Slow Down to Speed Up: The Decision Matrix That Protects Your Brand from Bad Partnerships

Stop reacting. Start partnering with intention. Marie & Anne-Marie share the exact tools to end spray-and-pray outreach for good.

Are you scrambling to find partners every time your numbers dip or an event is on the horizon? In this episode of Partnerships on Purpose, Marie and Anne-Marie tackle one of the most common — and most damaging — patterns they see in the coaching and consulting world: reactive partnership outreach.

They walk through exactly what this looks like (hint: it's the frantic wave of invites that goes out the week before a launch), why it fails to convert, and how it quietly erodes the trust and reputation you've worked hard to build. More importantly, they share the practical tools they use with their own clients to create calm, strategic partnership programs that compound over time.

You'll learn how to build and use a Decision Matrix that takes the emotion out of partner vetting, why your CRM is the most underused asset in your partnership strategy, and how to develop a Top 20 list of proven partners you can activate before you ever need to go searching. Marie and Anne-Marie also discuss when — and how — to hand partnership conversations off to a team member without losing quality or consistency.

Whether you're a coach, consultant, or service-based business owner, this episode gives you the mindset shift and the systems to move from reactive to intentional — and build partnerships that actually work.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

All right, welcome back everybody to partnerships on purpose. Today's topic, like most of our topics, is something that we're seeing happening in the industry right now. This is happening a ton. And we were just talking right before we press play on why, what we see, how we would suggest and coach somebody who's doing this. So, what is it? It is the fact of reactive partnership outreach. So, what that means to us and what we see is we will have clients and members and people in our industry who are just like, oh my God, we gotta have more partners right now. And they go and they like spray out a whole bunch of invites and check-ins and like la ha ha and so react. It's like crazy, right? It's like that's what it seems like. It's just like a crazy little fit. It's the it's the yes, there's no way to say it other than that. Um, but if it is reactive, it feels reactive, it's gonna feel incongruent to the people that are receiving that. It's probably not on brand for most of the people that we're talking to. And then what happens is it just spirals down from there. Now, Anne-Marie, you have a you have a couple conversations you actually had today or yesterday about this. So maybe you can give some more context and then let's talk about how we would coach somebody to do differently.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I think you're you're actually you're actually like bang on. People are just freaking out. They're looking at like, oh my God, I have an event in a couple of days and I don't have enough partners, or my numbers are not where they used to be, or oh my God, I need that revenue in the business. What can I do? So I'm just gonna get on a call with somebody and pitch them something. And people don't take the time to actually step back and say, does this make sense? Does this make sense for my business? Does this make sense for my event? Does it make sense for me? And I had two conversations recently. And, you know, I think when we're entrepreneurs, business owners, we have our own thing going. You obviously the end result is you want to make a sale, right? The end result is you want money to come into the business. And people just quickly think, okay, my God, I can make like $500 here. So let me just do it and not think about like, is this the right thing? Does it meet all of my criteria? Does this make sense? How much time is it going to take my team to put this together? So there's a whole bunch of different things. And I think, you know, it's really important that when we look at partnerships, for example, that we go back to what are we looking for in a partner? What makes sense? Even when you're telling you want to tell, like you could say, okay, great, like maybe this will make sense, but think about it more less of just like, hey, I'm gonna get somebody into the calendar and promoting me, but more of like, hey, this is in alignment, you know, with what we're doing. Look at the information, right? Do your due diligence. Um, and if you don't have time as a business owner, then pass it on to the people on your team to do the work for you. And the reason I say that is because if you don't, likely what's going to happen at the end is you're not gonna see the results that you expect. And then you'll be like, well, how come it didn't work? Well, it didn't work because we were reactive and we didn't do our due diligence at the beginning to actually see whether or not this was worth it, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

So I think sometimes when we do this, like people do this a lot. We're right at the end of a quarter right now, right? So everybody's looking at are we gonna meet our metrics? Are we gonna meet our numbers? Is revenue? And most of the people that we're talking to, partnerships is a stream of revenue, which we 1000% appreciate. Yes, do the thing. Partnerships in the pop world is all around long-term strategic partnerships. There is very limited things that we would go and be so reactive to bring a new partner in and assume that it's going to convert. And then we have to your point, we'll have members, we have people in our community that'll go to us and be like, partnerships just don't work for me. And we talk to them, we open it up. Okay, how have you been doing it? What's what's not working? And then they talk about this like say and spray sort of thing, like, well, I just invited everybody to promote my thing next week. Oh, and it didn't work. How weird. Like, did you consider their promotion schedule? Did you consider the copy that was being sent out? Did you consider the type of people that they have in their audience? We were just looking at some numbers the other day where it was just like the numbers are really off, right? The leads are coming in, conversion's way down. Well, that tells me we have to go back and look at the audience because we didn't present it the right way. I want to talk about a couple tools we have that we give people because I think this is super helpful. We can solve for this, friends. It's so easy. I love it. So, one thing that we train people on is called a decision matrix. Ann Marie, you built out the decision matrix for our clients long ago. I think that helps to like ease the anxiety of like, is this a good fit or not? Do you want to talk about the decision matrix a little bit and how people set that up?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah, absolutely. And and it's different for every business. It is basically the list of questions or the things that you look at in order to decide whether you want to partner with somebody, right? And that could be different for everybody. Like I know some people, it is list size, right? Decision matrix, you know, the first thing is people have to have a minimum list size of 5,000 people, right? So you go down that list and you identify what are the things that are important for you in a partner and you ask those specific questions. Now, sometimes it doesn't mean that you have to check the box for each, but it could say, hey, if somebody has four out of five of these things, well, then yes, we're we're gonna test the partnership. And sometimes even when we have, you know, check the boxes for everybody, sometimes it doesn't work. There's other criteria and other things we need to think about afterwards when we do that debrief call. So creating a decision matrix around who you partner with is really, really important, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

And then sticking with it, like when you get into this freak moment where you're like, oh my God, don't start freaking out, stick to your guns because you're your rational self many, many months ago, put together a beautiful decision matrix so that when you got to this point, you could say, okay, it doesn't fit. So you have to slow down a little bit to speed up, right? I say this a lot: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That's the way we need to think about things. And a decision matrix is how we have made this success successful long-term strategic partnership programs inside of so many businesses is to have the rational self create the space to say, is this a yes or no? And then they're like you're saying, the fudge is okay, maybe it's four out of five. Maybe not everything is checked, but you can already set that up and then hold yourself and have your team hold you accountable to that. We have people inside of our membership, they will definitely come to us. This looks like a great deal. What do you think? And then we have the opportunity to say, yeah, this looks awesome. And does it fit inside your decision matrix? And then they'll go back, they'll remember that they've already created this platform, and from there, they can say, actually, it's gonna do more harm than good. Exactly. If you do more harm than good because you just do a crazy outreach thing, it's insane. Anything else about that? Do you want to add on anything else? If not, I just do something else.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, no, I think I think you've covered everything. I have some other ideas, but I can share them at the end. Okay, that sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

So the other thing I was thinking is we definitely have people in our community out there that just get a Friday night wild hair and they go and they outreach to all kinds of different people. They're entrepreneurs, right? They're builders, they're gonna do all the things. Can you see the dog back there? I know I can.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

I love him.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Oh my seriously. Okay, sorry. We have an Anne-Marie pause right there.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah, done. We could we could wrap this up now. I'm so happy.

unknown 8:31

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

All right, so we have people out there, they go, they get a wild hair, they want to reach out to a whole bunch of people, they know that they're gonna find the partner there, and they do all of that. I never want to stop an entrepreneur from going out there and doing their very best self, especially when it is to promote their business. Obviously, we want you to think about it and everything else. The best thing you can do if that happens for you is document it. Tell somebody, put it in the Slack channels that you have, maybe with your team. If you have people like we do, we have people who are supporting us. They're checking in on our email, they're doing the outreach, they're prospecting, all that stuff. Just document it. I know I have a client that uses Whisperflow constantly. We'll just talk to anything. You do the same thing, right? With Claude, you just talk to it all the time. All the time, all the time, full time. All day, every day. We have so many tools right now where you can just turn that on and say, Hey, I just did an outreach to these seven people and I told them that I would follow up on Friday. If you do that and you start to document it, then when it comes Monday and all that excitement of the outreach is kind of finishing up. Now you can have, you can actually still do the what you say you're gonna do, which is a huge, huge core role of ours. Do what you say you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah. And then what you can also do is update your team accordingly, right? You don't want to forget. So if you're doing this, you're then taking the opportunity. So if you're putting it in something, you're like, hey, give me a summary of what I just said, the list of the people I reached out to, update your team, right? Because now if you don't do that, you're just creating more friction and more confusion and more work. And that's where things get messy, that's where things slip through the cracks. All kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

And the other thing is, is when you have a team, your partnership team, your outreach team, your VA team, whatever, you have probably trained them to do the similar things that you're already doing. So if that happens, that means they might have already reached out to the person that you've reached out to. So take a look at your documentation. We have spreadsheets for a lot of things. We use GHL, you can search to see who is doing what. Um, take the extra step before you just do a whole big outreach to see who who has already been contacted. And then is it a different type of conversation?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And I think, you know, I had, like I said, I had two conversations this week with two different clients, um, one around partnerships and one around um business services. But I just want to share the conversations because I think it puts some of this into context. So I think from a partnership standpoint, where I hesitate is, and that's probably just me because we're in the we're in the business of partnerships. But if one of our clients or somebody comes to me and I'm in a panic, or my clients in a panic, and they're like, hey, so-and-so will promote you, John, Joe, Tom, Cindy. And I'll be like, Okay, those are all partners. Yeah. But I'll be like, well, why haven't you told me about them in the past? Right. So my like my red flag goes up and says, Well, why are they all of a sudden a good fit for me? And why haven't I, number one, why have why don't I know them? Number two, why haven't I had a conversation with them? And number three, why would haven't we partnered together in the past? So, where did these people all of a sudden come from? Right. So that's kind of a like a red flag for me, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

And is it like what kind of promises did somebody make? Well, exactly in the DM, like did you just DM them that you would do that right?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Like it feels like, oh, did you just check off a box on your side? Like what happened? Did you promise people introductions and didn't know who to make those introductions to? So in a situation like that, I would go back to the decision matrix. I would say, okay, well, great, thank you. But before I say 100%, I'm gonna put you in my promo calendar or vice versa, let's have a conversation, let's jump on a quick 30-minute call. That'll be enough for me to figure out whether or not this is a good fit. Yeah, right. So that's that situation. Number two, from a sales perspective, yes, document everything. And I always tell, you know, anybody that I'm talking to, if I'm in a networking call, even when we're talking to people in our community, I love in person, but I love virtual so much more because everything could be recorded. I had this conversation with somebody this morning, and we were having coffee, so in-person coffee. And I said, you know what? I said, don't make any promises on the first call. I said, when you're talking to somebody, I said, schedule a discovery call, learn more about the person, learn about their goals, their objectives, what they're looking to achieve, and don't share everything and then go back and do your due diligence and go back to what's important for you and how can you help the client, right? That is so important. There's no reason to rush into things. And I think when we do that, sometimes we just position ourselves to be unsuccessful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Well, and entrepreneurs, especially people that are in a growth space, we move fast. Like we want to make quick decisions, we want to keep up with everything. And in partnership and long-term strategic partnerships, it's about developing the long-term relationship. And I think the person on the other side of that conversation can appreciate the pause, right? Take a beat, figure out if this is going to be a good fit. Same for them. They don't want you to promote something that's going to fall flat. You can't promise that things are going to work unless you do your due diligence. So it's just, I guess we're giving tools and ideas and things around that natural reaction of an entrepreneur. And that's who we work with a lot, right? We work with the coaches, the consultants, the speakers, the people who are out there building really amazing, important businesses and have good messages. Like we love to talk to them, and we want to give the tools to make every conversation important and important in two ways. It's either yes, it's a fit because it fits in the decision matrix, or no, thank you. I'd love to have you on my referral list, or we've done an episode before where you just go ahead and blacklist that person because it's a no, no, no. Yeah. So okay, I love it. You said you had some other tools. Do you have some other things you want to share?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Oh, yeah. So one of the other things when you are doing partnerships is start to build a database and document anything about the people you're talking about. Like, yes, this is a good fit. No, this is not. So when you're coming, when you're in a situation where you're being reactive, you can actually go back and say, hey, somebody's coming and suggesting Tom promote me, right? And then you'll be like, okay, great, but do I know Tom? Did I have a conversation with Tom? And then you can go back into your database and say, hey, yeah, you know what? I talked to Tom in 2023. This really wasn't a fit. And then you're able to make some educated decisions on like, this is not a fit. So I'm not gonna put you in my promo calendar or vice versa. So I think that's important to start building your CRM system and documenting and putting in. Sometimes you, you know, it could be like, oh my God, I had a call with that person, and they were just awful. And that's happened to me. Well, we talk about vibe all the time.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Like you get on and the vibe's off. It doesn't matter if they have the exact perfect audience, like, still say no, because it's not gonna exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

And then the other thing too is make sure that you, as you're going through partnerships and as part of your partnership program, you start to identify your top partners, your top affiliates, right? So that when you're in a position where you're looking for partners or you don't have enough people to promote something, or you're reaching out to those people first, right? Those should be the people that you're reading because you know that it works. So if you have your top 20, your top 30, your top 50, whatever the case may be, whatever you want to do in your business, you can say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go out to these people because this I know it works, right? So now you've you've already sent that out. So you're being reactive, not proactive. Sorry, you're being proactive, not reactive.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing too is we've done this for a lot of clients in the past where we have our we have the list of top 20 that's great for for a client. And then we talk to their top 20, right? Because if they're one degree removed, you know, if you've been promoting back and forth with Tom all the time, but Tom's best partner is actually Jim. Now you're like, hey, if you haven't already talked to Jim, let's let's take that step because more than likely, if they're a good partner for you and them, then you guys should be doing a partnership work. So the I think the biggest thing, and and we'll kind of find a good wrap-up here, but there's nothing wrong with doing outreach and being intentional with it. Put yourself some parameters in now. Have your conscious self sit down, create a decision matrix, create some processes, document if you do an outreach. If you go to an event, make notes, do what you can. I know that I have connected a lot. I mean, I've been to several events, and you were talking about in person. It's hard to record those conversations without being completely weird. But you can like connect, do a WhatsApp connect or you know, a text message, even, and then text each other. Hey, great to meet you. We said we would follow up about XYZ. Now you get the discovery call on, and now you can have a little bit more time to have conversations with people. Um, and all of these is is to be able to set up a an intentional long-term strategic partnership program in your business because it will go on for forever for as long as you have your business. But those reactions will taint your not only like it'll tarnish your reputation and it could also tarnish your brand. And then people say, Oh, yeah, she said she would promote me, but then she never did. And that gets out there too. And we can't absolutely do that. That is not okay. Word of mouth is so, so powerful for a lot of people, I'm sure, that are listening, and same for us, we get out so much of our ref from referrals. We get so many people who say you should work with Marie and Anne Marie. We get it all of the time, and that's intentional because we do what we say we're gonna do. So, anyway, small soapbox, so good. Anything else you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

No, I think I think we've said what we needed to say. Also, think about if you're not the person in your business to have those conversations, it's okay to pass it off to a member of your team, right? So if it's your VA who's having those conversations, or if you have a partnership manager or whoever it may be, a marketing person in your team, it's okay to share your vision and say, hey, we're in a position, you know, I was thinking about these people, you know, what do you think? And then have them reach out, right? So you're eliminating that extra layer, right? So that it it nothing slips through the cracks and it's done the way it's supposed to be done. Because it's in situations like this where things usually F up. Yes, totally.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

All right, friends. Well, we will see you on the next episode. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you next time. Awesome. Thanks, Marie. Bye, Remy.