Look, you’re great, I’m just not interested in taking our relationship to that level.
With that in mind, I would love to talk about formalizing a referral partnership with you. We want to create a clear, simple system that ensures you are rewarded for connecting us with new clients. I also think there could be other opportunities for us to support each other’s work more directly. We’d be grateful for 20 minutes to get your thoughts and discuss how we can make our partnership more intentional and effective for both of us.
“C’monnnnn,” I sighed under my breath after spotting this email in my inbox.
We’d already tried this “referral relationship” about eleven months prior (yes, with the same company who was again in my inbox) and it had gone—as I expected—absolutely nowhere.
Here they were, back in my email, wanting another conversation about referral partnerships.
After I politely declined, I was met with a rebuttal, which then caused me to inquire as to why we were restarting this conversation. I was then met with a seven-paragraph long (I am not exaggerating) email about how it would be different this time.
He might as well have said, “Please, baby, I’ve changed! Give me another chance!”
One of the paragraphs included this:
As I explained in my previous email, our growth has been limited over the past 12 months as we refined our marketing offer. That means we’ve simply not had any new customers where your services might have added value. We did not have opportunities to introduce you to anyone.
First of all, I thought, did he really just hit me with a “as I explained in my previous email” when asking for a favor from me? Seriously?
Second of all, are you essentially admitting to me that you have zero new clients and need us to help you fill your client roster? How on earth would that benefit us and—most importantly—how do I know the work you’re doing is any good?
When you’re first starting out in business, a lot of the pitches you’ll get from third-party vendors are things you’ll say, “Yes!” to.
I certainly said “yes!” far more often that I should’ve. You know what it got me? A lot of working for free, a lot of pitching clients who didn’t value me or my time, and a lot of wasted energy.
Here’s why I detest paid referral relationships:
- Our clients are already paying us a lot of money, so we don’t really want to suggest they pay more money to another vendor.
- I personally feel very “icky” when I know I’m getting paid to pitch another company to my client, knowing that their relationship means I get paid.
- If they do work together and their relationship goes south (which I have no control over) won’t that look bad on me?
Now, we do offer unpaid referrals, in the sense that we say, “We love Memorable Pets’ products.” We just like their stuff, so we tell people about it.
What this guy was pitching (for the second time) was a relationship that was built on us sending them business because they needed it.
Funny enough, when the shoe was on the other foot, they sent us nobody.
When I’d contacted them the year prior to ask if they had any clients to refer to us, my email went unanswered for over a week. When they finally did reply, it was vague and unhelpful. I got the sense they weren’t interested in sending anyone our way.
Now, of course, the tides had turned. They needed us.
I looked up the company’s website again and was shocked to find that they’d essentially copy-pasted our homepage onto theirs. This was bizarre.
Almost more bizarre was the fact that their blog posts about “how successful they’d be with clients” included zero client information. It was not at all clear as to who they worked with, with sentences like, “Our clients got a 90% ROI.” Uh, what clients? Where are those numbers from? Is AI writing your blog?
Even if I had client who needed the help that they said they offered, how was I supposed to trust that they could do the job?
“Sorry,” I typed back, “This just isn’t making sense for us right now.”
