Why the right questions can help you eliminate bad potential partners.

Like most of us, I'm relatively new to the Ronin way.

I've been looking for good potential partners and feel like I have some good options but the other day I had an important lesson.

It helps to know the important questions.

I had a coffee date with someone who on the surface looked like a good potential candidate for a partnership.

He was open with the questions I asked and said what seemed like the right things.

However his subject matter made me feel like I was out of my depth.

So rather than just say I don't know, I knew there were Ronin in the group that had more experience than I did and I'm not afraid to partner with someone in the group as well.

So first I checked in with

@Travis Sago

his dance card is full, cool. No biggie. I get it. So next I checked in with

@Tony Teegarden

I explained the situation I was looking at and Tony had some very pointed data centric questions he wanted to know the answers to.

Here's some of them:

-What's the size of your existing list?

-Are sales trending up or down?

-Which offers right now are currently working?--Do you have open rates for your email list

-When was the last time you emailed them?

-What was the last thing you sold and what was the price and how many did you sell

-What was your charge back percentage?

Once I started getting that info for Tony, it quickly became obvious that that this was not going to be a good partner for us.

Turns out that even though he said the right things initially, once we started to pry a bit for important info, the more we found out this was an unproven offer.

Once I started asking him these questions, he quickly disqualified himself as our potential partner.

Lesson learned. Onto the next one.

Thanks

@Tony Teegarden

for that lesson. I appreciate it man.

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