Seth Godin often gets me thinking. One of his posts this week was spot on. Seth used two westerns as examples.
“Howard Hawks, director of Rio Bravo, pointed out that the reason that the marshal [in High Noon] failed to rally the community was that he was asking. In search of affiliation, he shared his fears and a story of mutual support as well as loyalty for what he’d done for them for so long.”
“In Rio Bravo, on the other hand, John Wayne does nothing of the sort. He regularly turns down offers of help, being selective about who’s worthy of being on his team. He shares no fear or trepidation. He’s selling status and dominance, not affiliation. “Are you good enough to be on this team?””
“Humans are motivated by affiliation or by status.”
Put up the Red Velvet Rope. Create a line to get in. Make it a little harder to join the program.
Put the mirror away. Just because a Partner can fog the mirror doesn’t mean they make a good partner. How Aligned are they? Why are the adding you to the Portfolio? How will you work together?
I understand that there are KPIs in some programs just for recruiting – get the agreements signed – even if that partner doesn’t do anything else. The problem is the time and effort of signing up a partner without Enrollment is a waste of time.
The KPI isn’t the sheer number of Partners — it is the number of selling Partners!
TSB’s flash their partner numbers – 2500, 5000, 8000 – they only send checks to about 20% of that number. (Thank you, Pareto.)