PLG Section: reaching out to POC

Identify the right POC

The first step is to identify the right POC for your partnership. This should be someone who's incentives are aligned towards partnerships and someone who can align stakeholders in their organisation.

To identify the right POC, follow these steps:

1. If your potential partner company has a partnerships team, reach out to them
2. If not, make a list of POCs whose OKRs could potentially be building partnerships. Things to keep in mind:
3. 1. Have they worked on partnerships before?
   2. Do they have a incentive to partner with you?
   3. Are they in a position where they can align different stakeholders?

All these questions are not mandatory, but good to ask.

Craft the outreach message

The next step is to craft the outreach message. This is potentially the most important step in this entire process. If you have a good enough outreach message, you already have a foot in the door!

Here, all the context about your company, product, the problem statement, ICPs JTBD will come into use. If you're not clear on those, it's highly recommended that you go back and attempt that section again.

Follow these steps to write a solid outreach message:

Write a clear subject line

Clear subject mentioning company name A, company name B, and what you want to reach out for, that is the partnership.

Quick intro about yourself and the company

Provide a very quick intro of yourself and the company you're working for, with social backing. How is it impacting the users that's using that product?

After that, mention why are you reaching out to them. Provide a good reason for it.

Speak about the value prop

Mention how does this partnership align well with their roadmap. Always lead with data here, but make sure you don't give away all of it in the first chance

CTA

This is the most important part of the email. Provide them with clear next steps on how to reach out to you or your team

Craft the followup message & schedule

If the first shot doesn't work, you should have the next set of comms and emails ready - along with a followup schedule.

Keep these things in mind while crafting the followup message:

Figure out the FEC - functional, social and emotional of your POSo

Functional Job: The core tasks that they want to get done.

Emotional job: How they want to feel or avoid feeling as a result of executing a certain task.

Social job: How they want to be perceived by others.

Re-instate your core value prop with data

Continue with where your left off in the first email. Provide them with some more data to build conviction on your core value prop

Prepare your first meeting

Now that you have scheduled the first meeting, how do you prepare for it?

Here are some pointers that will help you nail the first conversation with a potential partner:

1. Research about their goals
2. Competitive research to figure out how this partnership gives them a competitive edge
3. Create the value prop for the partnership
4. 1. How does the partnership help solve customer pain points?
   2. Think if that partnership is sought after by mutual customers?
   3. How does your brand stand out from other's in the industry?
   4. What do they stand to gain?
5. Close the call with direct deliverables from your and the partner's end!

With this, you've nail the interactions with your partners!