What Else Are Your Customers Buying? (And You're NOT Getting A Piece!!)
All of us will agree that getting a new customer is not only a lot of work, it is often much more costly than maintaining a strong relationship with our current ones. A good quality hardcopy newsletter with great content can go a long way in accomplishing this, by the way. We all know that, but very few companies do it. (I've got a great source for that service if you're interested)
I am always looking over the list of people that I do the most business with, strategizing how I can leverage that strong relationship and solve more of their problems. My clients buy many things. One of my cIients has an information marketing business. I supply him with certain marketing tools to help drive his campaigns. I am always looking at what he is doing; trying to identify other products I could source for him to help build his business, or simply to make life easier. Of course, I don't buy the software, or the needed equipment to fulfill these new services, I find great Joint Venture partners to handle that for me; and earn a percentage of all on-going business.
As my Joint Venture Mentor Robin J Elliott has said many times; "Imagine if Save-On Foods decided they were just going to focus on selling bread and milk". This would be disasterous for them. (check out his blog at www.robinjelliott.com ) Our customers typically have many more problems that need to be solved than our service or product will address. And yet, we do little or nothing to fix those problems if it doesn't involve our specific product. This of course, can be addressed by implementing some simple Joint Venture strategies in your business. We don't need to carry more products, we don't need to learn new technical skills or get educated in providing new services. We simply need to find good JV partners, learn how to refer them effectively, and give the customer a reason to take action and try them out.
I'll give you an example; I have a landscaping client who wants me to show him how to increase his bottom line profit without actually spending more time doing landscaping. He meets with homeowners every day that buy his excellent service. In the past he has seen them as landscaping customers; people with lawns to mow. Of course they are much more than that. They buy a lot of stuff. Most people that hire a landscaper to mow their lawn and trim their hedges every week have disposable income, and more expensive tastes. Now my client sees himself as a problem solver. He is starting to ask his customers questions like, "What else are you doing around the yard this year?" or "Are you doing any home improvement projects this summer?" Depending on the answers, opportunities will arise to refer other people's businesses to them.
Within a few days we had a small handful of JV partners that he could begin referring. A painter, a real estate agent, an interior designer, etc. All of these partners will pay my client an ongoing commission of 10-20% of the gross business they do; on any business he refers them. They are all supplying him with gift certificates, offering samples of their services, etc, that he can give his clients; giving them a no risk way to try them out. Over the next year or two, this could lead to a LOT of extra profit to my clients bottom line.
Have a look at your business and identify services your clients need that you can refer them to; and profit from. Contact me for a free, no-obligation phone consultation on how to add JV profit to your bottom line.
Patrick Giesbrecht
Joint Venture Broker
