Partnerships and co-selling templates and swipe files for marketing and creative agencies
Copy-and-paste starting points for partnerships and co-selling — plus notes on why each template works and how to adapt it. Written for agency owners and heads of new business.
This edition is written for agency owners and heads of new business. In marketing and creative agencies, agencies sell their own outcome — the playbook has to be one they would proudly resell, so the way you install partnerships and co-selling has to reflect that reality from day one.
Templates are only useful if you understand why they work. Every swipe file below is paired with the underlying principle so you can adapt rather than copy blind.
Template one: the trigger-first opener. Reference an observable event in the first sentence. This works because one great partner is worth ten marketing hires — the buyer sees you know something specific about their moment.
Template two: the concrete-outcome subject line. Name a number, a metric, or a decision. Vagueness is invisible in a full inbox.
The binding constraint we see in marketing and creative agencies is almost always owner-time bottleneck on the sales function. Partnerships and co-selling is only useful in this vertical when it is pointed at that constraint — not at a generic growth number borrowed from another category.
Template three: the single-question CTA. Ask one question the recipient can answer in under thirty seconds. Multi-question emails get skipped, not answered.
Template four: the internal weekly review deck. Six slides: list health, trigger volume, sourced and influenced pipeline from partners, wins, losses, next week's bets. Keep the same six every week.
Template five: the kill-criteria doc. Written before you launch, listing exactly which numbers cause you to stop. Prevents the sunk-cost debate.
Adaptation rules: change nouns and numbers, not structure. If a template stops working, revisit the principle before you swap templates.
Concretely for marketing and creative agencies: agencies that install this stop trading time for pipeline and start productising it. That is the reason it is worth installing partnerships and co-selling properly rather than half-heartedly across three vendors.
Frequently asked questions
Partnerships · agencies — answered
- Does partnerships and co-selling work for marketing and creative agencies?
- Yes — provided it is aimed at owner-time bottleneck on the sales function rather than a generic growth number. Agencies that install this stop trading time for pipeline and start productising it.
- Can I use these templates as-is?
- Yes for structure, no for wording. Change the specifics to match your ICP.
- How often should templates be refreshed?
- Structure holds for a year; wording tends to fatigue in a quarter.
- What is the most-overlooked template?
- Kill criteria. Written before launch, it prevents most of the wasted spend later.
- Do templates apply to enterprise partnerships and co-selling?
- Yes, with heavier governance. Structure remains the same.
- What is the agencies specific pitfall with partnerships and co-selling?
- Running the generic playbook without adapting to agencies sell their own outcome — the playbook has to be one they would proudly resell. The install has to be vertical-first.
Growth Broker editorial
Filed under partnerships · agencies