Marketing Secret #70
Working With Related Professionals
I want to talk about a subject that I believe, is one of the best ways to make money, cost effectively which is overlooked or passed up by most businesses.
What am I talking about?
Joint Venturing With Other Related Professionals.
Now, what does that mean?
This is the skill of having external professionals, whose product/service relates to yours, work with you to provide a holistic solution as a win-win-win situation. See, many outside professionals have the disgusting tendencies to suck recommendations and clients out of you like a nursing calf, only to leave you dried out and empty. I’ll talk about how to stop this horrible problem by pointing out that you are not in the “one way street” business, and that you like to give, and get, recommendations.
I’ll also talk about how you should show them your MOU
- Market of Own Uniqueness (your
expertise ) to show your value.
“Wait a minute! I’m sick of hearing you tell us how easy it is to get other professionals to refer business to us! I’ve tried it a few times, and it never goes anywhere. They take my recommendations gladly and give me nothing but empty promises. So, stop making it sound like it’s so easy. These people just don’t want to help, and that’s it!”
Be the Professional.
Recently, I had a colleague in the solar industry approach me with an amazing proposition...to promote his products/services /business to everyone I knew. I asked the question, "why me?". His response was simple. "You're an influencer and I know you have a large network that you can connect and talk to."
How often has this happened to you, where people see you as their main meal ticket, even at the potential detriment of your own business success.
So I pursued the conversation further and asked him, if there would be the chance for mutual referrals, of which his response was hysterical. He says to me, "Well, we can't promote your business to our current clients as they are multi-million dollar businesses who don't need your services. However, we can happily refer you to the small clients we do solar for."
Being the pragmatist I am as well as loving a good discussion, I continued. "So, what type of referrals are you looking for from me?" His response was as I expected...he wanted big business clients with multiple stores that they could assist. Of course, I would be remunerated for my referral.
It was at this point that I turned the conversation.
The conversation began with mutual values and philosophy where referrals should be equal. I discussed the type of referrals I was looking for and why. I showed examples of our work and current testimonials to support the quality of our work. I then advised the benefit of reciprocity, where we respect each other's business solutions so rather than being one or the other, how could we potentially work together to support both of our clients with the best solutions.
After 45 minutes we closed the gap between want and desires returning to a middle and balanced ground where we both know we could benefit and more importantly, so could our respective clients.
Why was it important to get to middle ground as fast as possible?
Simply put, if we didn't, we would start to dislike each other. I could've felt taken advantage of, used and the expectations would be a lot lopsided rather than one of equality.
Learn to value your expertise and knowledge, then others will do the same.
If you have awards and recognition, are they displayed somewhere for everyone to see? Are you proud of the achievements you have to date? Do you discuss these openly, especially with new potential strategic partners?
They may not be important to you, but they could be to the person standing in front of you. Remember awards and recognition displays your expertise, knowledge and respect gained through your actions.
Rather than talk about what you do, why not talk about how you impact positive change through your solutions. This level of conversation shows your passion for your business, your knowledge as well as sets expectation as to what is important to you in business. In the example above, I turned the conversation to talk about what we were both passionate about, rather than the widgets we sell or who is in our network. This changes the energy level of the conversation and works towards reciprocity rather than one-sided.
Set an expectation of mutual respect
Establishing real relationships with these people is going to be an absolute key to making the most amount of money at the least amount of expense. In order for you to move up to another level, you’ll have to get into a new level of perception with outside professionals. You don’t have a choice.
What did he do wrong? When we asked some of our members this question, one of you answered it best. It cut through the rubbish and got to the heart of the matter.
“Solar Guy made a lot of mistakes in that meeting. First of all, he thought money was your motivator to put his business before yours, which suggests he didn't do his homework on what would motivate you to refer. He should've asked you what was motivating to you in business rather than making assumptions. Business is about relationship first and foremost and he missed this step."
Whoever you market to, there is always some end result in mind. For strangers, the goal is for them to want to come in to see you. So your marketing focuses on the hot buttons that will get them in for an appointment. For professionals, your end goal is to get them to refer people to you, and/or to let you do seminars or whatever else for their clients, and/or have them help you with the cost of marketing.
If you need to discuss your business marketing, book a 30-minute
no-obligation call with one of our team members.
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