160 checks for any partner or trade program on products above $2,000 AOV. Go line by line and score your own brand honestly. The total tells you where you stand. What you do next is in the gaps.
The gap between 2 and 3 is the entire game. Everyone above $2k AOV eventually says “20% off and a dedicated rep.” Almost nobody says “and if we miss, here is what you get.” Score 3s are the only lines that survive a competitor screenshotting your page.
Who gets in, how hard it is, and why that difficulty is the offer. A program anyone can join is a discount code. A program with a gate is an asset on the partner's business.
Discount alone is commoditised. Structure is not.
Every SLA below should carry a consequence. An SLA without a consequence is a hope.
Move every fear the buyer has onto your balance sheet, then say so in one sentence each.
Stop selling product. Start absorbing their labour. This is the part almost every program misses entirely.
The partner is running a business. Speak to their P&L, not to their taste.
At $2k+ AOV, logistics is not a footnote. It is half the objection.
“Dedicated support” is the most devalued phrase in B2B. Replace it with specifics.
Above $2k AOV nobody specifies from a screen. Whoever puts material in their hand first usually wins the spec.
Stop being a supplier. Become a source of their revenue. This is the only category where the offer becomes structurally uncopyable.
The offer is also the interface. Friction at 11pm on a deadline loses accounts that discounts won't win back.
High-ticket buyers are buying position as much as product.
Every promise above is worthless if the page reads as marketing. This part is what makes the rest believable.
Same offer, different sequencing, three times the applications.
Programs are won on acquisition and lost on the 90 days after. Most of the industry has literally nothing here.
Everything above can eventually be matched. These are the moves that make a competitor's team say “we can't do that.” Pick two or three — not all ten, which reads as desperate and un-underwritable.
Every score-3 item is a real liability. Three questions before it goes on your page. What is the expected redemption rate, and what does it cost at that rate? Can the operation deliver it on a bad week — a 30-minute quote SLA at 12 quotes a day is a person, at 90 a day it is a system that does not exist yet. And is it written in your terms, word for word? If the page says “full refund” and the terms say “at our discretion”, you have built a trap for your own credibility with exactly the buyers you are targeting.
The correct posture: make fewer promises than your competitors, and make every one of them absolute.
Book a call. Bring your score and we will work through the lines you rated 0 and 1 — and tell you which are worth underwriting and which would cost you more than they return.
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