The Trusted-Advisor Partner Test
Shared audience is not enough — partner only where your buyer already goes for this specific advice.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
A two-condition filter for partnership selection. Most companies stop at audience overlap: does this partner reach my buyer? Berkowitz adds the decisive second test: does my buyer actually go to this partner for guidance on the problem I solve? If not, the overlap is worthless, because the recommendation will never be asked for.
Origin
Berkowitz's own partnership doctrine at Deel, where venture capital firms became a major channel because founders ask their VCs which platforms to use after raising.
Core principles
- 01Audience overlap is a decent place to start and a terrible place to stop.
- 02A partner is only a channel if their audience asks them this specific question.
- 03The right partner is a trusted resource for your category, not merely a company with the same customer list.
- 04Look for moments where the buyer is structurally forced to ask for a recommendation.
How to run it
- 1
List everyone with audience overlap
Identify companies and organizations that reach the same buyers you do. This is the raw candidate pool.
- 2
Apply the guidance test to each
For each candidate ask: when my buyer has the problem I solve, do they go to this partner for an answer? A tech company can be tapping the exact same audience and still never be asked that question — in which case the partnership will not work.
Watch out This is the test people skip. It is the difference between a partnership that produces referrals and one that produces a logo on a page.
- 3
Find the forced-recommendation moment
Look for the point in your buyer's lifecycle where they are structurally compelled to ask someone for a recommendation — and identify who they ask.
Pro tip For Deel: a company that just raised from a VC turns straight back to that VC and asks what their other portfolio companies use to hire and expand. That moment is the partnership.
- 4
Invest only where both conditions hold
Commit partnership resources only to candidates that pass both audience overlap and trusted-resource status. Deprioritize the rest regardless of how big their audience is.
In the wild
When a startup raises money, it immediately asks its new investor how to spend it on team expansion — what are your other portfolio companies using, what platform do you trust and recommend? VCs are asked this question by default, so a VC partnership converts.
→ VC partnerships became a huge channel for Deel. Partnerships and other non-paid channels together account for roughly 50% of Deel's growth today.
Berkowitz describes tech companies tapping the exact same audience as Deel where a partnership still fails — because nobody ever turns to that company and asks 'who should I use for global payroll?'
→ Deel deprioritizes these despite perfect audience overlap, on the grounds that the partnership 'will likely not work just as well'.
Common mistakes
Partnering on audience overlap alone
You end up co-marketing with a company whose audience is right but who is never consulted on your category. The referral moment never arrives.
Is it for you?
Best for
A partnerships or growth lead choosing where to invest limited BD time among many companies that all technically 'reach our buyer'.
Not ideal for
Pure distribution or reseller deals where the partner is the transaction channel rather than a source of trusted advice.
From the transcript
“so it's important to not only recognize the importance of like an audience overlap as well as whether or not those people are seen as…”
“in our case Venture Capital Partners was a huge one because when you get money from a new VC they ask like okay thank you…”
From the episode
An inside look at Deel’s unprecedented growth
Meltem Kuran Berkowitz (Head of Growth)