Joint Ventures and Making Them Happen

There are misconceptions on the part of most small business owners. Many think that Joint Ventures (JVs) are a concept out of their reach and that they are only for big players. And this thought pattern happens in two ways.

First it’s thought that big players are the only businesses that do JVs and they don’t want to deal with a small fry. Second is the notion that small businesses are boxed out from being in the JV picture at all because they have nothing to offer. Another misconception is that the entrepreneur thinks they are not in a business conducive to doing JVs at all.





Without fully understanding what a JV is or could be, it’s easy to see where this train of thought may come from.

Let’s start with the first misconception and define a JV better. Although it certainly could be, a JV is not necessarily two bug companies leveraging off of each other or a medium sized business catapulting off of a huge business. As a matter of fact, many small business see tremendous growth due to a JV with any size other company. It’s not greatly publicized but that’s how most medium and big businesses actually “made their bones” in a relatively short time period.

Joint ventures come in all shapes and sizes but only one part of this widely misunderstood marketing medium is true. The true part is that it’s all about leverage. The real misnomer is in a small business thinking they have nothing to offer another party of any size. Yes, the odds of a $100k business being able to make a worthwhile contribution to a $100 million business is slim, but it could be possible. For our purposes here we want to aim a little lower, but not quite as low as you may be thinking.

The key to a JV with a business the same size as yours or one 10x bigger is thinking more in terms of two ways. First, the other party must be a non-competing entity but have the same target audience. Second you need to think in terms of “what would they want from me to let me borrow that list and endorsement”. If you can’t reciprocate by giving them an opportunity to use a similar sized list of targets, then high value information/education or money is usually the great equalizer.

What you are really trying to do is gain potential clients that fit your target audience without spending marketing and sales dollars to find them. That’s why you want the JV partner to do the introduction and endorsement for you and not just “rent” the list from them. That defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.

So the result of this is that you either get yourself in front of potential clients that you already know spend money and can use your services/products or actual instant clients without the dancing, courting, and waiting. For a service, door #1 is more likely and the best plan.

In return, the JV partner either gets a well educated audience out of what you gave their list or gets some kind of return on the gross revenue that you make for their part down the road. Depending on what you are selling, this could be a one time commission or recurring fees for a set period of time such as a year for each purchase made by each client you gained from their help. Just so you’re not hit between the eyes when negotiating a fee, you need to do your numbers to know just how much you can give up especially if you also included some kind of discount to the list to make the JV partner look good.

To not waste the effort or the possible slight loss you may have taken to acquire these new clients, you had better have your client management process lined up so you can turn them into long term clients. I’ve seen businesses triple their client list (and profits) with one carefully played out JV. Of course the rest of the business was also set up to handle this influx as well.

So let’s quickly go over the thought that you may not be in a business that can do joint ventures. The truth is, as long as another non-competing business/industry exists that has the same target audience as your business, there is a JV opportunity. All you need to do is open you eyes to the possibilities.

Before I tell you what I want you to do now, I want to make something clear. Although a JV can lead to some sort of true partnership, the nature of a JV is just sharing resources with a simple “you do that for me and I’ll give you this in return”. A true partnership is a much more complicated entity than a JV. But doing a few with the same company is a good litmus test on what a partnership with them may be like.

So here’s what I want you to do. Grab a piece of paper and list out what products and services you would like to form a JV around. Then list out what kind of break even margins or small loss you can deal with giving out as a payment. If you can barter with something else other than commission based payments such as providing their audience with superior information/education or reciprocating an endorsed offer to your list for them, write that down as well.

Next list out the specific target audience(s) for each JV item then find non-competing potential partners that serve the same target to contact. Keep in mind that sometimes a good JV partner is an independent sales person and not necessarily a business entity.

Remember, getting buy-in from a JV partner is the same as selling to a potential client. It’s all about spelling out what’s in it for them. In turn, you might just find someone to work with that adds a new passive revenue stream to your business as well.

If you would like to discuss these topics for your particular business, just follow this link to set up a free 30 minute session http://consultantscoach.com/FreeStrategySession.php.

To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant’s Coach

It's All About the List- Part 4

In part 3 we talked about using Joint Ventures to generate a list of qualified leads. This time around we’ll go over some ways to do it all on your own.

This means not having a list at all to start with but utilizing a few of the many available methods to have leads find you versus you finding them. Most of the methods I like to use with my clients do not involve a budget at all but some may require a bit of money outlay to get done.




To keep it simple and the cost down, we’ll talk here about just a few that are at the top of my list:

Websites: 10 years ago a website for most was a way to cut down on printing costs by making it a big brochure. Information and branding was the name of the game. With the low cost and simple tools available out there to automate your website to a pretty far extent as a lead generation system, there’s no reason not to do this.

Some in the technology business world have been moving towards this by providing a sign up for an emailed newsletter. That’s a good start and better than nothing but it’s very hit or miss. Most doing this have nothing compelling a visitor to sign up for the newsletter so many lead capture opportunities are missed. Even worse, you still don’t know how well these “leads” stack up against your true client base criteria.

A newsletter is great and it should definitely be sent out to current/past clients but it’s not much of an attractor to new possible clients. But stepping up the technology behind it and utilizing a true autoresponder to capture those to put on your lead list, manage that database and separate them into what they are interested in so you can automate most marketing to them is a better idea.

Now you can go beyond just offering a simple newsletter that has a variety of information and start offering on your website pinpointed information in the form of white papers and reports that will separate those looking for Service A and Service B. You can not only just target market to them but keep them informed on your company and send them the newsletter.

Again we’re back to message to market match and your list(s) are now allowing you to take warm leads that told you what they were looking for and be able to use the autoresponder to automatically market to them based on this knowledge. You can also take your marketing offline if you move these leads into giving you other info such as phone numbers and addresses. And all it costs is some upfront setup time and a few dollars a month for the autoresponder.

PPC and Natural Search: Ok so this is still website related as you need to get people to the site and capture those that are interested in what you have to offer. This can be even longer than what I wrote above for websites (which was still much shorter than all the details involved) so I will really keep this simple.

Having a solid informational site with lead generation ability is great but you have to get people there and they need to be the right people. This is not a perfect science but doing what you can to have the right people find you will make a big difference in not wasting your time. There is no point in attracting 100 visitors a day if 90 of them got there by accident trying to look for something else. You are not Amazon selling 1000’s of items.

Setting up a website with all of your essential pages is a must but it’s hard to pinpoint how you come up in a natural search as you can’t really make a page work to be found for a slew of keyword phrases. So what you thought was a 5 page site might really be better off as a 10 page site that has pages that shoot off to talk separately about your products and services.

But we’re not done yet. To really get noticed in natural search you should have a variety of these 10 pages that are distinctly optimized for each search phrase you think your true audience is looking for. Now your 10 page site is a 30+ page site. Many small businesses fail at making a 5 page site into a 10 page site but almost all don’t take the time to become a 30+ page site. And it makes no sense since it shouldn’t cost you any more to host a bigger site.

Besides natural search, you can also set up this 30+ page site to attract visitors based on pay-per-click (PPC) methods. This will cost you a few dollars to use a service like Google Adwords, but if done right it becomes a much more effective version of direct marketing on the web.

It’s also a good way to test those keyword phrases you think are suitable for your business. For $1 a day you can find out a lot. And if you want to make PPC a full part of your marketing mix once again it’s automated, acts like offline direct marketing as you are advertising to those you don’t know, but you only get charged when a viable prospect clicks on the ad.

It can be a low cost effective way to generate leads depending on how well you construct the ad, but just as importantly how well the landing page they go to is designed to meet what they were trying to find and compel the to take action and make themselves a part of your list. Otherwise the flip side is you could lose your shirt, but let’s assume you wouldn’t go into PPC without getting help.

Speaking Engagements- Speaking is a very low priority to most technology business owners as even more than most, speaking in public is not on the top of the “like to do” list. I can’t blame you but that’s what makes it such a great separator from the pack. And it could be a low to no cost way of getting in front of a captive audience that chose to listen to you. In some cases you may even get paid to do this marketing/branding.

Although this is a variation on using a Joint Venture, I consider it a separate entity since it involves the speaking effort. Bottom line, groups and organizations that contain your target list are always looking for people to educate their members. So finding a few that fit your target niches will allow you to hook up with them to do webinars, teleseminars or in-person events.

This is really the best way to generate a list as you have knocked down a lot of barriers by being an expert, having them come to you, and moving right to establishing a relationship. Especially at in-person opportunities.


Ok this post is more than long enough and yes I know I could have gone into greater detail but room and individual needs make this the wrong forum.

I hope you got a ton of ideas from this 4 part series. If you would like to discuss these topics for your particular business, just follow this link to set up a free 30 minute session http://consultantscoach.com/FreeStrategySession.php.



To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach

3 Steps to Your Most Dependable, Motivated & Productive Staff Ever

Ignore the media, market even hard and continue seeking the advice of your advisors. Most importantly, start improving the productivity of your staff today to make this most profitable year ever.

By Grant D. Robinson, President of People Values & Partner of George Sierchio (of Action Business Partners, Inc.)

Anytime you want to learn how to create performance standards in your company and then hire and develop a TOP Performing Staff, visit http://www.PeopleValues.com/ActionBusinessPartners.htm



Here’s a fact:

Without a productive staff, you simply are not going to grow your business or accomplish your important professional and personal goals.

In this time of economic turmoil, never before has it been more important to employ a dependable, motivated and productive staff.


Here’s another fact:

Not all businesses are experiencing hard times.

The top 10% (or so) of every industry have remained on pace to shatter previous revenue records. From what we’ve found, all of them have something in common.

The leaders of these businesses are ignoring the dreaded news spouted by the local and national media. They have continued to seek the professional advice of their business coaches and advisors. They have NOT discontinued or cut marketing efforts to attract new customers…

And most importantly, they have all taken the following steps to improve the productivity of their staff to assure 2009 is their best year ever:


Step 1 – Establish Performance Standards

If you haven’t set minimum productivity standards (goals) for your positions, how do you expect your employees to produce to your expectations?

They can’t and won’t.

The most productive businesses have established, WRITTEN systems to assure every employee becomes and remains productive. And it’s important to know, a system is much more than a “Job Description” that your employee tosses in their file never to be seen again.

Productive businesses always have productive people. Productive people have “blueprints” for success which include:

1. At least five “S.M.A.R.T. Goals” and objectives of their position

2. All major duties and responsibilities (what they must do to accomplish the goals and objectives of their position)

3. Five to 10 “success strategies” for their position that they can initiate on their own to improve their performance.

By having these performance standards in your business, you and your managers spend less of your time micro-managing, externally motivating your unmotivated and will improve your productivity.


Step 2 – Hire the Right People in the First Place

If you don’t follow a proven system to attract and hire the right people, studies have shown up to 84% of your new hires will fail in their first year on the job.

And when they do, they will damage your customer service, employee morale, productivity, sales and bottom-line. Even worse, you and your managers will spend most of your time solving the problems created by having these people in your business.

Now, if you’d rather spend your time, energy and money on business development and increasing sales, start hiring the right people.

To do so, learn the best practices of TOP Performing companies. They all start with written performance standards, then “actively” recruit and never rely solely on their “gut” to make critical hiring decisions.


Step 3 – Continually Develop the “Individuals” on Your Team

Once you have created performance expectations and hire people who “fit” these standards, I guarantee your staff productivity will already have doubled.

You’ll also soon find it is much easier to take an employee doing 100% of quota to 120%, than taking an employee doing 50% to 60% of what is expected.

But the only way you are going to do this is to establish a system of continual performance review and at the same time, provide them the skills, strategies and “individualized” coaching they deserve (and require).

Your market’s leaders insure that every employee, from their executives to entry level, are reviewed and developed at least twice a year. You need to realize that if any employee is not reaching their performance and productivity expectations, your organization will also fall short on reaching its productivity, sales and revenue goals.

Many business leaders struggling to accomplish their goals act as if they believe not every employee can be a TOP Performer. Do you think market leaders believe this?

They don’t and neither should you. Start developing your greatest asset today to make this your most profitable year yet.

****************


To learn how to create performance standards in your company and then hire and develop a TOP Performing Staff, visit http://www.PeopleValues.com/ActionBusinessPartners.htm


****************
About the Author:

Grant D. Robinson is the President of People Values and partner of Partner of George Sierchio (of Action Business Partners, Inc.). Since 2000, People Values has been perfecting their 7-Step Job Matching Process. A system small businesses use to make it easier to hire and develop a TOP Performing Staff.

It's All About the List- Part 3

In my last post on this subject of creating lead generation lists, I spoke about buying lists. This next round is about using Joint Venture partners (JV) to cut down the cost and find already active potential clients.

I would recommend setting yourself up with JV's that work in a quid pro quo manner versus paying somebody for use of their list. The reason why is because these lists are not exactly vetted in particular for you so you would be back to buying 1000 names that aren't a particular fit. That is except for the fact that the JV you are working with should have been checked out enough to have a good chance that their list fit at least your basic criteria and maybe a point or 2 on the detailed criteria.



I may be confusing you so here's an example. Let's say you have a niche in the medical field for general practitioner doctors that you sell your IT services to. A joint venture opportunity would be with people that sell niche specific software packages to these doctor's offices.

Buying that list would probably get you a bunch of doctors with office too small or in locations that don't fit your geography etc etc. So why buy that 1000 name list when 50 fit your criteria. That's wasted time and money.

Besides, the real point of a JV is to have your partner ENDORSE you and send out the notice for you. Not make you pay for a list of people that don't know you causing you to have to set up a mailing campaign with 4 to 8 sequenced mailings to get some bites or a bunch of emails that can get you spam canned.

Them endorsing you will also give you the opportunity to help them not waste their time by doing their own vetting so they send it to those that can really use your service, thus making them look good in the process.

There are a variety of ways to do this and I'll list out a few here but this is not the forum to get into heavy details. You know where to find me if you want to discuss this in detail to fit your business model exactly. So here it goes:

Total Quid Pro Quo: They send out an email for you that you write and they add in their 2 cents at the beginning with an introduction and endorsement and you do the same for them. Cost = nothing. A little tough to do if you have a much smaller list than them but it's possible if you ask. And if the JV is with an association or community often they will endorse anything that helps their members.

I think it's necessary for me to add in that we are talking lead generation so this is a free offer to capture name, email and/or other info. Unless you are selling a low cost product, this is not the time to go in for the kill. We're looking for leads from true prospective clients to put into the marketing funnel and build you personal list.

Back End Payment: This may take a little trust on their part unless you can set up some kind of system to track it, but usually a quick written agreement will work. They agree to send an endorsed email, or an insert in a regularly mailed newsletter, or with their bill mailings, etc and they get a cut of any business gained. Depending on what you are selling the "cut" could be all over the place so I can't go into detail but let's just say you shouldn't be stingy as your costs are minimal for them to do this for you. Don't forget that this is for lead generation so you should be selling in the endorsement but giving something away for free to capture the lead. Then you track the lead to give them a cut of the sale.

Website Thank You Page: In this case you have 2 choices. If selling a low cost product, you could make an up sell offer on a thank you page to something they sell and give up a cut again. In most cases it's better to truly make it a lead generation tactic so giving away an audit, white paper, teleseminar, webinar, etc makes more sense. It doesn't have to be on a thank you web page but think of it this way.

A thank you page indicates that this person already bought something or got something for free so they are already in the right frame of mind to take you up on something else since they are already there. As long as it fits with what they just received from the JV as you are selling this to the JV as something good to put in front of their customers to make them look even better.



These are some basic ways to use other people's lists. Especially lists that are actual customers, not just prospects as they have the propensity to be the decision makers you are looking for. Again the objective is really to pull from their lists those that belong as prospects on your list.

So I encourage you to write down what businesses in your niches would make good JV partners. Then fiddle around with a pitch to them that says you can help them look like heroes to their clients and even better if you can put some money in their pockets.

In the next part for this series we'll go into generating your own lists from scratch.

If you would like to discuss this for your particular business, just follow this link to set up a free 30 minute session http://consultantscoach.com/FreeStrategySession.php.



To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach

It's All About the List- Part 2

OK, so in Part 1 of lead generation- the secret is in the list we talked about why segmented lists are important to your marketing system. You may want to reread that post as a refresher and then get into the info below talking about how you actually compile segmented lists.

So I left you off telling you that I consider 3 ways to generate a segmented list to market to. I will repeat again the notion that marketing pieces should be done talking about 1 particular product/service and worded to fit the audience AKA message to market match. And this goes for web pages, direct mail, telemarketing calls, seminars and everything in-between.




Now let's get to the generation of these lists. The 3 ways are: You buy them, you joint venture with someone whose list matches your segment(s), or you generate your own.

Let's start off with buying a list. This is more of a science than an art as the first thing you need to do is breakdown your current best/ideal customers into what makes them the best/ideal. If you don't have any or many customers, you still need to have criteria in your head as to your true target.

Basic things to include would be industry, specific industry niche, location, revenues, employees, ideal decision maker (Owner, VP of XXX, Manager of YYY) etc.

Then you want to get a little more specific depending on what you are selling to really fit your ideal client. Do they use specific systems? Do they need to have a specific network infrastructure? Do they cater to a specific client/consumer/industry niche? Do they subscribe to particular industry magazines or resource organizations? Are they members of a particular organization? Do they have a specific internal department structure? Do they have a solid budget for your service/product? Do they already buy services/products that compliment your offer?

Again, anything that would distinguish them in your mind as an ideal client, which obviously includes the need for your product/service and the ability to pay for the value you deliver.

Now you have enough to go on to employ a list broker service as this is the fastest and most accurate way to go about obtaining a list. And there are list brokers servicing all kinds of industries including yours. Google them and you will see this very quickly.

Providing them with this very exact criteria will yield a compact list of targeted prospects. Of course this compact list will cost more than giving them only the basic criteria but wouldn't you rather target 100 that fit your need than 1000? The increased cost of the list you bought pales in comparison to the amount of wasted time and marketing dollars that a bloated list would cost.

For example, would you rather pay $150 for a 1000 name list that will cost you $4000to do a direct mail campaign on (assuming 4 mailing sequence to the list) for a 1% to 2% repsonse rate? Or would you rather pay $500 for 100 names that have a good chance to respond at a 10% to 20% costing you more like $400 for the same sequence of mailings?

That's what I thought.

Next is joint venture lists. This is the quickest way to find and move people into your marketing funnel and is fairly accurate if you pick the right partners. It's not the most accurate as there will rarely be an exact fit, but it can be free or it can cost you on the back end after a sale. Not bad either way.

But again, this is another posts on its own so you'll have to wait until next time. (you can get to part 3 here http://www.georgesierchio.com/2009/10/its-all-about-list-part-3.html)

In the mean time, write out your ideal client criteria and check out some list brokers if you like to use that route in your business. Find a couple for your short list that fit your budget and have the capability to produce the list based on your basic and detailed criteria.

If you would like to discuss using list brokers to build a targeted list, just follow this link to set up a free 30 minute session http://consultantscoach.com/FreeStrategySession.php.


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach

Going to Vegas Baby- For SMB Nation

Just a quick blog and shout out about my upcoming trip. I'm leaving on Friday (10/2) to head out to Vegas for the weekend. This year's home to SMB Nation.

If you're going out there, look for me floating around the Expo Center on Saturday and ask me the prizes I'll be giving away. Karl Palachuk will also be giving away prizes with my name on them on his Big Wheel of Fortune so check him out at the SMB Books booth.

Sunday I'll be jammed with activities including being on a Business SME panel at 8AM, a podcast interview with Karl and then "speed dating", which is sort of a floating guru round table things. Lots of fun.

There will also be some other podcasts from Friday through Sunday that Karl Palachuk will be conducting. Here's the schedule if you want to listen in.

Here's the schedule:

Friday Oct. 2nd:
1:50 PM to 2:20 PM
VOIP Podcast with Karl Palachuk / Jay Weiss
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/881510992

Saturday Oct. 3rd:
2:25 PM to 2:55 PM
SharePoint Podcast with Karl Palachuk / Robert Crane
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/749350137

Sunday Oct. 4th:
11:25 AM to 11:55 AM
Business Coaching Podcast with Karl Palachuk / Matt Makowicz / George Sierchio
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/156829056


Talk to you all when I get back.

To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach