Collaboration Junkie

Humans have always been tribal, based on shared values, and business is no different. 

Referrers are the tribe who appreciate your value but may not fully understand it. They need to be educated.

Partners are the tribe who know your value and can leverage it.
They need to be motivated.

At Collaboration Junkie we work with Agencies, and other businesses where high degrees of trust are needed in their sales process, to develop the skills, systems and processes that allow for the consistent delivery of ideal clients, at the ideal time to buy, from trusted third parties. 

We work with you to turn your Nearbound strategy from something organic (and lets be honest, 'chance' isn't a strategy) to something scaleable. 

It could be building cultures of referrals in your team - so that everyone customer facing feels empowered to gain ideal introductions from your clients.

Or working through our DANCE framework for building successful strategic partnerships so you have all you need to know who the right partners are for you, how to attract them, and then, most importantly, how to effortlessly activate them so they deliver game changing results. 

Delivery can be workshops, online consultancy, 121 coaching, or coming in to be more hands on as a fractional role in your business - all either in person, remotely, or hybrid.

Loopli

Infinite security and compliance protection that evolves as your business grows.

Pretty cool right? Yeah, we know it’s a boring subject and there’s a lot that can go wrong, but we don’t want you to worry about that. We’ve got all that covered.

Your Business; Secure By Design

Security should, by design, be woven into the core of your business at stage one to prevent problems; not years later as a problem solving measure. 

To protect your people, you need to combine the right framework with the right technology - and that's what we do.

Head of Partnerships

The Agency Adventure

Supporting The Agency Adventure clients and community with Nearbound strategy - from simple client referral tips to how to scale partnerships and everything in between

Partner in residence

Boardy

Connector

LuMilona

Customer/Member engagement agency (previously advantage benefits) with reach of 1million SMES - adding value to our B2B clients customers through partnerships with global brands.

During the 6 years of the 2 incarnations we not only increased the retention rates and additional revenue streams of our clients but: 
Were top referrer to Regus UK
Worked with Volvo to launch their new models accross their UK dealer network
Delivered 10's of thousands of qualified leads to Yell.com
Worked with multiple global brands to help them access the SME market - Global Payments, DAS, Mercer Marsh, Eon, Experian and more. 

LuMilona works in partnership with brands who want to increase customer or member engagement, and add more value to their audience, through bespoke benefit packages that drive both value and profit back into your business.

From sourcing and managing the partners and benefits that your clients are looking for, to provding the software, systems and communications to support the programme, we use all our experience gained in membership to support your goals. And it's all wrapped around the advice and support that we love to provide. 

LuMilona can be a complete outsourced solution, or we can just provide support where you need it most so you can focus on what you really want to be doing - adding value to your customers.

Founder / Partnership Director

Advantage Benefits

Customer engagement agency helping organisations attract, retain & reward their customers through bespoke, white-labelled benefit platforms that build on our partnerships and collaborations with market leading providers.

Building on 10 years previous experience of sourcing best in the market offerings, and our member and customer engagement with business owners, 'advantage' is a unique customer benefit scheme. It not only adds value to your customers, driving greater loyalty and acquisition, but it can also become a new profit centre for your business where everyone is gaining value.

Co-Founder / Partnership Director

Champions of Small Business

Champions of Small Business was a national initiative dedicated to celebrating & supporting all that’s great about Small Business - which lets be honest is A LOT.

There's a HUGE lack of support and understanding about the needs of modern business owners, and it amazes us that in the UK you need a licence to fish, yet can start a business, be VAT registered and employ people without any idea at all of your responsibilities. 

At the core of Champions of Small Business is a free online resource - providing member engagement through tonnes of practical advice with useful downloads & articles, inspiring content from our thought leaders and ebooks & toolkits for all aspects of business. There's access to exclusive offers and everything you need to start a business, grow your business - or just save some time & stress and make run your business a little bit easier. This is all backed up with an online community with live events and webinars. All gathered from working in partnership with our best in class benefit and content providers. 

I left my position at Champions to focus on my other business interests where I was able to add more value.

Co-Founder

Business Scene

Grew small business membership organisation to 2000 members entirely through Nearbound strategies (35% client referral, 65% partnerships)

Business Scene’s mission was to create the perfect environment to start, grow and maintain a business so that small business owners, wherever they are in their journey, not only feel supported but have all the tools needed in order to achieve success.

Business Scene's membership was developed in partnership with industry leading benefit providers focussing on 4 key areas essential to any business; Growth, Savings, Protection & Support. But what really set us apart was just how much we cared about our members’ success. Member engagement was absolutely at the heart of everything we did. 

After developing the industry-leading range of benefits for business owners, and running partnerships with multiple national brands (Volvo, Regus, Mercer Marsh, Experian, Web.com, De Vere Hotels to name a few) we took the decision of alternative routes to market in order to help as may business owners as possible

Managing Director

Swindon Chamber of Commerce

Responsible for the growth of the Swindon Chamber of Commerce, primarily through developing relationships with businesses of all sizes and sectors across the region, and partnerships and collaborations with other local networks.

In the 3 years 2009-2012 Swindon Chamber of Commerce membership grew by 20% and the member engagement increased significantly.

Assisted both members and prospects alike by helping relevant businesses to connect with each other, in the hope that they can then develop worthwhile, lasting relationships.

Also organised events in the region, ensuring additional benefits portfolio meets the needs of business, assisted the Chamber Council in their representation of the local business community and advised businesses of the various ways the Chamber can help support them in the running of their business and how they could get the most from Chamber membership. Member engagement was at the forefront of everything I did.

Business Development Manager

Brook Street

Responsible for sourcing jobs to work on, understanding customers needs for the role and their business. Then finding suitable applicants and interviewing them, managing process with customers until vacancy filled. Then responsible for ongoing account management to ensure steady stream of vacancies on ongoing basis

Permanent Recruitment Consultant

Fed up of outbound campaigns that don’t deliver on either quantity or quality and feel a bit spammy? 

How about long sales processes, haggling on price, and ghosting? 

Feeling twitchy that lots of your business comes through adhoc referrals?

😩

Enter Nearbound

😀

A trust-first, relationship-driven approach to lead generation. 

Nearbound leverages your connections to create demand and attract higher-quality leads. It’s perfect for B2B, where trust and long-term relationships drive buying decisions.

In other words, it’s word of mouth, but with a modern, scalable twist.

Referrals shouldn’t be left to chance. They’re not just happy accidents—they’re opportunities waiting to be created. When approached intentionally and humanly, referrals become your fastest, most reliable path to growth.

From your clients, to your wider network and strategic partners.

In an increasingly remote world it's your relationships - not your tech stack - that's going to drive your business forward.

📈

Here’s why working with an expert (and this particular expert) could be right for you:

Worked with hundreds of business owners over the last 5 years - typically delivering <10x ROI.

It’s not just about leads, I’ll help you work in a more efficient (and therefore profitable) way - so that you deliver higher levels of service with less time and effort. 

Nearbound leads do happen organically - but working with an expert gets you expert results

Why me?

Check out my experiences for the results I achieved growing businesses by both receiving and providing introductions. 

And check out my recommendations that highlight some of the awesome wins we’ve generated for clients at Collaboration Junkie.

💥

Intrigued? Book a call, drop me a message, or book onto one of our free online masterclasses 

🧔🏻

A Bit about Me

A music (all sorts, but I'm more of an ass shaker then a fist pumper) and football (long loving, but feels like longer suffering man utd fan) loving (and much more, but too much to list) Dad from the South West of England, married to the gorgeous Kelly, with Luna (10), Milo (8), and Remi (2).

Big believer in being excited by, and enjoying what we do. We're here for a good time, not a long time afterall.

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday Collaboration Junkie, happy birthday to me. 

I posted earlier in the year about this being the 5th year of Collaboration Junkie, but unsure on when exactly. 

(Yeah, my business is 5, I'm not 55, but any further attempts at getting chat GPT to amend an image made everything go very weird)

I definitely decided on it and started talking about it pre-covid (so I guess that makes it Feb time) but with it starting off as a just a brand attached to an existing ltd company* and me taking a while to get the site up I wasn’t sure what to use. 

*it is now the company, covid helped see to that but the agency going under after losing 95% of its revenue in 3 months was actually the best thing that could have happened, kind of. I’ll come onto that. 

Well - September 8th was the 5 year anniversary of the first invoice hitting the bank account!

Yay! 

A big thanks to Tracey Miller & George Swift from Bigger Brighter Bolder  for putting their faith in me back then, and being vocal supporters ever since. 

There’s of course been a whole lot more happen since then, including an absolute tonne of mistakes, but thats another post for another time, for now I’m going to focus on the positives:

5️⃣ - Years of getting paid for helping people consistently generate ultra high quality leads through word of mouth 

👤 165 - number of clients (I reckon there’s more, but that's the CRM figure) 

> 💯 % - ROI generated. It’s way more but the number looks ridiculous

🗣️ 534 - minimum amount of people who have been to one of my own free taster masterclasses
(here’s the next one)  https://lnkd.in/eEa9u65D

🗣️ >1000 - audience of external events I’ve spoken at 

📩 748 - current newsletter list (subscribe here if you like!)
https://lnkd.in/eQ4pUHy7

⌨️ 35 - articles written. Yeah, bit lax on this one - but you can read them here
https://lnkd.in/eYqmrTCH

🎥 232 - videos posted on LinkedIn, from Rant of the Week which is how I got into regular videos, to Dave's Partnership Tips. I defo need to get back into a regular swing of this again

❤️ 50 - Recommendations on LinkedIn, and I reckon there must be another similar number in those received direct. 

📖 1 - Book written. Started way back when I thought of the business, but only just off to the editors. It’s my DANCE framework for partnerships & ff you’d like a free excerpt and to be kept up to date you can sign up here 
https://lnkd.in/eEvbTk9h

But my favourite thing of all is the random comments from people who have put things in place and seen results, or had huge shifts in mindset from something I’ve said. Sometimes it’ll be people I’ve never met before but were at an event I spoke at years ago and still remember the impact - and I love that.

I'm also doing what I love, and what I believe the world needs more of, so..

Here’s to 5 years more!

Dave Plunkett

Scalable leads through referrals & partnerships 🧑‍🤝‍ Nearbound Specialist 🌳 Coach, Consultant, Trainer, Fractional

Just about returned to normal levels after a jam packed week out and about last week.

Kicked off in Bristol on Monday with my first in person Agency Hackers event.

Wicked venue (check out the disco ball being expertly posed up by Amy Moore!), and brilliant content from all the speakers, with person highlights of Alicia Grimes talking about triggers & intention (two words I use all the time!), Jon Payne with the tyranny of choice and focusing on tracking / reporting what really matters, and a similar theme from Stephen Pratley on keeping things simple if you want people to implement.

80% of the room said they’d had busy summers as well - a good sign for better times ahead.

Headed to London late Tuesday night ready to wear both my Collaboration Junkie & Infinity Nation hat for eCom Collab Club® London Sponsored by Mailchimp bright and early on Wednesday. 

Always an awesome event, but it’s especially awesome when the host announces to all the agencies in the room they should go and talk to you for partnership advice (and they did!) - thanks Adam Pearce

(And a big congrats to his agency Blend - Shopify CRO Agency  for winning ecommerce agency of the year at the UK Agency Awards last week - check them out - they also have a great partner programme!) 

Wednesday afternoon was the brilliant Swap partner day. Especially liked Phil Greenwood 🐦 highlighting 2 of my favourite things in partnerships as part of their outlook 

a) they should be intentional
b) that it’s a mindset

And possibly my favourite take away from all the events in conversation with Mark Bowring  - ‘the only place organic belongs is on a jar of peanut butter’

Top work Jemma O'Leary - would never have guessed it was the first event you'd ran!

Was then onto the after drinks where Laura Parrott correctly predicted before even arriving (and despite barely knowing me) that I wouldn’t just be staying for the couple I intended to, as low and behold we were in the final group. 

Awesome chat with Simon Small as well (who wonderfully held space for me to have a quiet breather in amongst the chaos)

Thursday kicked off with a sunny walk along the Thames with Michael Murdoch & the Agency Folk crew. Great catching up with familiar faces and meeting new ones too, with some exciting plans afoot! 

Then wrapped it all up with the AgencyLand Network first birthday party. Ellie Hale has really created something special and the love in the room was palpable

Particular shout outs to Jakub Mysona for working through the 2for1 cocktail menu with me

Kelly Molson & Gavin Willis 💜 because it was so good to meet in person for the first time (cant beat a hug!) 

Anthony Leung who thinks he might stand a chance in a speed eating challenge with me 

and Jessica Riso / Andrew Dicker - I need to know if the football happened??!!!

Way too many others to tag, so if you’re one of those people rest assured I loved meeting / catching up.

No more events till October now, just a mountain of follow ups.

"when should I ask for a testimonial and when should I ask for a referral?” 

This comes up all the time in conversations I have with founders. 

(genuinely, not because I said it to myself for an easy LinkedIn hook) 

The thing is, they’re not actually mutually exclusive. 

In fact, they fit together perfectly if you add a bit of process from one to the other, and for many can act as the catalyst of starting to be more intentional in their request. 

You see, most people feel more comfortable asking for recommendations then they do an introduction - and it can be easy to do this consistently at particular times in your customer journey.  

But a great time to ask for an introduction is right after someone’s given you a testimonial. 

By leaving a positive review, they’ve just reminded themselves how good you are. 

It’s a little “wow” moment. 

They’re in exactly the right mindset to recommend you, and you’ve got the perfect hook for your ask.

So next time, and every time, someone shares a review, make sure you thank them and as part of that follow up include a simple referral request. 

And If you’re not sure how to position that request.....

Get yourself along to my next free online masterclass. 

Tuesday 23rd 12-1pm 

https://lnkd.in/eEa9u65D

Despite TfL’s best efforts, last Wednesday’s eCom Collab Club® London Sponsored by Mailchimp  was probably my favourite yet. 

Brilliant crowd, and great panels with top-tier guests… even if half the panel discussing discount strategy during Q4 admitted they don’t touch Black Friday with a barge pole 🤣 

As ever, it was hosted in the BEST style by Adam Pearce - CRO for Shopify Brands and Rich Evans (though I’m sure those from Birmingham will have their own views on that).

Sadly, I can’t make the next one — which means the chances of this post being picked as the “lucky winner” have now shot up almost infinitely.

Over my two days in London I bumped into a bunch of people who, like me a few months back, all said they had been “meaning to get along.” 

All I can say is: do it.

(Shit photos as too busy chatting to aforementioned great folks. Even one of these I stole off John Brolly. Got a bunch of pictures of peoples name badges though to remind me to follow up!)

Human Connection

It’s at the heart of everything I do, so it’s only natural it's also at the core of this! 

I’d put off starting my own podcast for ages, mainly because, let’s face it, it’s a s*&t tonne of commitment. And with 3 young kids, a growing business, and a vague desire to somehow still have a life outside all that I don’t need any more on my plate. 

Also, who really needs yet another podcast. 

And if I host one then I have to promote it as well.

But then along came the force of nature that is Georgina Dean who asked me to co-host one she was launching. It was a 100% yes. Not only did I know it would be a lot of fun, but Georgie’s brilliant network meant I knew she’d be bringing some awesome guests.

(Little did I know that half of the early guests would be people I already knew and loved, even though she didn’t know that!) 

I also didn’t have to get involved in anything production related (the awesome  Jack Ralph does that)

And so The Dave & Georgie Show 🎙️ was born. 

(we went for our names so we can then rebrand when we come up with something cleverer)

Anyhow, every episode we invite two guests on, have a good laugh, and dive into what makes these folks tick - how they build brilliant business relationships and why human connection is the secret sauce of being in business. 

With my background in memberships/networking and Georgie building the Woko-Loco Networking community, there’s a definite tilt towards networking. But really, it’s all about celebrating the magic of connecting with people.

Our first guests? 

We went with a sales focus with none other than long time friend, and sales legend Ben Kench, and someone who I’m sure after speaking will turn into a long term friend Jason Kehoe. 

Recording it was an absolute blast, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed making it.

(If you do choose to add something else to your ever increasing list of things you mean to listen to put don't find the time.)

❌ YouTube - https://lnkd.in/ezRRFrVw

❎ Spotify - https://lnkd.in/e3ffGsqk

Calling all Travel & Leisure agencies (and the folks who support them).

On 1st October at 9:30am I’m hosting the first of a new event series: The Intro Exchange, for Gray Matters .

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those forced referral swaps. 

No one’s keeping score.

Instead, it’s a space to:

*Share challenges and opportunities

*Explore collaboration

*Build trust with peers who get your sector

Because let’s be honest - half the battle in networking is simply being in the right room.

So if this sounds like your room, grab your spot via the link in the comments.

If it’s not for you but you know someone it is, give them a tag below.

(And yes, technically you’ll be in your own room too… perks of an online event.)

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