Building Strong Fusion Partnerships and JVs with Other Businesses

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01) JV With Your Suppliers – Your suppliers generally want you to be more successful, since it means more sales for them. They may fund sales people, mailings, extra staff, etc. You’ll never know unless you ask them.

02) Seek Out Other Business That Cater to Your Market –A realtor may JV with moving companies, custom framers, carpet cleaners, pest control services, lawn care companies, painters, electricians, plumbers, the list goes on. Just be sure to JV with those businesses who have products and/or services your customers may need (i.e. a realtor JVing with a video game company doesn’t make much sense).

Make a list of businesses who want and need a constant flow of leads: lawyers, doctors, dentists, realtors, home remodeling services, carpet cleaners, pest control services, etc. Broker deals between them where there is a fit to generate leads.

03) Match Front-End/Back-End Products – If you sell a high-ticket back-end product, you can seek out people who don’t yet have a back-end product and JV yours via an affiliate program. Likewise, if you don’t have a high-ticket back-end product, the reverse is also true. There are plenty of expensive product and service sellers out there to partner with. You can also broker deals between businesses selling front-end books and tapes and businesses selling back-end expensive seminars, for example.

04) JV a Sales Force – There are plenty of professional sales people that sell a variety of different products on a commission basis. You can put an ad in the paper to get these folks to sell your products and services.

05) JV Mailings – For certain product or service offerings, direct mail can be prohibitively expensive. That’s why card decks and Value-Paks are so popular. But aside from those types of mailings, you can always partner with a non-competitor (or two or three) that offer a complementary or similar product/service with the same target market as yours. By splitting the cost of the mailing, you still get your message out, but at a much-reduced cost.

06) JV Inserts/Flyers/Circulars – Similar to JV mailings, you could arrange to have your flyer, insert, or circular inserted into another publication already being mailed. This “hitching a ride” approach works best when your audience is targeted, although newspaper inserts are popular with local bricks and mortar businesses. The JV part comes into play when you pay so much per lead or a percentage of all sales resulting from the arrangement.

Depending on your price structure, you can pay a percentage of the first sale only, or a tiered approach where a smaller percentage is paid for all first year purchases, a percentage of the back-end purchase, etc. You need to determine what types of deals bring in the biggest profits for you, while still providing a valuable incentive for your JV partners. And that really goes for any type of deal.

07) JV a Mini-Seminar or Teleseminar – Two competing business could get together and hold a seminar for new business owners, offering a package deal for both of their services.

08) Endorsements – There are people and businesses that have a great personal relationship with their customers and prospects. They may not necessarily know this fact. In fact, a lot of them don’t even realize the amount of pull they have with their audience.

People who recommend certain stocks or trends, people who give great content and information to their subscribers, people who give investment advice, generally people who have a certain rapport with their subscribers. They are the ones you want to target. If their niche is non-marketing-related, so much the better in order to cut through this niche’s clutter.

I know someone who targeted golf enthusiasts for a marketing product, simply because of their test results. In any case, if you can JV with this sort of person who will endorse your product or service, you have a huge advantage. It’s simply one of the best ways to print money on demand. Please don’t overlook this technique.

These people may not even realize the relationship they have with their list. So you would be well advised to start with those folks.

09) JV a Consulting Back-End With a Static Product Seller – Let’s say that you are a consultant specializing in doing creative real estate deals.

You could find someone who sells a static book or course on the subject, then partner with them to offer your coaching or consulting services on the back-end for those that want to go beyond the book or course. You could offer your own course, seminars, coaching programs, whatever.

10) JV a Static Product With a Consulting Back-End – And the opposite is also true. If you sell a static information product, why not seek out an expert on the subject that you can partner with and endorse for additional training for your customers. Everybody wins!

11) Let Them White Label You – Let’s assume you are an IT consulting firm, and you decide to JV with hardware companies to access their customer base and have them endorse your services. The trouble is, you want to JV with several hardware makers, and each one wants you to use only their hardware. How do you get around that and still have access to all of their lists and endorsements?

One way is to let them “white label” your services. In other words, when you consult for their customers, you represent that hardware company. So every time you go out, you change “shirts and hats,” so to speak. That way each hardware company has you representing them. Basically, they would sell your services as their own.

Think of it as a “private label rights” situation, where you sell your works to other companies that they can in turn repackage as their own. If you’re looking to drum up more business, this one approach alone could bring you more than you can handle. In other words, you may have to hire more staff. It’s that powerful.

Listen, do you think all of the “Geek Squads” and such are all owned by the companies dispatching them? No, many are contracted. These are large-scale corporate deals, but nothing says you can’t do something similar on a smaller scale to start.

12) JV the Costs – Whether it’s an office you share, or a receptionist, or an administrative assistant, or standby conference call lines, you can make deals with other businesses that may not need a full-time receptionist, for example, to keep the costs down.

A local school supply business shares an office with a surveyor. A small downtown mail order firm shares office space and conference rooms with an advertising agency. A New York investment consulting firm shares the mailing address with a Florida realtor who is also licensed in New York and wants a local presence.

Things like office and mail services, help desk support, and other shared services are becoming more common. If you can’t find one that makes sense for your business, why not invent your own solution?

13) JV to Build Your List – Your list is your greatest asset, right? But if you only have 1,000 names where 50,000 or 100,000 is the norm (more is better, right?), then why not JV a list exchange. Bear with me. It’s true that you may not have much to offer to the list owner of 100,000+ names, when you only have 1,000. But it can be done.

One way to do this? Ok, let’s pretend that I convince a speaker to do a teleseminar with me that I know at least 2 or 3 other 100k+ list size owners would love to tell their subscribers about. Let’s couple that with the fact that these list owners want to build their lists even more. And you do too.

You could make a deal with some of these list owners that whoever opts in to your teleseminar, you’ll do a solo mailing of a product of their choice to the entire list if they promote the call. Remember they’re delivering a message to their list that their list would be interested in, and they’re interested in getting the names of the other list owners that will opt-in. So you act as the middle-person and make all sides happy, while greatly adding to the size of your list.

All you need to do is to contact these people and let them know how they benefit from the arrangement.

Will everyone welcome the deal? No. But there are plenty who will. And everyone wins (those are the best kinds of deals, by the way). This is one of those ideas that will work just as well online as they do offline.

14) JV Anything You Need – Need a room to hold your seminar? A rental car? Your hotel or airfare covered? Any expense, rental, or use of a product or service? Why not use your product or service to JV what you need. If you’re running a seminar in a local hotel, you could get the room for free in exchange for introductions from the hotel to the seminar attendees or just have them use the hotel’s facilities.

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