A few weeks back, while working on our sales strategy for DealSavant.com, it hit me. We’re not scalable, as in my partners and I, we’re not scalable. We are only 3 people, and no matter how many people we talk to, email, or chat with online, we just don’t scale. Our initial sales strategy was very one dimensional, and would have required us to have a very high service cost to offset the time required to close each sale. Customer acquisition costs would have been through the roof, and no matter how effective our product is, it couldn’t have been priced at a rate that the market could bear.

While I’d planned on having a partner program all along, I never really considered up front, how effective it could be in helping us get to our first generation of end users. Then I reached out to a few potential partners, and BAM, we were talking about some serious potential.

At that very point, we pivoted, and redirected focus toward our partner program. This is our bread and butter and is where we’re engaging with our MULTIPLIERS. We’re partnering with Marketing, SEO, PPC, and PR firms that have existing clients that need our service. Each of us can support a broad number of partners, and each partner can support a broad number of clients. The partner, in turn, gets either a discount or commission on each account and the ability to generate net-new revenue, and we gain new clients. 

Each partner, whether they have 10 clients or 10,000 clients, presents a unique opportunity and advantage for us in that we only have to train them once and only need to support them as it pertains to the service. The partners in turn make more money, and are able to provide a new, unique, and valuable service to their clients.

Case in point. When you’re looking for ways to make your service based Startup sales scale, look for the multipliers, and build systems that allow you to support them and grow your business in the process.