Why is it important to select the right strategic alliance partner for your company to work with?
I can speak from experience in this and working with clients and doing interviews to my show influential entrepreneurs because I feel this is such a huge huge piece in our marketing strategy. You know first you have that competitive advantage that you build out your special messaging your unique selling proposition right. That really tells your story the right way and then you’re delivering that competitive advantage in messaging marketing messaging to your target audience. But have you ever heard of the phrase know like and trust. Right. So people will do business with those who they know they like and they trust. So it is wonderful to have a marketing strategy going directly to your target market.
We need that. That’s the first step. But there is also another layer and sometimes a shortcut where you need to tap into people that already have the know like and trust relationship with your target audience. So let’s think about it like this. If you were selling office equipment and it was you know copiers or any kind of computer I.T. equipment and you’re selling them to small to medium sized businesses. Yes you can have your competitive advantage and deliver it to that target audience and you can really segment it down to small business owners in this part of town or small business owners who specialize in I.T. So it gets into our segmentation or targeting but let’s think about who already can’t get in the door and get past the gatekeeper because in sales and marketing you have to get the attention of the decision maker.
And sometimes they have a gatekeeper. So do you think that a business owner CEO of a small medium sized business would have a CPA. Probably maybe a CFO maybe an attorney. OK so let’s let’s just use the CPA mainly because that’s one of the most well respected professions out there. You know by research. So if you couldn’t then start finding CPA’s in your area who specialize in working with that type of customer that you work with small business owners right. And what if you started a relationship with that CPA took them to lunch introduce yourself to them gave them some helpful information. Just in general business that they can pass along to their clients. What if you could even make them look really good to their clients your target audience and asked them would they be willing to have you sponsor a client appreciation lunch for their clients.
So it’s all about the CPA. They’re going to announce to their client base, “come on by our offices. We’re going to have lunch catered in by a local you know wonderful caterer. And here’s the day and we’re going to have a short presentation on some tax tips and have a great lunch and get to know each other”. That CPA with you know no cost to them at all is putting on a client appreciation event that is enormous opportunity for them. Guess who else it’s an enormous opportunity for? You! Because for just a few hundred dollars you’re getting in front of your target audience. That’s a strategic alliance! Now maybe the first time you do it you don’t even ask to speak to the group at all.
Maybe you just have a little place mats by each one of the seats that says this lunch sponsored by…. And then has your logo and maybe you know called action or your website. Maybe the next time you do it you would ask the CPA maybe you do it quarterly because all their clients might not be able to come every single time so maybe you do a quarterly and the next time you ask could you give a 10 minute presentation. Just a quick little educational topic on your business because it might benefit the CPA’s clients. So that’s another way to do it and I’ll give you an example from my personal experience. I’ve got a review marketing platform it’s a software that just is spectacular in collecting reviews and then marketing them online for my clients.
Well I’ve got a chiropractor that uses it and he loves it. And he said “I trained chiropractors from all over the world all over the country. Would you pay me a revenue share or an affiliate commission. When I recommend clients to come to you?” I said Of course because that’s another model that you can do a shared revenue because think about it. I didn’t spend billboards or Internet advertising or direct mail or anything to get a client. He just hands it to me because he already has the know, like, trust relationship with those chiropractors. I would never be able to connect with them even if he gave me a list and I emailed them cold they would not pay attention because I’m not him. Well interestingly enough we did an announcement to a group of his clients that he trains… chiropractor’s.
We did a web in our presentation. We nailed that…. it was wonderful. If I do say so myself…. and guess how many clients came out from that? Zero. He then did some Facebook ads. He did some e-mail follow ups to the people that attended the Web are zero and we’re scratching our heads going. “What is the key what is causing people not to take action?” We’ve got the perfect target audience. We’ve got the strategic alliance we’ve got to know like and trust. So he said let’s try this. You know he lived right down the road from me about 20 minutes away and he was doing a presentation at a local hotel and he goes I’m bringing all these chiropractors in for the weekend to train them on this training program. Would you combine a 15 minute presentation on the program… I said yes.
So I got there sat up in the back of the room and then at the right time he introduces me brings me up and I have my PowerPoint ready, 15 minutes right. It was like three slides and basically I gave an overview of why this is important in their practice. And then I showed some screenshots of it in action. So you know, this is what it looks like in his back office. Here’s an example of a review that came in and you know it came in after four requests. And this is all automated and you never would have requested it four times because you’d be so busy right. Well at the end of that 15 minute period I offered to give a special promo and waived the setup fee for the first five people…. and there was a rush. There were people coming up with their forms filled out asking questions and at the end of that event I had signed up eight of the Chiropractor’s I even you know I only limited to 5 but I gave three extra and I got eight out of that and now we’re sharing in the profit for that. Well the interesting thing is it was the same relationship the same product but a different mode of delivery. So we need to think about that. What is that target audience responding to best even though there’s a strategic alliance involved. Now let’s compare for final point the chiropractor example that I just gave the CPA example I just gave you may not be able to share revenue with a CPA or an attorney. There could be compliance issues there could be a feeling where they just go you know. … I’ll just refer you and I’ll let you come into the lunch and do a short presentation but I don’t need to have any sort of payback or revenue share mainly because I want my advice to be strong and I don’t want my clients to feel like it was swayed by income right. And so be prepared for that and just offer it or as a side note. But the chiropractor was wanting to have that revenue share. I never would have gotten in touch with any of these chiropractors from across the country and had them give me the time of day if it hadn’t been for this one strategic alliance.