When organisations partner with us, they're often delighted at all the things they get for free that they'd usually have to pay for with other companies. Things like:
- Personal onboarding support
- Facilitated online training courses
- Template courses they can use
- Course design advice in the form of suggestions, example pages or a review
- Integration support to help get their systems connected to iQualify
That's zero set up fees.
In many situations, you'll see companies trying to recoup their onboarding costs in various ways. We use a different model. We invest in making sure our partners succeed. Because, if our partners succeed, we succeed.
In the rest of this article, you'll find out more about why this makes good business sense and why you might like to take this idea and run with it yourself!
It saves time and money
The support we offer saves our partners time in having to recreate the wheel. And in terms of training, it gets them to good, faster. This means they're up and running quickly and can start getting those learners started. Great for them and great for us.
When we offer advice for free, we consult to help our partners identify what the "right" solution is, quickly. This saves them time and money in investigating alternative options. But as well as that saving, often because we've been doing this for a while, we're able to suggest options that would achieve our partner's success goals in the most efficient and innovative way (rather than a method that might see us having some nice big billable hours). A billable service constrains you to that service. An open session frees us up to suggest approaches our partner might not have thought of. It also frees up time for us to support a greater number of partners.
When partners look good, you look good
We put the learner experience at the center of our product. So, when we're onboarding partners, one of our aims is to make sure their learners have an amazing experience. We know from talking to learners that they often bundle the content and the platform into one experience. So, if we can help make sure the learners enjoy the course and the platform, that's great for us. When learners and facilitators love the course, they spread the word. That's great marketing for the partner and great marketing for us.
It exceeds expectations and breeds goodwill
The services we offer have a lot of value. When we offer services truly for free, we're not trying to recoup costs via upselling. This means our conversations are focused on value for our partners, rather than value for us. This breeds a great deal of trust. Our partners can see that we are invested in them.
When we show up with the services and support we offer, partners are delighted and they can see that we've tried to do as much of the heavy-lifting for them as we can. This does so much for our reputation with them and their goodwill towards us.
These two combined can add up to a really strong relationship. Stronger relationships can lead to better retention (provided we're still the right fit for them of course).
Your turn...
For us, giving away stuff is just good business sense. As you've seen above, we've got some skin in the game here. We succeed when our partners succeed.
So, whether you're a freelancer, small business, or an organisation looking to really deliver value - why not take a look at how you onboard and support your partners? Do you have services or expertise that you could provide that would help them down a successful path? Offer it to them. At no cost. It's likely these would be highly valued by your customers, and it's a great way to get some feel good for you and your brand. You'll soon see it paying dividends.
