partnerships aren't a lifestyle strategy

founder led sales stalls somewhere around $1m to $2m arr for a lot of companies. that's a common rule of thumb in saas, and it's the exact spot a guest on the show has built his firm around.

he's a go to market operator who spent seven years at an hr tech scale up before going out on his own. now he works with companies stuck in that gap, where the founder is still the best salesperson and also the bottleneck.

his first ten clients all came from his network. remember that. it matters later.

i asked him the biggest mistake he sees in ai go to market. he didn't hesitate. taking the human out of the loop.

the ai sdr wave in 2023 and 2024 paid the early movers. then everyone caught up. now every decision maker gets hundreds of emails a day, each one stuffed with personalization that feels assembled. his words... "the context oftentimes feels forced."

you know the email. it mentions your podcast from three years ago and your alma mater and then asks for fifteen minutes. it's personal the way a form letter with your name in it is personal.

so when founder led sales stalls, the reflex is to buy more of that. more sdrs, more sequences, more ads. volume through nobody's trust.

his contrarian answer was partnerships.

"partnerships is my favorite now, like partnerships is one of my favorite ways to grow business," he said.

at his old company they partnered with mid market hr and payroll firms for distribution. those firms already had the customers and the trust. he didn't have to earn attention one cold email at a time. he borrowed it from someone who already had it.

most founders file partnerships under nice to have. something for a lifestyle business. a couple of referral deals and a logo swap. his point is that it scales. it scaled for him.

think about how a new restaurant fills tables. it can hand out flyers on the corner all day. or it can get the hotel concierge next door to recommend it. one concierge sends more people than a thousand flyers, because guests trust him.

distribution through someone else's trust beats volume through no one's.

and look back at his first ten clients. all from his network. that's partnerships too, just smaller. it's the same principle at every scale. the warmest path to a buyer runs through someone they already believe.

i don't think this means you stop doing outbound. we run outbound every day. but the outbound that works now gives something first and opens a door to a relationship. it isn't three hundred forced-context emails hoping one sticks.

and the partner wins too. a payroll firm that can point its customers at something useful looks smarter to those customers. that's the test for any partnership worth building. if it only helps you, it won't last a quarter.

there's a reason partnerships get dismissed. they're slow to start. you can't spin one up in an afternoon the way you can launch a sequence. you have to find a company whose customers are your customers, figure out what's in it for them, and earn their trust before they'll lend you any.

but once one works, it keeps working. a sequence decays the day you stop paying for it. a partner who believes in you keeps sending people while you sleep.

if you're at the stall point and weighing whether to hire your own sdr team or bring in a service, i laid out the trade offs in outbound as a service vs hiring sdrs.

so who already has your buyers' trust... and have you ever asked them to share it?