A real agency partnership starts with value, not a referral fee. After hundreds of these conversations, the difference is obvious within the first message.
A lot of ecommerce SaaS products try to partner with us. The best advice I can give, based on all those pitches, is simple: do not lead with money. The partnerships that work start with a genuine fit for our clients. The ones that go nowhere start with a commission structure.
Why leading with money backfires
When the first thing you mention is a referral fee, you have told me exactly how you think about my clients: as a payout, not as people you can help. I am not going to recommend a tool to a brand I care about because it pays me. I will recommend it because it makes their store better. Mix those two and you lose my trust immediately.
It is the same reason our own pricing is a flat fee rather than a commission-driven retainer. The moment money steers the advice, the advice is worthless.
What a good partnership pitch looks like
Show me the problem you solve and the client you solve it for. Prove it works. Make my clients’ lives better and the commercial side takes care of itself. The partners I have kept for years all started that way, value first, terms later. It is the same trust the five clients who stay for years pointed to.
If you are the one choosing an agency, apply the lesson in reverse and read why the partner matters more than the platform before you sign anything.
Trust is the actual product
Everything I do runs on the trust my clients place in my recommendations. I will protect that over any single deal, which is why I turn down business we could profit from when it would spend that trust. A partnership that respects that is one I will champion for years. One that ignores it does not get a second email.
If you are building something genuinely good for ecommerce brands and want to talk the right way, book a call.