sean Steele: And you know, it's a really nice, if you talk about those meeting rhythms, it's a really nice, you know, in the early days, you might only have to bring it back out once a year or once every six months or whatever, and then maybe it becomes quarterly. It's just a check in, it's like one of the agenda items. Is everything still here the same? Like, because people change, their intentions change, their businesses change, their goals change, and so you want to keep it as a living, breathing document. That's why you don't want to make it overly complicated. It's not a 50-page contract. It's a one to two page, absolutely tops, like two-sided table that gets out the key stuff, the high-level stuff, so it's easy to modify and change. What else, Talila? What else could go wrong?

[00:48:05] Talila Kroy: Introducing clients at the wrong time. For example, just say a client's got, I don't know, $100,000 to spend on X problem. And that X problem has three parts. And you deem that they'll need this service, this service, and this service to solve those parts. If there's a misalignment between the partners and you get them to speak to service number two at the wrong time, and service number two takes $80,000 out of their $100,000, they've got no money left to solve the problem one and three. So, I think the issue needs to be making sure that the client's spend of money is going to solve their problem, not detract from your business and get them the outcome that they require. 

[00:48:48] Sean Steele: They're looking for, yeah. 

[00:48:50] Talila Kroy: Another one, could be getting the wrong clients. And we've talked about that for, we weren't clear enough on who we wanted, you sent us the wrong people. We've got a client who we've helped them to grow their sales system very, very successfully in professional services in Sydney. They actually have now got a book of referral partners and they send most people because they're almost full to one of them. So, what do you do with the people you don't want to service? Have partners for those, send them somewhere that they're trusted and safe. Don't take them on yourself. So that's another area. Let's have a look. I made some notes about other sort of issues that can occur. I think another one is, not introducing or referring properly. That's a big one. I think that, you know, if you just send a flick through email – ‘Hey John, I thought you should talk to Mary. John has this need. Mary wants that. Let you guys take it from here.’ That's nice. But it then requires John and Mary to do a lot of work. And I think a more effective strategy. Would be say, ‘John, you've got these problems and I think Mary can really help you. Mary does this, this, this.’ Explain to John what Mary does and say, 'We're meeting again on Thursday. Do you want me to bring Mary in? And you can have a chat to her and we can see.’ That is a super powerful strategy. John and Mary's meeting is now guaranteed and you can be there and support John and Mary and make sure they're fit for each other and make sure it goes to the next level. Triangulation. 

[00:50:31] Sean Steele: Yeah, I've definitely been guilty of those quick and dirty introduction emails. And it's like, you know, I might've actually had really good conversations with both of them. I did one only yesterday, where I'd had really good conversations with both parties. And then I was kind of like – well, they've already had a, both good conversation about each other, so I don't really need to now like recreate that conversation and write. But it probably would have made their life easier because they would have probably got to the right agenda more quickly. So, apologies, if you're the client from me yesterday. 

[00:50:58] Talila Kroy: I have done it too. And I think the thing is that, from the client's perspective, they then have to reach out to the partner, which isn't comfortable. And then from the partner's perspective, they also have to maybe make the first move, and it's who's going to talk to who first.

[00:51:17] Sean Steele: A bit of dancing. 

[00:51:19] Talila Kroy: Yeah, a little dancing. And then subtext is lost. So, it's also good to talk to the partner about the client, to the client about the partner. Try to fill in the gaps and make everyone's life easier.

[00:51:31] Sean Steele: Yeah. It makes sense. And especially, if you're there for the meeting, then you will be able to very rapidly bring a context and agenda that they can then talk about and you can kind of sit back in that meeting, but actually getting the context set quickly, and being able to perhaps articulate any issues that might need to be worked out in that meeting. You know, it helps everybody get to the nub of things far more quickly, doesn't it? Yeah. 

[00:51:55] Talila Kroy: Particularly if it's the test case, you know, the first couple. You want to be involved to make sure everything goes well. Another reason, as I said, most of the things I'm suggesting have come about because I have made these mistakes. Made plenty of mistakes. 

[00:52:14] Sean Steele: Wisdom from battle scars. 

[00:51:15] Talila Kroy: Yeah, but got enough right that almost every single client we have comes from partners. To this point, we haven't done any marketing at all. We are actually about to start marketing ironically, because we have a product that we want to scale, but to this point we haven't done marketing. And it's a very easy lever for your clients to pull. 

[00:52:39] Sean Steele: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And so, what's your recommendation if a, what do you think about having multiple… So, you know, if I can think about, okay – Hey, this is working really well. We've developed this partnership. We're getting leads from them and you know, we're getting clients and everyone is happy. But I need to do more. Like I need to secure more clients than that and I don't want to do, go down the paid lead-gen scenario. Would you encourage them to take on multiple partners who do the same thing. So, on their client side, they've got options. But actually, now you might have three people who do that same service on the other side who are referring to you. Or do you think that is danger zone space? And so, you do actually go – well, maybe don't focus on that part of the value chain, focus on a different problem and find a different partner because the volume will still come, but you'll be solving more problems for the client. How do you think about that? 

[00:53:26] Talila Kroy: Yeah, that is a really good question, and we have been in that space, so I'll talk to you from my experience of it. I think that sometimes clients do want to have a couple of options, and it's nice to be able to say this company, and this part company both solve your problems in slightly different ways, and here's how they do it. We do have to be super careful because some partners do expect almost an exclusive kind of relationship, but again, it's all about the client. It's not about the partner. That I think that the best thing to do in that space is to have people who solve, or companies who solve the problem, but slightly differently from each other or for slightly different niches or groups or things so that it's not a exact competitive head-to-head. 

[00:54:10] Sean Steele: Let me go back to the, this is a great opportunity to go back to the M&A example. I've always got clients that are, you know, at some point going to sell their companies. It's just the way, it's just, you know, the seven-figure Founders are scaling up into eight figures. They get to a couple of million dollars of EBITDA and they're like, maybe I should sell… Great. So, they need an M&A partner. They need someone who to prep them for the transaction and manage the transaction, et cetera. You know, specialists who do just that. However, they're not all cut from the same cloth. They all deal with different, some of them will have deep CEO relationships in one sector. And it's like – Hey, you're a recruitment business. Well, there's going to be an M&A business that probably knows every single person, every kind of buyer that just buys recruitment businesses. And they're probably someone you definitely want to speak to. Now, if I give them another generalist corporate advisor who might have a great process, they may not actually be the best advisor for that client. And so, I've had, on the corporate advisor side when I was trying to build some of these relationships, I had plenty already, but I also wanted to have choice. So, that if I had a client that was of a certain ilk and I was like, this is the right advisor for you, that I would always be able to say - Here's somebody that I know. Here's how I know them. Here's why I think they could be good. And. You should also generate your own options. And maybe here's another couple. The reason I think these guys would be interesting for you is X, Y, and Z. But actually, ultimately, it's always your call. And so, I had a M&A partner that I know is excellent, and they said, 'The only way that we work with referrers is we have to be exclusive.’ And I said, ‘No, no chance. There's no way that I'm going to put all of my eggs in your basket because you can't be a specialist in everything and that's not a good outcome for my clients.’ So, I think it's a really good example. And so, I have a bunch, , and they all have different areas of specialty. They're all specialists in different stages or different sectors, and that's worked really well to make sure my clients get good choices.

[00:56:01] Talila Kroy: I think that was a fantastic example. And I think it could become very dangerous or difficult. The hardest part becomes when we're trying to maintain the stakeholder relationship with our partner, but the client comes first, client always comes first. Even if the client is their client, client still comes first.

[00:56:21] Sean Steele: Yeah. 

[00:56:22] Talila Kroy: And we have to work our stuff out behind the scenes to make sure the client is never compromised. Otherwise, it is a house of cards and it will not last and it will not lead to joy. 

[00:56:31] Sean Steele: 100%. Talila, we are almost out of time. Is there anything else that you would, I mean, that has been super instructive from my perspective. And if you were to go back and write all these into a sequence of, I mean, if you go back and listen to this podcast again, there is a sequence of steps there for you that take you exactly through the process of how to think about where to start. If you're like, I really want to do this, but I don't know where to start, you literally go back and listen to this podcast, Talila has given you like a step-by-step process. 

[00:56:55] Talila Kroy: I’ve learned a lot from you too. I will say, I've got two or three points that come to mind. One is, don't underestimate the things that partners can do for each other. For example, we've got a client in the agricultural services industry, who was able to create seminars, book seminars with partners to speak to large groups of clients. So that's one option. Another one is when we first got started, one of our partners ran an offer of ours through his database and that got us our first two clients. So, there's lots of different ways that you can support each other. It's not just a referral lead, and that's important. Another thing I would say is that, we're still like, we've compiled this into, like you said, a set of steps and it's something that we now offer to our clients as a partner piece. But as well as that, we do this matchmaking piece and we've just started this and we're going to really wrap it up into 2024 is, if we've got a client over here and a client over there and we trust them and know them really well because we've worked with them. Putting them together like a little matchmaker to help them with their partnerships. So that's something that is new on the horizon for us that is exciting that I thought I'd mention. 

[00:58:04] Sean Steele: That's awesome. 

[00:58:05] Talila Kroy: And there was a third one, something really, really good. Oh, the other one is, don't, again, when you're doing the partnerships, you can think wide. I know in our, one of our coaching groups that we're a part of, a furniture company and a car company and a jewellery company that became partners. And really all they had in common was that really high luxury end user client and they were able to create events for each other and do all sorts of weird stuff that I wouldn't have even thought of.

[00:58:36] Sean Steele: You know, I think, you know, when sometimes when you're thinking broad, it's like – okay, who else already sells to this customer? Like if you are selling, you know, I don't know, management consulting to HR leaders. Well, who else do HR leaders deal with, with any of their sort of problems? Like there are other people who are constantly in conversations with the same kinds of people. You may not even see it as a related issue, but that's an interesting way to broaden your thinking is just, start with the actual persona or the ideal client. 

[00:59:06] Talila Kroy: The ideal client. It all starts with the client. Spot on. 

[00:59:11] Sean Steele: Yeah, 100%. Talila, thank you so much. And again, thank you so much for being so practical and so instructive and thoughtful in the way that you presented your information. I think the Founders listening today will agree that there is lots of value for them. If they're thinking about doing partnerships, they're going to have a really massive head start the results of listening to this today. Where would you send people if you, they want to follow along with what Emple is doing or get any more information?

[00:59:35] Talila Kroy: Very good question. I have given you a link before Sean, but that was more about businesses that wanted to be sales hire ready. I think if they just wanted to [email protected], that would be easy. Just email me. We're very happy to share with them any more partnership insights. And as I say, we do have that piece ourselves, but you don't need us. You can create partnerships by yourself. If you'd like to work with us, however, I certainly won't say no, I'd love to meet any good Founder-led business that is doing good things in the world.

[01:00:08] Sean Steele: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Talila. And folks, I really hope you got a huge amount of value out of that. Go out and build your next strategic partnership. Just pick one. Let's get started, get in the process and see what, if you haven't done it before, see what you learned through the process, there is always going to be learnings but hopefully this will have shortcut, some of that learning time for you. Thanks very much, and we will chat to you again next week. Thanks so much, Talila.

[01:00:30] Talila Kroy: Thank you.