Partner Journey · Complete How-To Guide

Three things partnership is at B2B Growth Hub:

• Mutual audience access · your audience hears about us, ours hears about you. Cleanly, transparently.
• Co-delivered programmes · co-authored content, co-hosted events, jointly-built tools. The output is ours-and-yours, not a white-label one-way deal.
• Aligned commercial structure · introductions get the right treatment on both sides · revenue share or co-charge where applicable, transparent referral acknowledgment where not.

What partnership is NOT · vendor-customer with a different name. We don't partner with our suppliers · we partner with platforms, networks and organisations whose audience and offer is complementary to ours.

1. Channel partner · you have a network we want to reach (e.g. an industry association, professional body, accelerator). Lead-share mechanics + co-branded content.
2. Integration partner · your product complements ours (e.g. CRM, analytics, lead-research tool). Technical integration + joint customer journeys.
3. Content partner · you produce content the ecosystem benefits from (e.g. industry research, podcast, newsletter). Co-publishing + audience-share.
4. Event partner · you run events that complement ours (e.g. regional meetups, niche conferences). Mutual ticket allocations + cross-promotion.
5. Sector specialist partner · you bring deep vertical expertise (e.g. healthcare, fintech, manufacturing). Bring buyers / suppliers from the vertical + we provide the platform mechanics.

Partnership starts with a 60-minute conversation. Four questions to answer between us:

1. Who's your audience? · size, segment, fit with ours.
2. What's the strategic objective? · audience growth, revenue, credibility, capability gap-fill.
3. What's already on the table? · pilot, MVP, year-long programme.
4. What's the long arc? · single-pilot or multi-year. We prefer multi-year framings · pilot-first is fine but we want both sides aware this is a relationship, not a deal.

After the conversation, 2 weeks of mutual diligence:

• We review your audience profile, financials (broadly), reputation in your space.
• You review ours · we share investor structure, audience metrics, member NPS.
• Both sides talk to 2-3 references in each other's network. Reputation-first checks before commercial discussion.

~50% of conversations end here · usually because the audience overlap is thinner than expected. Honest exit at this stage is much better than a strained partnership later.

On mutual yes, formal agreement:

1. Scope · what we'll do together · co-authored content schedule, event co-hosts, integration spec.
2. Commercials · revenue share, fee structure, or barter framework · whichever fits.
3. Brand usage · which logos, which contexts, sign-off process.
4. Exclusivity · category-exclusive, regional-exclusive, or non-exclusive. Usually negotiated tier-by-tier.
5. Term + termination · standard is 12-month auto-renewing with 90-day notice. Pilots can be 3-6 months.

Signed digitally via the platform's contract flow at /contract.

First 30-60 days of an active partnership:

• Single point of contact · partnerships team owns the relationship on our side. You assign your equivalent.
• Enablement deck · we build a shared deck explaining the partnership to both teams. Lives in a shared workspace.
• Joint roadmap · 12-month plan of activities · content publication dates, event slots, integration milestones.
• Cross-team intro · marketing-to-marketing, product-to-product, sales-to-sales where relevant.

The partnership becomes public when both audiences hear about it. Typical launch:

1. Joint announcement post · same content, both channels, same day.
2. Joint webinar or virtual session · 45 minutes, free, both audiences invited.
3. Press piece in trade publication where relevant.
4. Inclusion in next monthly newsletter on both sides.

For channel and sector-specialist partnerships, lead share is the operating engine:

• Lead routing · partner-originated leads come into the platform with attribution. Standard 6-month attribution window.
• Revenue share · typically 10-20% of first-year revenue on partner-attributed leads · varies by partnership.
• Quality bar · leads must be qualified · partners don't bulk-forward. We track per-lead conversion and partner quality scores.
• Partner portal · for active partners, we provide a portal showing live lead status, attribution, and pending payments.

Every 90 days · 60-minute QBR with the partnership leads on both sides. Standing agenda:

1. Numbers · leads exchanged, content published, events co-hosted, revenue attributed.
2. Wins · what's working that we should do more of.
3. Frictions · what's not working · honest, not defensive.
4. Roadmap · next 90 days of activity.

Partnerships that skip QBRs drift. The QBR is the discipline.

Renewal conversations happen at month 9-10 of a 12-month term. Three outcomes:

• Renew same tier · most common · keep doing what's working.
• Renew + deepen · add content streams, expand to additional events, add integration features.
• Renew + narrow · cut activities that didn't work · same partnership, leaner.

Three signals that a partnership isn't compounding:

• Both sides skip 2+ consecutive QBRs.
• Numbers stagnate · 2 quarters of flat or declining leads / content / engagement.
• Audience friction · members on one side complaining about something on the other.

When this happens · honest conversation. Sometimes the answer is to pause and restart with reduced scope. Sometimes it's mutual exit. Long unhealthy partnerships drag both brands · short healthy partnerships compound them.

• QBR keeps getting rescheduled · a signal · escalate to senior partnership leads on both sides.
• Lead quality is dropping · run a 30-minute calibration session. Often the qualification criteria need updating, not the partner's effort.
• Content slipped from schedule · most partnerships have at least one missed deadline. Acknowledge, replan, move on · don't penalise.
• Co-hosted event under-attended · both sides debrief jointly. Often the post-mortem reveals an audience-mismatch that was visible early · honest analysis prevents repeats.