How To Quickly Establish Multiple Strategic Alliances
By Eric Ruth
Last month I explained how fitness professionals can create power-positioning with lead generation marketing. One of the strategies I mentioned, but didn’t expand upon, is the awesome power of....
Strategic Alliances
A strategic alliance means developing win-win relationships with other professionals and business owners to expand your market penetration. Today, I want to explore that subject a little more, and give you a specific tool for establishing multiple strategic alliances quickly and easily.
In his excellent book, "Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got" (a must read for every serious businessperson), legendary marketing expert Jay Abraham has this to say:
"Why spend all your time, effort, expense and credibility-building activity to attract new clients from the outside market, when there is a much easier and less expensive way to do it? The cost of acquiring a client can be enormous. Most businesspeople don’t realize it, but they are in the client-and-prospect-generating business. That’s the basic goal of all marketing. Don’t ever forget it. But what if you could eliminate a lot of the expense, time and inefficiency of ‘prospecting’ and only spend your time and money on people who are ready to buy?"
With strategic alliances (what Jay refers to as "host-beneficiary relationships") you can.
Essentially, a strategic alliance (SA) is a way for you to "piggyback" on the prospecting and client-generating efforts of other businesses. But one of the beautiful aspects of the SA is that it’s symbiotic, not parasitic. It’s win-win. Just as you piggyback on their efforts, so to do they on yours.
There are multitudes of different ways for fitness professionals to create SA’s. I reveal many of them in The Ultimate Personal Trainer Marketing Program. In this article, I’ll share a simple, effective tactical SA application you can use right now.
Pay close attention, okay, because I’ll not only show you how to build a dozen (or more) strategic alliances within weeks, but I’m also going to illustrate another strategy that can bring you rapid results. That strategy is.....
Creating Irresistible Offers
The "Preferred Provider Directory" combines both strategic alliances and irresistible offers into a double-whammy marketing tool that’s simple to create and use, and can bring you a steady stream of new, ready-to-act prospects week-in and week-out. Here’s how it works....
This can be done in person or through the mail. I recommend a combination of the two: a direct mail letter, followed up by a personal phone call or meeting.
First, make a list of 30 to 50 "preferred" professionals and business owners in your area. You probably already know a dozen or so premium businesses in your area that service your ideal clients (i.e. chiropractor, massage therapist, cosmetic surgeon, laser hair removal, spa, upscale beauty salon, financial planner, CPA, landscaper, etc.) A fast and easy way to build your list is to go to your local Chamber of Commerce and get their directory of members, or go to www.bbb.org and request the Better Business Bureau Consumer Guide for your area. Either is fine, the Chamber’s is generally better.
You want to pick out premium businesses offering complimentary, but not competitive services. Once you’ve got your list, enter it into an excel spreadsheet (to facilitate mail-merging of information into the letter you will now create). Here’s an example of a letter you could send to these business owners:
Dear [mail-merge business owner’s name],
Here’s a simple way you can get more new [customers/clients/patients] that currently don’t know you or have not tried you. And it won’t cost you a dime.
I’m starting a promotion to grow my business and I’d like to see if I can help you grow yours at the same time, without it costing you anything. If that sounds appealing, here are the details:
My name is [name] and I’m [town name’s] leading personal fitness trainer. You may have heard of me. If not, I’m happy to provide my credentials when we speak. I’m in the process of creating a Preferred Provider Directory that will include irresistible "get to know us" offers for some of [town name’s] premium service businesses like yours and mine, catering to upscale, discerning and affluent clientele.
I’d like to include you in it. Here’s all you would need to do to participate:
Supply me with a special offer for your services. Something substantial that will entice new prospects to give you a try. Possibly a 2 for 1, or half price, or even completely free offer. It’s your choice, but the more irresistible it is, the greater you will benefit.
As a service provider, you know that substantial profits are generated through the development of repeat buying behavior from your clients. And that behavior is a direct function of your ability to deliver value. Because of your excellent reputation, I’m confident you deliver exceptional value, so each new client you get represents significant long-term profit to your business. My goal is to get you more new clients.
There are a few more details to this promotion that you’ll want to know. The big question in your mind right now is likely to be, "why are you doing this?" I’d like to explain this opportunity in detail to you and answer all your questions. So I will call you on [date and time] to fill you in on everything. Just keep in mind that there is no cost to participate. I’m not selling advertising or anything like that.
I look forward to speaking with you on [date and time]. Should you have any questions in the meantime, please call me at [your phone].
Sincerely,[your name]
That’s the simple letter you would send to your list of premium service providers in your area. Now you’re probably wondering exactly how to make this work for you. So allow me to fill in the gaps.
First of all, the key to creating irresistible offers is to make them very low cost to you, yet with high perceived value to the client. As a service provider, this is easy to do. A complete assessment, consultation and training session could carry a price tag of $199, but cost you only two hours of your time. Obviously, the goal is to get paid for all your time, at premium rates, as often as possible. But when you can accept only half your normal fee, or $99, for a two-hour service that you normally charge $199 for, and advertise "$100 OFF" – that is pretty irresistible (as long as you’re building the value of the offer). And as long as you have the lifetime value of your client firmly etched in your mind, losing $100 on the front-end to gain hundreds or thousands on the back-end in ongoing fees for your services is not all that uncomfortable, is it?
The same applies for any service provider. A financial consultant who normally charges $250 for a complete financial analysis can make the irresistible offer of "Save $125" by advertising this service at half off her normal fee. Because the big money comes in the form of commissions earned as a result of managing the client’s portfolio.
Anyway, I hope you appreciate the lifetime value of your clients. If not, that’s another reason to read Jay’s great book.
So, how does all this coalesce into a profitable, powerful, SA-building promotion?
Let’s say you get 10 of your 50 premium providers to agree to this strategic alliance (you should easily be able to get at least half of them, but let’s be conservative for the purposes of this illustration).
Now let’s say that the average irresistible offer from all the providers is $100 off. That’s a thousand bucks in total savings (10 X $100). You take all these offers and compile them into a little booklet (encourage each business owner to provide some compelling information about their service which will ride alongside the irresistible offer "coupon"). You can have these booklets printed up at Kinkos for about $2 each. Once you prove to yourself how powerful this is and roll it out, you can get them printed in greater volume for less than $1 each.
So you now have a Preferred Provider Directory of some of your town’s premium services that costs you $2 and is worth $1,000. That’s pretty cool, right? And, of course, your business information and your irresistible offer is included in the booklet – in fact, it should be the first one. Be sure that when you have the booklet printed it clearly shows the total dollar value right on the cover (i.e. $1,000 In Savings Enclosed!)
Give two or three of these booklets to each provider who participated and tell them they can use them anyway they’d like to promote their business or give as gifts. Educate them about the value of the booklet and different ways to use them as promotional tools (there’s a wealth of ideas in Jay’s book). Give them a little order sheet so they can get as many more booklets as they’d like for just $2 each.
A beauty salon could now use the booklet as a "hook" in their advertising like this, "Get $1,000 In Free Gifts With Your Next Cut And Style."
A financial planner could say, "Get $1,000 In Discounts From [town name’s] Premier Service Providers When You Take Advantage Of My Financial Analysis."
And of course you can use the booklet as your marketing hook in the same way. All the providers who participate in the program now have a hugely valuable promotional tool that costs them just $2 each and carries a real $1,000 value.
If all ten of the providers were only to give out 20 of these booklets to their prospects and clients, that would result in 200 more excellent prospects for your services seeing your irresistible offer. If you do a good job of educating the providers about the value of the booklet and showing them different ways to use it as a promotional tool, it’s quite possible that they could each give out hundreds of these booklets. And what if you had 25 or even 50 providers participating?
This type of premium bonus gift can double, triple, even ten-times the power of your marketing. And it will do the same for all the providers who participate. Will it have immediate, magical power to supercharge your business overnight? Nope. Will it require a little bit of work to get it up and running? Yup. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
Because this is just the beginning of your strategic alliance relationship with these other premium service providers in your area. This is a simple, powerful way to get your "foot in the door" with other exceptional businesses, prove to them that you deliver and that you’re serious about helping them. You’re giving a little bit in the beginning to get a whole heck of a lot in return.
A final note: If you want to lock a turbo booster onto this marketing tactic that will benefit you and your SA partners, make sure that everyone records the names and addresses of those to whom they give the booklets. This way you will build a database of excellent prospects in your area that all of you can share. By target farming this database with follow-up marketing impressions, you will convert a much higher percentage to clients.
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Eric Ruth is the President of Fitness Marketing Systems and the creator of The Ultimate Personal Trainer Marketing Program. You can grab his information-packed books 101 Personal Trainer Publicity Secrets and 101 Personal Trainer Marketing Strategies free of charge at www.HowToSellFitness.com.
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Check Eric's Other Articles....
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