?? The Blueprint for Finding Great Partners
Cole Bridge
Building Opta to help lead buyers & sellers earn more and scale smarter with modern lead distribution
The difference between mediocre lead generation results and exponential growth often comes down to one overlooked factor: partnerships.
If you're selling leads, you need quality buyers and campaigns.
If you're buying leads, you need quality lead vendors.
Today I'll break down 7 simple steps to help you find, contact, and close quality lead gen partners that will help you grow your business.
Define Your Ideal Partner
Start by defining your target audience. In sales, this is referred to as ICP (ideal customer profile).
For lead buyers, this means identifying industries or verticals where your leads perform best. Ensure they companies with clearly defined metrics and lead nurturing processes who use valid business emails and pay their bills.
For vendors, it’s knowing which types sources consistently deliver quality traffic for you. Have they worked with clients like you before? How did it go? Does their traffic align with your target outcome?
Pinpointing these characteristics ensures your efforts are focused on the right prospects, saving time and boosting success rates.
Create a Lead List
Next, create a lead list that matches your target audience. Use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Apollo to identify relevant companies based on your ideal customer profile. Then, find contacts at those companies with job titles relevant to what you're after (Paid Growth, Marketing, Lead Provider, etc.).
This step is crucial.
Great emails delivered to the wrong people aren't great emails.
Craft a Compelling Offer
Show how you can solve specific problems or deliver value.
This could be improving lead quality, reducing CPA, or driving higher conversions. Think about what someone in their role is looking to achieve.
How can you help them accomplish that? A clear, benefit-driven offer sets you apart and makes prospects eager to learn more.
Write Personalized Outreach
Avoid generic templates and instead tailor each message to your prospect’s needs and pain points. Mention their industry, recent successes, or challenges, and explain how your solution fits.
For example:
“Hi [Name],
Noticed you're running paid [specific channel] campaigns to generate [industry] leads.
I help companies like [client 1, client 2, and client 3] [achieve desired outcome] by [how you help achieve desired outcome].
Interested in learning more?”
Real personalization shows you’ve done your homework and care about their success.
Build Trust with Proof
Mention similar partners, testimonials, case studies, and data-backed results to demonstrate your ability to deliver.
Trust is especially important when forming new partnerships, as prospects need assurance you’re a reliable collaborator.
Address Common Concerns
Be prepared to answer questions about compliance, lead quality, or ROI. What are the common objections you run into when pitching new partners?
Think about reasonable responses to those objectives. Proactively addressing these topics reassures prospects and removes barriers to moving forward.
Track Your Efforts
Use a robust CRM to organize your outreach, monitor responses, and measure performance. This gives you valuable reporting so you can run tests to improve your meeting set rate, sales cycle, and more. By analyzing what works, you can refine your approach and focus on strategies that yield the best results.
Follow these steps to execute a partner prospecting plan:
Building a prospecting plan mirrors building an advertising plan—both require clear targeting, compelling offers, and consistent refinement to succeed.
Now, you might be asking - why would a lead distribution platform be sharing information about how to improve at sales and partnerships?
At Opta, we aim to be a strong partner for the industry.
We’re not just a tech platform; we’re a highly supportive partner who goes above and beyond to help our customers (and readers) grow, improve their businesses, and achieve better outcomes.
If you’re looking for a partner who’s invested in your growth, schedule a demo with Opta today.
COMMUNITY
This week, we're proud to highlight our partner, Green Spigot Advertising.
They're a performance marketing agency run by James Basic (managed millions in ad spend) and John Belaska (former Meta Insider).
In short, they're a team of paid advertising experts who absolutely know their stuff.
They also run the Performance Marketing Behind the Screens show where they break down performance marketing strategies, real-world examples, and actionable insights to help businesses scale with paid traffic. You can check that out here.
If you're looking to grow your business with paid ads, you can acquire more customers and higher customer lifetime values by working with Green Spigot. Learn more about their work here.