In this video Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about how to approach referral or alliance partners. He argues that referrals are one of the fastest, most scalable ways to grow a business because they let you reach a large, relevant audience through a single partner rather than cold‑calling individual prospects. He outlines a concrete three‑step process: (1) Identify who potential customers work with before they buy from you – the “pre‑purchase influencers” such as real‑estate agents, mortgage brokers, developers, or insurance brokers. (2) Create a targeted list of contacts in those influencer categories, aiming for about ten prospects per segment in your local market. (3) Reach out with a value‑first, exploratory meeting request, using a friendly email that emphasizes mutual benefit, shares a brief personal intro, and proposes a coffee chat. He illustrates the approach with a real example of contacting a new manager at Enterprise Toronto, showing the exact email wording and the mindset of being a resource rather than a salesperson. During the meeting, he advises asking the partner about their goals first, then positioning your product as a solution to those goals. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to subscribe to the channel.
Chapters
How to approach referral partners. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Zeeshan, who wrote in to say, "Thanks Evan, but do you have any idea about such referral partners on how to approach them and ask them to do business with us?" So let me back out for a second here. I believe that going through referrals is a great way to build your business, one of the fastest ways to build your business. Instead of calling up individual clients and saying, "Hey, "Are you ready to buy my product yet?" You're reaching people one, one, one, one, one. Now you can reach people who have an audience that's the same audience as yours, and by attacking that one person, they're able to spread your message to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Saves you so much time and effort. So example, I'm, you know, I have my Zuga Worksheets right now for entrepreneurs, or guides to help entrepreneurs become successful. I'm not calling up individual entrepreneurs and saying, Hey, do you wanna buy my product? It's really good for you. It'll, it'll, you know, change your life. You gotta buy my product right now. It just takes too much time and it's not scalable and it's not a great way to build a business. Instead, I'm looking for people who have entrepreneurs as an audience already and partnering with them to sell the products. So I'm gonna give you 3 steps for how you can make those introductions and build the business through referrals and alliance partners. So number 1, think of who customers buy from before they buy from you. So you wanna think about your clients as running through a chain of events. So before they're coming to you, they're coming to you with a problem, right? I have this kind of problem. And before they come to you, they have other problems. What are those other problems that they're facing and who are they hiring to help them out? So for example, if you offer lawn care services, right? Okay, so you're helping people cut their grass, mow their lawns. So who are they buying from before they're buying from you? Well, maybe they're working with a real estate agent, or maybe they're working with a developer, or maybe they're working with an insurance broker or mortgage broker, right? All of these people, I have to buy a house. Before I have a house, I don't have a land for you to work on. So who do I work with to buy a house, right? Those are the people who you need to connect with. So you wanna think about all the problems that customers have before they come to you, and who are the companies that they're hiring working for. Number 2 is make a list of contacts. So once you have all of these types of companies, so maybe real estate agents, mortgage brokers, developers, insurance brokers, so those are your 4 buckets, especially someone that's in your local area, and find out contacts there, right? If it's the president, CEO, if it's a small company, if it's the marketing manager, if it's a bigger company, right? You want to make a list of all the people who are at those companies, right? Get Get the 10 businesses in each section. So 10 real estate brokers, 10 mortgage brokers, 10 developers, 10 insurance brokers, 10 contacts at each. And now you have your list of 40, 50 people, depending on how many segments you have, that you can reach out to and start making connections with. And number 3 is reach out. And it's super simple to reach out, 'cause this isn't a sales call. This is an exploratory meeting to potentially have a partnership with them. So here's what I do, and I'll give you an example. So, you know, I'm trying to sell my Zuga guides and there's a company that's run by the City of Toronto here, Ent City, called Enterprise Toronto, and they help new entrepreneurs get started. And they just had a new manager hired 3, 4 months ago named Chris. And so I reached out to Chris, like this is a great potential partnership for me to know Chris and for us to help each other out. And first you want to take that mindset of you're trying to help each other out, right? Them selling your stuff. You are trying to help each other out. So I don't know Chris at all. I wrote him an email and I said, Chris, you know, congratulations on the new position. My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe in entrepreneurs. So you state who you are and you state what you're all about. Then I said, I believe that Toronto should be a place where entrepreneurs are proud to do business instead of fleeing off to other parts of the world. So Enterprise Toronto has that same mission. So we're— I express a joint desire to make something happen. Then I would write to say, I'm working on a few projects that I think we might be able to work together on, and I think would really interest you. So I'm not getting into anything specific. I'm not saying, hey, I want you to sell my stuff, right? I'm saying I have projects that we could potentially work together on. I'd love to get together for a coffee. I'm in your area next week on Tuesday and Thursday. Do any of those times work for you? And almost always I get a response, okay? They're usually gonna check out my website, right? And they'll see that, hey, this guy's legitimate, right? If you don't have a website or you don't, you know, feel legitimate enough in email, you can always say who you've worked for, who you work with. If there's a big name that you can drop, that'll make it seem a little more, you know, prestigious and recognizable. And then when you go and meet them, this is beyond the 3 tips, you go and meet them, you go with the mindset again, you're trying to help each other out. You're trying to explore ways you can help each other grow the business, not just you and going to pitch them. So when I went to talk to Chris, the first thing I said was, "Hey, I want to be a resource to you. If there are entrepreneurs who you're struggling to help or you need help kind of brainstorming how to grow, if there's any problem you're facing with your organization right now that I can be helpful with, just let me know. I want to be a resource. Pick up the phone, give me a shout, call me, let me know. I want to help out. Then he asked him about what he's trying to do, how he's trying to grow the business, without getting to my need yet, right? Ask them what they're trying to do, ask them what their goals are, and then you can frame your product offering within their goal ideas. Or you may come up with a whole brand new set of ideas coming off of what they said. So you're going in with an open mind, trying to understand their business, trying to provide value and be a resource, trying to build a relationship, a connection. And if you can do that, then they're gonna be much more willing to support the things you're doing and promote the products and services that you're offering. That's how you reach out to alliance partners. Belief. For those of you watching, like the video, you can subscribe to the channel, see more videos just like this. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
