Building a Referral Network With Strategic Partners

John Jantsch (00:01.806)

So most people build referral networks by meeting, I don’t know, as many people as they can, as many people as possible. Today’s guest picked five or so and went all in on the trust with each one of them and turned it into a $50 million in funded deals without any cold calling. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jermane Cheathem. He is the sales director at Dale Financial Solutions and runs something called Creators Learn.

Where he teaches other sales professionals how to build the same kind of referral-based business. Today he actually pitched me on the idea of doing a building something live here on the show. So I have no idea what I’m doing today. we’re just gonna dive right in and see if he can actually use a duct tape marketing offering as the case study. So, Jermaine, welcome to the show.

Jermane (00:55.296)

Thanks, John. I’m looking forward to it, man. I I I’m just as lost as you in today’s episode, so we’ll figure it out on the fly.

John Jantsch (00:59.47)

Well well let’s get let’s get a little context. In the email you originally sent me, you said you had been making 300 cold calls a day, which sounds absolutely terrible. and that that nothing was really working. So what was the day you realized that that math would never kind of get you to where you wanted to go?

Jermane (01:20.414)

Well, I realized it because I was working twelve hours a day and getting very little results from it. life is short, we all die. So I knew that was not gonna pan out long term. And the way I had the epiphany was I was talking to one of the people that were working on the deal that we were working on together, and he told me, Hey, Jermaine, I’ll have some more deals for you.

John Jantsch (01:27.299)

Yeah.

Jermane (01:46.558)

And I realized, wait, wait, I’ve been going at this the entire wrong way. Instead of me going one-to-one transactions and trying to figure out one-to-one how I can get someone to buy my thing, I should just partner with people that already have my ideal customers in their sphere of influence. And my thing helps them sell their thing. And because you know, I was doing financial services, I just partnered with medical device salespeople because my financing helped them sell their the medical devices to the doctors. So

It became a win win win situation where I did ninety percent less work but got ninety percent more income. So I just turned the entire vehicle on its head.

John Jantsch (02:26.2)

Yeah, I I wrote a book actually called The Referral Engine in twenty ten. and that was one of the premises of that book was you your customers, people who know you, I mean, certainly know how great you are. they can refer you, but they can refer one or two people maybe. whereas, like you said, that right strategic partner might have five hundred people that could send your way. So a hundred percent agree with that. So one of the things I wanted to focus on is I think

I think that you said most of your results came from just a small group of people, five maybe even. how did you pick those instead of the, you know, obviously the others you hundreds you could chase?

Jermane (03:05.6)

Well, because they started sending me business and so there’s no reason to chase more business if you have ample business already. It’s all about quality, never quantity. I’m always looking for leverage and simplicity. And so for me, leverage and simplicity is always about how can I manage the fewest personalities, procedures, protocols, and get the greatest return while deepening my relationship with those individuals. Because you can’t have a a hundred friends.

John Jantsch (03:08.952)

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:32.706)

Yeah.

Jermane (03:33.382)

You can’t be close enough because there’s not enough hours in the day. So you have to really dive deep into who do you want to spend your time with and develop something bigger as long as it’s profitable. I I always have this adage like the best friends to have are friends you make money with.

John Jantsch (03:45.507)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:50.711)

Yeah. Well, and and and that’s a really good point though. I mean, I know you’re you’re kind of being facetious, but not. is that that those five or whoever, whatever the number is, they have the right values, they bring you the right kinds of customers, a deal is easy with them. I mean, it just you know, it’s like there’s a whole bunch of people out there that can make life hard. You know, when you find people that can make life easy, then then like you said, why not focus on deepening that relationship?

Jermane (04:18.622)

Yeah, it never makes sense to me to chase anything in life. Because you’ll notice like the best friendships, the best relationships, the best business partners, they were always very easy at the very beginning. It was never a bunch of convincing or scratching and clawing or following up. Like even to me, following up is almost a waste of time, to be completely honest. Because if you it it because you’ll spend 90% of your day following up people that will never buy from you versus just pay attention to the signals that are already there.

John Jantsch (04:21.388)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (04:29.272)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:38.914)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jermane (04:48.264)

That are easy.

John Jantsch (04:50.07)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we provide fractional CMO services, as I told you. And actually we have a whole network of of certified marketing consultants that that license our practice. So I thought you had offered to kind of do this live, you know, break break this thing down live. And so I thought let’s let’s use the duct tape marketing fractional CMO service as you know as kind of the guinea pig for this. you know, we provide this service to

Really small to midsized businesses. We’re not, you know, we’re not going after Fortune 500 companies. These are like two to twenty million dollar businesses, founder led quite often. and what we’re providing them is is marketing strategy, marketing leadership, which they they haven’t had. in many cases we will also execute excuse me, execute on the plan for them with our team. but the primary thing that that we’re bringing to them is a a a strategic outlook on the on their market.

So what what other context would help you kind of do to do today’s goal?

Jermane (05:53.29)

So is there any particular vertical you’re in?

John Jantsch (05:57.268)

y you know, we don’t we haven’t. I just I’ve always enjoyed the variety of of working with different types of businesses. we do a lot of business in the home services industries, you know, remodeling contractors, roofing contractors, that kind of thing. And we do a lot of work in the professional services. So other consultants, you know, architects, accountants, lawyers. Those are probably the two biggest.

Very broad you know, markets, but home services and professional services.

Jermane (06:29.544)

And so which is the most profitable and which do you enjoy working with the most?

John Jantsch (06:36.205)

Well, you know, my team does all the work, so I I couldn’t tell you the I couldn’t tell you this but you know there’s they’re drastically different. I think the reason we went into those two fields is professional services have always relied very much on thought leadership. and that’s really how I built my whole practice was on thought leadership. but then I started moving a lot of that thought leadership towards

Jermane (06:42.644)

What do they say?

John Jantsch (07:04.009)

businesses like remodeling contractors who, you know, we’re like, what do you mean, thought leadership? You know, we we just build this thing that people tell us to, but we’ve actually been in very successful at c almost changing that that industry by having them, you know, think differently about it. So if I were going to pick, you know, my one of my favorites is remodeling contractors. you know, I just I love working with them. We can have great impact, you know, especially ones that we can teach some of the, you know,

the differences that what we bring and what strategy really means, we we can have massive impact on on their business, really transform their businesses.

Jermane (07:39.006)

Okay. And so we’ll just take those two avatars. so with the with the contractors and with the professional services folks, how do you currently acquire those clients?

John Jantsch (07:41.955)

Okay.

John Jantsch (07:53.166)

Well, we ha I’ve been doing this thirty years. I’ve written seven books on marketing. and so we have we you know, we have a little unfair advantage. I I shouldn’t say it’s unfair. I mean we work to build it. but most of the most of that comes to us by way of the fact that that we have a pretty well known brand, you know, nationally.

Jermane (08:11.699)

Got it. So it’s mostly all inbound, I’m assuming.

John Jantsch (08:14.39)

It it really is, yeah.

Jermane (08:16.327)

Okay. Is it mostly from the books or what what’s the main driver?

John Jantsch (08:19.917)

Well, we’ve continued to you know, we do webinars every month. you know, we we put out tons and tons of content. We’re very active in the social channels, so it’s the books are a big part of I would say half the business that that that finds us sites having read or at least been aware of one of my books.

Jermane (08:41.843)

Got it. Okay. interesting. Okay. So the though here’s the problem I see with the current setup. But but I know why you set it up this way, being broad. But strategic partners always work the best when we have a very narrow offering and avatar, obviously. so with that being said, what I would do on the contractor side.

is I would probably partner with franchisors that do those type of franchises because it doesn’t they have to have to have a ROI. They have to have these franchises work. And so what’s the biggest hindrance of growing a franchise? Marketing and sales and getting more revenue, right? So I would include some type of marketing package that you already have, included in the franchisor’s pitch to the franchisee.

John Jantsch (09:25.521)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:37.433)

Mm-hmm.

Jermane (09:42.9)

That would be an easy now. Obviously, you’d want to even get more niche as far as they only do bathrooms or they only do kitchens or like the more niche the better. But that would be what what my first thought with the with the remodeling situation would be partner with the franchise or now on the professional services. what I would probably do since it’s again very broad and we don’t know what these coaches or consultants are actually doing, but they all

Since they’re thinking about thought leadership, most of them I’ve noticed really place a very high value on branding. They believe brand is like the B’s knees, but real entrepreneurs know branding comes after sales and marketing. It becomes almost a byproduct, but they don’t know that. So I would partner with brand consultants, brand coaches, whatever, offer your package. Say your package is $10,000. You give it to the brand consultant.

John Jantsch (10:28.632)

Yeah.

Jermane (10:40.701)

Or coach and say, listen, this is what I do, X, Y, and Z, it’s $10,000. However, you can offer it to your clients for whatever you want to price it. You can price it at $20. You keep the spread. We make our 10, you make your 10, whatever. But that not only makes the branding person’s offer stronger, but it also is gonna exponentially help their client actually execute on the brand. so everybody wins in that scenario, and also everybody wins in the in the franchisee scenario. So

Those are my two high level thoughts on this live kind of workshop. if you know if we had like more narrow specifics, I could have a lot more leverage. Like, for example, I had a a client that was doing high end gourmet chocolates in Dubai. She couldn’t figure out how to sell them. And so since I I knew where her market was and all the situations, I was like, your best strategic partner is gonna be the top fifty restaurants in Dubai.

John Jantsch (11:13.572)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:18.007)

Is it?

John Jantsch (11:26.638)

Nice.

Jermane (11:38.576)

Top high end 50 restaurants in Dubai. And you can either do this wholesale or retail, but you give them the chocolates for free. Everybody loves an awesome surprise at the end of their meal. Especially when they’re high end, they’re wrapped in this beautiful box. And so you can either give them to them for free, obviously. Once they get ingrained and they get the response back from their clients how much they love these chocolates after their meal, after they spend a thousand dollars on lunch, then you can either decide I can do wholesale.

John Jantsch (11:50.04)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:05.112)

Mm-hmm.

Jermane (12:07.731)

Wholesale and sell these chocolates to the restaurants for 50 bucks each, whatever you decide on the pricing, or even better, retail, where you include your business cards at the bottom of the box, your Instagram handle at the bottom of the box. So then these people that make millions of dollars can reach out to you directly, tell their friends and family about you, and then you have a direct and consumer play. But again, you’re just using strategic partners who are these high-end restaurants to get your foot in the door to these high net worth individuals who want to buy your chocolates versus trying to figure out.

John Jantsch (12:31.108)

Yeah. Sure.

Jermane (12:37.811)

How to do it one to one on your own.

John Jantsch (12:40.452)

Yeah, so I I kind of set you up a little bit in that we’ve been doing this, you know, we’ve been doing strategic partners for fifteen, twenty years. And so like on the remodeling side or the home services side, every every trade has an industry group and every industry group has a local chapter. And those have been so because we can educate on marketing, which is frankly a topic they all are always interested in.

we do a ton of education in those associations and those trade groups and that puts us that has them effectively put us in front of their audience. on the professional services side we’ve had a lot of luck with the all the Martech software solution folks, you know, people like HubSpot put us in front of their audiences because

they know that their folks need strategic marketing and you know, not just a tool. and so we’ve had a lot of luck in those two though both of those areas, you know, probably account for about half of our business you know, in any given year is the fact that we get in f we have people put us in front of their audiences. So that we’re not that you know, they’re not pitching anything or you know, we’re actually not e we we don’t even set up referral relationships with them. We just provide value.

to their users or their clients and and you know, some of those folks decide to hire us.

Jermane (14:01.181)

Yeah, no, that’s that that’s the that’s the only way to that’s the only way to do it. But it’s it becomes even more strong when you can figure out from a strategic lens of how you can make sure that your thing helps your partner sell their thing. Because then they it’s it’s not it’s not a want, it’s a need. I have to have Jermaine’s thing to sell my thing. That’s when those relationships last for a lifetime and the deals just become super simple because

John Jantsch (14:16.205)

Yeah. Yes. Very, very key. Yeah. Yeah.

Jermane (14:28.979)

Your partners doing all the selling on your behalf because they need your thing to sell their thing. Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:33.816)

That’s right. That’s right. Well, they it and and I think that’s a really key, especially when you’re trying to develop a an initial relationship. I mean, let’s face it, you know, people are gonna consider, well, what’s in it for me? and so I I think you’re absolutely right on that. You know, I get pitched every day with people that they call it partnering, but what they really want is for me to sell their stuff. and it you know, it it really that idea of of providing value first in some fashion, you know, you

you hit on and it is like it helps me s it helps them sell their thing. Absolutely a hundred percent key.

Jermane (15:08.851)

Yeah. And and then and this is just kind of something I learned in in my finance space. And then I started to realize like, okay, as I’m getting into coaching and consulting, like how am I gonna find people to coach and consult? Like I’m I’m not I learned learned my lesson. So like it’s all about finding these partners that need your thing to help them sell their thing. And if if more entrepreneurs can think from that lens, it makes life not only easier, but it’s actually funner because you’re doing business with people you like.

John Jantsch (15:22.051)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jermane (15:36.945)

And everybody’s winning. So it’s not like a competition or winners and losers. It’s like we’re rowing in the same direction.

John Jantsch (15:37.519)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (15:43.963)

So if you were gonna c again, you obviously would have a lot more context than this, but you know, there’s a ton of people out there. I mean, again, I talked about getting pitch I I tell you the thing I get pitched more than sell my stuff is people that want to generate leads for me by sending out cold, you know, cold email or whatever. so and a lot of people are following, you know, for that. if you were talking to somebody, somebody came to you as a prospect and said, you know, we’re doing this cold outreach and we get one or two percent response and

You know, it seems to be going okay. What would you tell them? What’s kind of one move you would say, here’s what you need to do to find your first real part.

Jermane (16:21.713)

well first stop doing anything cold. Like cold email, cold call, cold ads, like it it doesn’t I mean it works but it’s it’s it’s the the the ROI on your time, your resources, your money, you it it it’s it’s like it doesn’t make sense.

John Jantsch (16:24.206)

Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

John Jantsch (16:37.142)

It it it it’s also abusive to both parties, yourself and and the person you’re sending it to.

Jermane (16:41.488)

Yes.

Yes. I think there’s I think there’s somewhat I think there’s been over the last I don’t know when this developed, but there’s a misconception on how the human psychology works when it comes to sales. people want to put sales or marketing in one box and then put the rest of their life into another box, like as if it doesn’t bleed through. No. Sales and marketing in your normal life are the same. Your wife, your friends, everyone you interact with.

John Jantsch (17:03.203)

Yeah.

Jermane (17:12.847)

You know them because they know, like, and trust you from some situation that you infiltrated and became known at church, in the in the soccer club, and whatever, your local baseball team, whatever it might be, you became part of a community, if you will. That is the only thing that matters in sales and marketing. Is once you’re be part of some community where everyone is winning based on your thing, then you don’t have to sell market or brand.

John Jantsch (17:18.404)

Mm-hmm.

That’s right.

John Jantsch (17:30.137)

Business.

Jermane (17:42.355)

Because they send you ready to sign clients that you don’t have to convince because they trust Tim and Tim trusts Jermaine. So now they inherently trust Germaine. It’s just human nature, it’s not rocket science. So the first thing I would do is say stop anything cold. Second thing to do is

John Jantsch (17:46.992)

That’s right.

Jermane (18:00.53)

Here everyone has a Rolodex of friends, family, previous, co-workers, anybody. I don’t care if it’s 50 people, a thousand people, whatever. Reach out to every single one of those folks. Pri I would hope on a phone call. That’d probably be the best. you can always message them and just say, I’m looking to get into this is exactly what I do. When I first started in the finance space and I was struggling because of all the cold calls, I reached out to my Rolodex and I one lady I talked to, she was in marketing, and I said, I’m looking into get into the healthcare field.

John Jantsch (18:03.641)

Mm-hmm.

Jermane (18:30.345)

Do you know anybody? That’s all I said. She said, Great, let’s have let’s have lunch. Went to meet her for lunch. She gave me a couple names. I called those names. I said, she I I I I dropped name dropped her name, like who she referred me. Next thing you know, I’m getting deals from these folks because I’m leveraging the network that’s already in my phone. So first thing is call everybody or contact everybody in your phone currently or on your LinkedIn or whatever that knows you and say, I’m looking to get into this industry or find people on here or whatever.

They’ll start giving you names. They’re gonna start introducing because humans want to help other people. We love to help other people, it’s inherent. So that’s that’s step two is contact everybody on your phone and then reach out to those folks and tell them what you’re trying to do. And then that is the first step. You’d be surprised how much comes from that first domino because then they start referring you to five, six other people. And then once you have like one key, I call them MVPs, most valuable partners.

John Jantsch (19:19.384)

Mm. Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:27.013)

Mm-hmm.

Jermane (19:28.071)

Once you have one MVP that’s sending you business that’s solid that you like, your reserve friends, everyone’s winning, that one MVP knows other people that probably has the same service or product that you could also distribute to to that community. So it becomes a snowball, a domino, you can have different analogies for it, but people forget to leverage their backyard. Like if I live in Phoenix, why am I calling someone in Texas? I should exhaust Phoenix metro area first.

before I go anywhere because it’s just no like and trust. It’s you can talk about common things, the weather, the sports teams, whatever. So we we get I think I think a lot of folks look at, you know, gurus or successful people and they see them in their tenth chapter and they’re trying to copy the tenth chapter where they’re in the first sentence of their first book.

John Jantsch (19:56.88)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:16.025)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, a hundred percent. You know, I think that point about reaching out to everybody on your phone, I make that all the time because maybe two of them are prospects, but they all know somebody who needs what you do. And that and I think your point of just letting it out there wide open, do you know anyone who? You know, is one of the best, you know, best opening phrases you can make you know, to to your warm market for sure.

Jermane (20:44.913)

Exactly. Yeah. It’s it’s simple man, but you know, simple’s not always executed on for some reason.

John Jantsch (20:45.072)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:49.548)

No, no. Well, that’s you know, there’s the the lure of I can send a thousand emails with the click of a button. you know, that seems a lot easier, right? so but it it you know, do less and but just do it better. you know, as opposed to trying to trying to spam everyone. Well, Jermaine, I I appreciate you reaching out to me and and agreeing to kind of do this fun little episode today. Is there some place you’d have people connect with you or or find out about your work?

Jermane (21:18.995)

Yeah, best place is at my website, creatorslearn.com. They can check out all my socials and then they can also book a call there too with me directly.

John Jantsch (21:27.106)

Awesome. Well again, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Jermane (21:32.991)

Sounds good, John. Appreciate it, man.