Every business owner I talk to has the same three ideas for getting more customers.

Run more ads. Post more on social. Ask for more referrals.

None of those are wrong. They just all start you at zero trust, building it one stranger at a time.

Meanwhile, there's a guy across town who's spent the last twelve years earning the trust of exactly the people you want to sell to. He's got 3,000 of them on an email list he barely uses. They open his emails. They answer his calls. When he says "you should talk to these people," they actually do.

And you've never once asked him for anything.

That's what we're fixing today. It's an old direct response play that almost nobody in the service world uses anymore, mostly because it doesn't come with a dashboard or a monthly subscription. It's called an endorsed mailing. Jay Abraham built half his reputation on it back when "going viral" meant you had the flu.

Here's how it works. You find a business that already sells to your customer. They send a message to their list endorsing you, usually with an exclusive offer for their people. You get warm leads who already trust the person introducing you. They get a cut, a reciprocal promotion, or just the goodwill of giving their customers something valuable.

You skip the ad bill and you skip the algorithm. You just borrow his trust.

I run ads for a living. I'm not anti ads. I'm also not going to pretend it's 2019.

Costs are up across the board. Feeds are full of AI-generated junk. And this week every TV, phone and laptop in America is getting carpet bombed by political ads, which I'll talk about more on Friday. Cold attention has never been more expensive or more skeptical.

An endorsement skips all of that. When someone your customer already trusts says "I know these people, they're good, and they're giving you something special," now you're the guy their friend vouched for.

The numbers usually aren't close. A cold ad might convert one or two percent of the people who click. A solid endorsed email to a warm list can do several times that, because the trust transfers with the introduction. And you didn't pay for a single impression.

And here's what surprised me the first time I ran one of these. Endorsed customers tend to be better customers. They came in pre-sold, with a recommendation from someone they respect. They haggle less and stay longer, because somebody they trust already sold them on you.

Here's how I pick them. Find businesses that sell to your exact customer right before or right after you do. Not competitors. Neighbors.

Think about the timeline of your customer's life. What did they buy right before they needed you? What will they need right after? Whoever sells those things is your partner list.

A few examples to get your brain going.

Quick warning before you start dialing. If you're in healthcare, law, real estate or financial services, paying for referrals can get you in real trouble. In those industries, stick to reciprocal deals with no money changing hands, and run anything else past your attorney first.

The best partners have three things. They have a list, even a messy one. They have trust with that list. And they don't currently sell what you sell.

Bonus points if they're a little bigger than you. A partner with 10,000 past customers is worth ten partners with 400.

Here's where people blow it. They walk in and say "hey, want to send referrals to each other?"

That's not a pitch. That's a vague handshake that dies in a week. Everybody says yes and nobody does anything.

You need to make it specific, easy and obviously good for their customers. In that order.

Specific means you show up with an actual offer and an actual plan. "I'd like you to send one email to your customer list introducing us, with a special offer that's only for your people."

Easy means you do all the work. You write the email. You write the text message. You make the graphic for their social post. You build the landing page. All they do is hit send. If they have to write anything, it's not happening.

Good for their customers is the part that actually closes it. Your partner doesn't really care about your growth. They care about looking good to the people who pay them. So the offer has to be something that makes them look generous. "My customers get something nobody else gets" is a great feeling for a business owner.

Here's roughly what I'd say over coffee, which is where these conversations should happen. Not email. Coffee.

"Look, we share a lot of the same customers, and I'd like to put together something that makes you look good to yours. I'll create an offer that's only for your clients, something like a free safety inspection or $200 off, and I'll write the whole email so all you'd do is send it. For anyone who becomes a customer, I'll pay you 10 percent of the first job, or if you'd rather, I'll do the same thing for you with my list. Want to try it once and see what happens?"

"Try it once" is the line that gets the yes. It's one email. You're asking for coffee, not a ring.

This is the part that separates endorsed mailings from "here's my business card, pass it around."

The offer has to be only for their people. Not your normal promo with a different label on it. Something that makes their customers feel like insiders.

A few that work well.

A free version of your paid entry offer. If you charge for assessments, like I talked about on Monday, give their customers a free one. That's real value with a real dollar number attached.

A credit toward the first project. "$250 off your first project, exclusively for [Partner Name] clients." The partner's name in the offer is important. It reminds the customer who's doing them the favor.

Priority scheduling. In busy seasons, "you skip the wait list" can be worth more than a discount.

A bonus they can't buy. An extra service, an upgraded warranty, a second year of maintenance free. Something that feels special without cutting your price on the core job.

Put a deadline on it. Two to three weeks is plenty. No deadline means "someday," and someday means never.

The endorsed email should come from your partner, in their voice, sent to their list. You write it, they approve it. It should not look like an ad. It should look like a note from someone they trust.

Here's the skeleton.

Keep it short. 200 to 300 words. Write it like a friend telling a friend about a good mechanic, because that's exactly what it is.

If you're stuck staring at a blank page, give Claude the partner's name, how you know them, who their customers are and your offer, then ask it to write the email in the partner's voice as if they're recommending a friend. Then rewrite the parts that sound like a robot. There will be some.

There are three common ways to structure the deal. Pick whichever one the partner gets excited about.

Revenue share. You pay a percentage of the first sale from their list. Ten to 20 percent is common in services. Some people pay on the lifetime value of the customer, but I'd start with first sale only. It's simpler to track and simpler to explain.

Reciprocal mailing. You endorse them to your list, they endorse you to theirs. No money changes hands. This works best when the lists are close in size and quality.

Flat fee or sponsorship. You pay a set amount to be featured. This works for partners with newsletters or communities. Less common in local services but it shows up.

Whatever you pick, write it down on one page. Who sends what, when, what the offer is, how leads are tracked, what gets paid and when. One page. Both of you sign it. Have your attorney glance at it if real money is involved, and check whether your industry has rules about paying for referrals. Some do. Real estate, healthcare and legal all have their own lines you don't want to cross.

The fastest way to kill a partnership is a fight about who sent which customer. Track everything from day one.

Give every partner their own landing page or link. Even a simple page that says "Welcome, [Partner Name] clients" with your offer and a booking form. If you're running Go High Level, you can clone a funnel page for each partner in about five minutes and tag every lead with the partner's name automatically.

Give every partner their own offer code. "SMITHINSURANCE250" is ugly, but nobody's arguing about attribution when it shows up on the invoice.

Ask on every intake call. "How did you hear about us?" If the answer is a partner, tag it before you hang up.

Keep a simple tracker for each partner. Date sent, list size, leads, booked, sold, revenue, payout. A spreadsheet is fine. If you want it to update itself, Make.com can push each tagged lead into the sheet the moment it comes in.

Then send your partner a quick update after every mailing. "Your email produced 14 inquiries and 5 customers. Here's your check for $1,140. Thank you." That one email is what turns a one-time favor into a partner who asks when you're doing it again.

One endorsed mailing is a nice bump. Thirteen partners each sending twice a year is a lead machine that runs whether your ads work or not.

So build the system.

Make a list of 30 potential partners. Score them on list size, trust with their customers and how closely their customer matches yours. Go after the top 10 first.

Track your partner relationships somewhere you'll actually look. I like Clay for this because it keeps the notes, the last time you talked and the context all in one place, so you're not trying to remember whose kid just started college when you call.

Aim for one new partner mailing every two weeks. That's 26 endorsed introductions a year to warm audiences you didn't have to build.

Treat your partners like your best customers. Honestly, they're better than your best customers. One good partner can send you more business in a year than a hundred happy customers.

I put everything into one working document so you can start this week instead of thinking about it for three months.

It's called The Partner Playbook. Inside, you get the partner map with 120 partner pairings across 30 industries, the partner scoring sheet so you know who to call first, the coffee pitch and the follow up scripts for in person, email, text and LinkedIn, three endorsed email templates written in the partner's voice with a finished example, the text message and social post versions, 12 exclusive offer ideas that don't wreck your margins, a one-page partner agreement template with all three deal structures, the tracking sheet and partner report template, and a 30-day launch calendar that gets your first endorsed mailing out the door in under a month.

Some guy across town already earned your next customer's trust. Buy him a coffee and ask.

Talk Soon,

Dan

Dan Kaufman

Founder, Dead Simple Growth and Pinnacle Masters

P.S. Reply with PARTNER and I'll send you The Partner Playbook. Tell me what your business does in the same reply, and I'll send back the first five partners I'd call if I were you.