Do you recommend cold outbound for partner recruiting? Why/why not? What has worked for you if yes?

I recommend cold outbound, but not automated cold outbound. In the early days of our partner program, all of our partners came via personalized cold outbound. I ran searches on LinkedIn for no-code automation agencies and reached out to them with a pitch of how SmartSuite can solve pain points that they may have with existing tools they partner with. Personal Loom videos have also been very effective. Ultimately service partners care about delivering great products to their clients. If you can prove your product will solve pain points that they currently have many of them will be open to less. Don’t just tell them about the product. Try to show them in a Loom video as much as you can without making the video too long.

I 100% recommend it as partners gained from cold outreach can be your best partners. The reason why is because you can get deadly specific with the people you're reaching out to, and with that, you can gain the EXACT ideal partner type you are looking for. However, the one thing to note is that in order for cold outreach to be successful, you need to really nail down your onboarding process for these partners. When I first started doing cold outreach, I was getting partners to say "yes" to partnering with us. But in the months after, they weren't referring any business to us or were being active in our program. Later on, I realized it was because I was treating these partners the same exact way I would any other new partner and put them through the same onboarding process. This is a huge mistake! Why? Because: 1. The cold outreach prospect definitely needs more education on your system than someone who is an inbound applicant 2. They'll need more time to get familiar with the product 3. Because you'll want to win them over quickly, you also need to focus more on their needs as well and how you can support them So, having a deeper onboarding process for these partners (more so than your inbound partners) that involves more education, training, and benchmark setting is crucial for your cold partners to be successful. Lastly, one killer tip for cold outreach is to find partners who are currently getting clients onboard with products/services that COMPLIMENT your software. The reason why is because they probably aren't offering anything in your wheelhouse yet, and that means you have a lower barrier to entry vs. someone who may be recommending your competitor, because you'll have to do less convincing selling. Doing these things will lead to super profitable partners for you.

Absolutely. I think inbounds, customer requests and prospect requirements are a great way to build out an ecosystem of potential partners but the long-term and strategic partners will often come from you outbounding and reaching out proactively (if you are the smaller partner).

Yes. When we started building our Partner Program here at Chili Piper, I was cold-emailing everyone who shared similar ICPs. I realized that the partners open to collaborating shared joint customers and didn't know we offered a Partner Program. If I would've never reached out, they might've never known.

100%! I wrote a whole essay on why "Your first partner won't be an inbound lead": https://www.linkedin.com/posts/franz-josef-schrepf_partnerships-alliances-partnerprograms-activity-6988843687266897920-isJ0 TL;DR: To build a successful program, you need lighthouse partners. The market leader in an industry your customers care about and use. The tool all other competitors are trying to catch up with. If you partner with a lighthouse, it signals to both customers and partners that this is the place to be. The problem? Market leaders don't land in your inbound queue. The good news? Outbound doesn't have to be cold. If you're active in the partnerships community, you'll likely be able to score a warm intro. And if not, well-researched cold emails and persistence are key. What's the worst that can happen? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.