Oct 1, 2008 Posted in Marketing Ideas, Random Thoughts

New Customers Fast

What small business owner isn’t looking to find new customers? Sales and Marketing are the bane of existence for owners that love what they do but find that they don’t have a constant stream of new customers offering to give them money.

So what do you do when you love what you do but hate selling what you do? Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet even though Internet Marketers everywhere are trying to sell them. However, I have found something that is almost as good.

Let’s say that you sell health insurance. No doubt you’re constantly on the lookout for people looking to buy insurance, right? Maybe you’re calling lists or attending networking meetings. You may be advertising in the yellow pages or buying pay per click advertising on Google, Yahoo or MSN.

All of these approaches can work to some degree but they all have two things in common: Cost and Risk. Even if an approach is free (cold-calling as an example) you are still spending your most precious asset. Your time. If you’re buying advertising then you have the risk that you don’t get sufficient ROI.

Enter, the simplest solution I’ve found. Joint venture partnerships.

With joint ventures, you find other business owners that cater to a similar client base as your own and you set up a partnership with him. The biggest obstacle to getting a new customer is building trust. The right partners already have relationships with their customers so you can leverage that trust to sell your own products or services.

Of course, you have to compensate your partner in some way – usually as a percentage of revenue generated.

When done properly, JVs don’t cost anything, there is zero risk (because you only pay your partners on sales and after you’ve been paid) and can produce results very quickly. Getting back to selling insurance as an example. Imagine that you find a gym owner that has 500 members, a realtor with a list of 1,000 prospects and a maternity store with a customer base of 2,500. You can ask each of these partners to promote your services to their customers and prospects and they will do so.

Why? Because you’re paying them. That is the difference between this approach and traditional networking. Your partners are actually motivated to help you succeed because they have a vested interest in helping you sell more.

There are some intricacies involved with setting up joint ventures so that risk is removed from all parties. Partnerships only work if they are win/win and both parties recognize them as such.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like more information about this approach to building your business.