The Power of Strategic Alliances
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The most successful small businesses rely on relationships more than any other way. And yours should too. This presentation includes great stories about the power of strategic alliances, a discussion on how to find the right strategic partners.
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The Power of Strategic Alliances
- 1. The Power of Strategic Alliances Diego Pineda
- 2. Free gifts… • Factsheet: How to move from “Acquaintance” to “Strategic Alliance Partner” • E-book: The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Business Maturity
- 3. Diego Pineda Founder of 4 companies: • Publishing House • Marketing & Entertainment Company • Eco-friendly products • Online Educational Portal – Medical Writing Training Risen Books
- 6. www.CranksetGroup.com As a business consultant with the Crankset Group, I help business owners: •make more money in less time, • get off the treadmill, and • get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place.
- 7. Agenda • Me, talking • Q&A • Strategic Alliances within the group
- 9. Which is better, big business rules or the rules of small business? They are two very different games!
- 10. There are four basic ways businesses promote their products and services: 1. 2. 3. 4. Advertising Public Relations Direct Marketing Relationships (Strategic Alliances)
- 11. Big Businesses go WIDE. Placing focus on the development of new business through acquisition of new customers. Vast amounts of resources needed!
- 12. Going wide is expensive. Go deep instead. Going deep means building strong, lasting relationships with like-minded business owners also interested in producing greater results with less effort. Build strategic alliances, helping make 1+1=3 for you and those around you.
- 13. My objective in this webinar is to help you see the importance of building relationships. Serve, don’t sell. Stop networking and build a network instead.
- 15. Classic circular sales cycle for a small business owner Networking Client Database Buying Conversation Coffee
- 17. Turn your clients into referral sources. “Do you know one person who would benefit from this experience (product or service)?”
- 18. A strategic alliance is a term we use for people who will never buy from us but have all the clients we want and will send them our way as they begin to trust us.
- 20. It takes 12-24 months for you tonot need networking if you’re focused on building strategic alliances
- 21. You only need 5-15 strategic partners, along with your existing clients, to create a steady stream of potential clients. What other business owner has the same customer base as me, but isn’t competing with my company?
- 22. Alliance Examples Same client base, Not Competitors • Real Estate Agents & Mortgage Brokers • Financial Planners & CPAs • Private Money Lenders & Real Estate Investors
- 23. More examples • Flooring Company & Window Covering Co. • Deck Building Co & Landscaping Co. • Accountants with different focus – large and small companies – who refer clients back and forth
- 24. Real life stories John Heenan TDS Fulfillment & Distribution John has a fulfillment company in Ireland and is involved in a worldwide strategic alliance with other small fulfillment companies like his that pass business to each other.
- 25. Real life stories Andy Bacon The Bacon Group (RE investing) Andy does fix/flip and wholesale purchasing/selling of houses and formed a strategic alliance with a company that focuses on cleaning out houses owned by hoarders.
- 27. How do we develop a clear plan and budget for Relationship Marketing? 1. Describe your ideal Strategic Alliance Partner. Make a list of them. 2. What do they or their businesses need? How can I help them get there? Serving them will set you apart from everyone else! Serve THEM (don’t look for them to serve you first.)
- 28. Bottom Line • Strategic Alliances are a better place to find clients than advertising and direct marketing to the potential client. • Look for the people behind the people! • Identify the relationships that are giving you business and the ones you wish were, and focus deeply and intentionally on serving them in their businesses.
- 29. This will make them want to refer to you and help you build a steady stream of potential clients.
- 30. What about you?
Editor's Notes
- Hello, everyone. Welcome to the webinar, The Power of Strategic Alliances.
- At the end of the webinar, I will give you a factsheetabout How to move from “acquaintance” to “Strategic Alliance Partner” As well as a free ebook, The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Business Maturity.So pleasestay until the end.
- Now let me tell you a little bit about my background and why I'm talking about this topic.I am a serial entrepreneur with more than 12 years of experience in the entertainment industry, including publishing, film and digital media.I’ve had all sorts of ventures, some successful, others not much, but I’ve learned as much from my mistakes as from my successes. And that’s the life of an entrepreneur.
- For instance, when my wife and I started a company that distributed eco-friendly products across Canada, we learned the hard way what it is to step on the toes of big corporations and the lengths they will go to, to get you out of the market. We had no strategic alliances back then, which made us vulnerable to competition. So, the big guys threatened our customers with higher prices on other products if they bought from us. Eventually, we were out of business and had to close down the company.
- But in other occasions, as it was the case with an online education portal I created for medical writers, I learned how to leverage the power of Internet Marketing and outsourcing to generate large profits. Early on, I developed a strategic alliance with a company in California, Inquill Communications, where we would launch products in partnership and attract more customers.In 2011, when I was ready to move on to a different venture, InQuill bought the portal and they continue with it until this day.
- All these experiences as an entrepreneur have led me to where I am right now, doing what I love, and that is helping other business owners.I’m now working with a revolutionary company, the Crankset Group.As a business consultant…
- In tonight's webinar, for the first 30 minutes or so I will share some practical concepts and ideas about forming strategic alliances to grow your businesses.Then I'll be answering any questions you have and finally, I'll open the chat for a quick start at forming some relationships within the group.Ok. Let's dig right in.
- If I were to ask you, “Which sport has the better rules, basketball or football?” Well, if you think about it, this question makes no sense. Basketball and football are two different games with two very different sets of rules.So why do I ask such a silly question? Because I believe the same analogy can be applied to business.
- Which is better, big business rules or the rules of small business? Once again, we are speaking of two very different games.
- Let me illustrate this. There are four basic ways businesses promote their products and services.a. Advertisingb. Public Relationsc. Direct Marketingd. RelationshipsLet's do a quick poll.POLL: From which of these four do you obtain the majority of your clients?On the right hand side of your screen you will see the poll. Please go ahead and submit your answer. I’m going to give you guys a few seconds and then we’ll see the results. There you go. What we have found is that most small business owners obtain the majority of their clients from relationships.
- To follow through on a football analogy, Big Businesses, Corporations like Coca-Cola or General Motors, go wide.Going wide means placing focus on the development of new business through acquisition of new customers. To do it successfully requires vast amounts of resources including market research to define a customer base; staff for operations, marketing, sales, finance, and customer service; and budgets to support full-scale advertising and marketing.Coca-Cola, for instance, wants you to see their brand at least 6 times a day. And to do that, they need to be everywhere all the time.
- The problem for the small business owner is going wide can be an expensive way of doing business. But there is another way. Go deep. Spin fewer wheels by building stronger, more meaningful relationships with the customers you currently have. And let me tell you something, being a “good networker” is not going deep.Going deep means building strong, lasting relationships with like-minded business owners also interested in producing greater results with less effort. It means creating situations that will build strategic alliances, helping make 1+1=3 for you and those around you.
- My objective in this webinar is to help you see the importance of building relationships.One of my mottos is "Serve, don’t sell, stop networking and build a network instead.”It sounds crazy, but I actually want to challenge you to stop going to networking events.
- We had a realtor come through one of our trainings before and she would spend about 20 hours per week at networking events. And it seemed to be working for her because she was selling houses. But we told her she couldn't go back. She panicked and said that she couldn’t do that. Well, we finally convinced her to use the time she usually spent networking in building deeper relationships with her existing customers and contacts. All she had to do was call them up and see how they were doing and how she could help.As a result, her income increased 60% in a matter of weeks, all the business coming from cultivating those relationships.
- Now, let's talk about how to build a network instead of networking. Here's the classic circular sales cycle for a small business owner.You go to a Networking event, do some speed dating and collect a dozen business cards. - Then you enter all these contacts into your Database - Eventually, after a number of back and forth emails and voice messages, one of the people in your database accepts to have Coffee with you. - As you earn their trust, you present your offer, effectively having a Buying Conversation - Finally, the person says yes, and they become a client, right? And where do you usually go after you get a client? – Back to networking! And off we go to do that all over again.
- Here’s a better way. Same circle–But this time, we get you off the sales treadmill (out of this cycle) and back to doing what you love – selling properties, creating software, consulting, etc. Instead of networking, you get to do what you came into business to do.Here’s where the strategic alliance comes into play.
- The first thing you need to do is turn the client into a referral source. You deliberately ask a happy client, “Do you know one person who would benefit from this experience?”They don’t want to look dumb and say they don’t know anyone. They’ll probably say they know more than one person, that they know 2 or 3.But you don’t ask for more than one because you don’t want them to feel pressured to come up with a list of names. Neither you use the word referral.We’ve found that this is the best way to phrase the question: “Do you know one person who would benefit from this experience?”But besides clients who give you referrals, you want to find strategic alliances.
- A strategic alliance is a term we use for people who will never buy from us but have all the clients we want and will send them our way as they begin to trust us.The key here is TRUST. And here’s what happens.
- These strategic alliances willgo to their database and send you people to have coffee with.The resultis that you no longer have to go to networking events, cutting that one piece out of the sales cycle. That’s the first step in getting you off the treadmill. The 2nd step is that eventually you will have enough client referrals and alliance referrals that you won’t even need to go to your own database.You’re now meeting most people at the coffee stage. You are OFF THE SALES TREADMILL.Wouldn’t this make life and business more enjoyable?
- If you are spending a lot of time networking and don’t have any strategic partners, it’s time you focus on building and nurturing strategic relationships.In our experience, it takes 12-24 months for you to not need networking if you’re focused on building strategic alliances.
- The amazing thing is that you only need 5-15 strategic partners, along with your existing clients, to create a steady stream of potential clients.Think about this for a moment. What would be the impact on your business if you didn’t have to go out and chase clients but instead has a steady stream of potential clients coming your way all the time. What would be the impact on your lifestyle?Now, if you want to identify a good strategic partner, ask yourself this question: What other business owner has the same customer base as me, but isn’t competing with my company?Here are some real life examples.
- A lot of real estate agents and mortgage brokers have formed strategic alliances to send clients to each other.Financial planners and CPAs;Private money lenders with real estate investors;
- We know of a commercial flooring company with a commercial window-blind company who pass customers back and forth; There’s also a deck-building company with a landscaping firm; We also know of two accountants who have different client bases - one focuses on larger companies and the second focuses on smaller ones -and they pass those back and forth; two merger/acquisition brokers also do the same thing - one focuses on larger companies being bought and sold over $5 million a year and another that focuses on businesses under $5million.
- A friend of mine, John Heenan, has a fulfilment company in Ireland and is involved in a worldwide strategic alliance with other small fulfillment companies like his that pass business to each other all the time. And John is doing great.
- Andy Bacon in Denver, fixes and flips properties and does wholesale purchasing and selling of houses and gets a ton of leads from a company that focuses on cleaning out houses owned by hoarders - and they get leads from him.
- So, as you can see there are lots of possibilities to form strategic alliances to grow your business. But how do you do it?I’m glad you asked.
- Here’s a simple 2-step plan to develop what I callRelationship Marketing?a. First, describe your ideal Strategic Alliance Partner. Make a list of them. Again, ask yourself: : What other business owner has the same customer base as me, but isn’t competing with my company?b. Second, ask: What do they or their businesses need? How can I help them get there? And then go and help them. Serving them will set you apart from everyone else! You want an alliance? Serve THEM (don’t look for them to serve you first.)I’ve done it many times, and gotten excellent results. Whenever I go into a meeting with someone, I’m asking myself, how can I serve this person? And if I don’t have the expertise or the tools to help them, I’d refer them to someone I know who can help. If you do this, I promise you, you will start forming strategic alliances in no time. But if you just go in chasing their wallets and trying to sell them whatever you got, no matter what, you’ll forever be on the sales treadmill, chasing your next client.
- No, let’s recap. This is the bottom line.
- Now, it’s your turn. the chat is open for any questions and also to give you the opportunity, only if you want to, to share what you do and who your ideal strategic alliance would be.