Building Profitable Alliances

Whether you are just starting out in business or a large corporate company, collaborating with other businesses can give you incredible leverage.

Building Strategic Alliances are one of the fastest ways to grow your contacts, lift your profile, value add to your existing service offering and create opportunities without committing to expensive internal expansions that go beyond your core business.

It is a low cost, highly leveraged marketing strategy that can generate phenomenal results with the right preparation and planning. Simply by finding five effective and carefully chosen alliances you can produce ongoing referral streams through leveraging their networks.

While many people form successful alliances, many also overlook a lot of the preparation through not having clear expectations, an agreement in writing or a solid understanding of their legal and tax responsibilities.

1. Choosing the Right Alliance Partner

When forming alliances you need to remember that it is not just the business you need to consider if you have synergy with or not, it’s also the people involved. Personal factors aren’t as easy to measure, however they can be what determines the success or failure of the alliance, so you need to be sure you are working with the right people.

Here are just a few of the questions you should ask yourself when considering an alliance partner: 

• ·         How credible and professional are they?
• ·         How long they have been in the industry?
• ·         What are their values and beliefs and do they match yours?
• ·         What is their attitude toward customer service and providing quality?
• ·         What is the culture of their business?
• ·         Do you feel confident in their ability to provide quality service?
• ·         Do you feel confident that they will be able to deliver on their part of the alliance?
• ·         Do you think they are as committed to the alliance as you are?

Before you enter into a formal agreement it is important to establish trust and spend time with your potential alliance. You need to know their capabilities, their strengths and weaknesses in order to be sure that they will do right by your clients.

2. Forming a Win/Win Relationship

In order to ensure the success and profitability of an alliance both you and your alliance partner must have clear and mutually beneficial expectations and outcomes. Business transactions of any kind need to have a win/win or a win/win/win outcome. If it is heavily swayed in only one persons favour the alliance will not be successful.

Having an alliance with no boundaries, clarity or aligned expectations can result in conflict, confusion and a strategic alliance arrangement that is not beneficial to all.

To prevent this, know how you would like to benefit from the alliance and what you are willing to provide the other party, from the beginning. This reduces the risk of future misunderstandings or your alliance partner not seeing the value for their involvement.

People will always look for what is in it for them. Showing your potential alliance you are interested in how they will benefit will demonstrate that you are not simply using this as an opportunity to sell your products or services to their database without consideration to their needs.

3. 10 Steps To A Profitable Alliance

Alliances of any kind need to follow a step by step process if they are to be successful. All too often emotion and excitement about potential opportunities can cloud the important details that need to be addressed. To form an alliance the right way we suggest you follow these steps:

 Know your outcome

1. Do your “due diligence” on the people you are working with
2. Prepare the information
3. Put together a professional proposal
4. Meet and discuss any questions that have arisen from the proposal
5. Negotiate any changes ensuring that it is win/win for all involved
6. Clarify any areas that are not clear
7. Do up an agreement
8. Develop KPI’s to Test and measure performance
9. Review - What did you learn? What worked? What didn’t? What would you do differently next time?

If you would like to find ideal alliances please let us know as we have a network of businesses open to forming powerful and mutually beneficial alliances.

 Email me at Vicki@connectworking.com.au

How To Make Money From Networking

People network because they want to generate business first and foremost. The issue most have is that it doesn’t always happen for them, especially when they use networking as a major marketing strategy.

So lets look at how to make money from your networking.

All networking is about interactions with other people, so if you realise you need to speak the “buying language” people need to hear rather then on just your service or product, you are already ahead of your competitors. Did you know there are “buying buttons” in our brain that if a message appeals to these buttons there is a far greater increase in generating business.

There are 6 key communications you need to get across to people and if you don’t it won’t matter how good your business service or product is, a sale won’t result. Think about the instances you have made a purchase and regardless of price you knew you just had to have it? Think about your kids too, and how they are influenced by powerful marketing techniques and  how many times have you heard from your teens that  they must have that brand name or else they will just die? Why do you think people line up for days to get the latest Apple product, or why people will line up for hours when they know there is going to be major sale at their favorite department store for boxing day sales?

Now one of the challenges that faces most small business owners is they can’t afford the marketing budget that allows expert advertising professionals to really move people into action to buy a product.

That is until now. The power to influence people in a positive way to purchase your service or product is a skill you really need to possess. We will be looking at each one of these in detail over the coming weeks so be sure to take notice of what you can be doing.

Lets look at one now.

Stop selling your service / product and start selling your value. People need to know how what you do relates to them and what value they will get. I go to a lot of seminars and watch the professionals at work. They have this down to a tee. If you listen carefully in their spiels they will often talk about someone who has used their service/ product / education / system and how much money they made. This is more than just value, this is proven value. Proven value is more powerful than just talking about the value you possess. The brain needs evidence that what you say you do is what could happen for them too. Remember one of the basic motivational drivers in all humans is “what’s in it for me”! So if you can provide proven value to people then you are already starting to speak the language the buying buttons want to hear.

3 Connection Mistakes Most People Make!

Below are 3 of the biggest connection mistakes we see people make in networking. Perhaps you are making one (or all) of these mistakes right now!

Connection Mistake #1 – Thinking you are “too busy to network”

One of the biggest mistakes we often hear people say is “I am too busy to network”. I would like to challenge you that you are too busy NOT to network. After all, by doing so you can capitalise on leverage and collaboration instead of marketing yourself and you can get to the point of choosing who you want to do business with rather than getting any business through desperation.

Connection Mistake # 2 – Most People Don’t Have a Great Value Offer

What do you think would happen if at your next event you got up and said, I have a contact for Bob, Michael, Michelle and Jane? Do you think it would only be those 4 that would be impressed with you or do you think it might be the whole room!

A major component in being perceived as having real value to offer is being genuinely interested in other people. Find out what people you want to connect are looking for. Talk to them about their goals and if you can help them achieve them in some small way you are building solid foundations by giving first. Reciprocity is where people have an unconscious desire to want to help those who help them.

Connection Mistake #3 – Thinking You Can Do It All On Your Own

One of the biggest connection mistakes we see some business people make is they think they have to find people they need on their own. The whole point of networking and connecting is leverage, yet many people try to do everything on their own. They either feel uncomfortable using their connections or they have not built enough rapport to ask for the favor.