Over these next few weeks I’ll be posting this entire series detailing my strategies on effectively developing strategic partnerships in your community.
I believe that developing strategic partnerships is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways of building your business. It should be one of the foundation elements that receive continual focus with direct goals in every quarter.
Now one of the big problems with strategic partnerships is that local businesses are constantly approached or solicited by others to do things, display things or post things that help other people grow their business. For the business being approached this generally just takes up valuable space and is a waste of time with little to no reciprocal benefit which is why so many businesses won’t talk to you or have a standard practice of saying no.
Here are my five steps to overcoming this. Go with a giving hand and deliver real value that leads to mutually beneficial relationships.
- Interview the Expert
- Sponsor Your Community
- The Charity Lunch & Learn
- Cross Promotion
- Revenue Share Programs
In this post we’re going to cover the third step, which is the Charity Lunch & Learn.
Ok this step is really critical and is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to organizations that can bring groups of 10-20 or more people together.
Every business in the community quickly realizes that part of their brand or community perception will be as a result of charitable contributions or their efforts to give back to the community. This is especially true in smaller markets like mine.
You know have a budding relationship with some great strategic partners. This time I suggest you contact them and attempt to learn what charitable organizations they like to support. Once this information is know suggest to provide your time and knowledge in the form of a charitable event that both your and their audience could attend. It’s always better to encourage this even be held at their location (if that’s at all viable) to ensure they see how they would be getting the maximum benefit.
Essentially you want to give them a reason (and preferably all the done for you tools) to promote this event internally. As the sheer virtue that they are hosting a charitable event lends to their brand, credibility and reputation in the community.
People will attend the event for just a donation. Your job is to deliver highly valuable content, information that they might use and take away immediately. I suggest nutritional lectures with easy recommendations to immediately implement tomorrow; or home or office workouts with demonstrations and the reason why it’s important.
What you’re not going to provide is handouts.
Always educate, and in truth we all need to make an attempt to be more eco-friendly. You must never attempt to sell your services at an event like this. Instead your goal is to make it easy for people to want to receive more CONTENT from you, not necessarily information about your services (that comes later.)
Sure some will immediately ask and of course treat these like the warm leads that they are but your primary mission is to educate and most importantly leave people wanting to opt-in.
Leave a clipboard and a pen at the back of the room when you conclude your only offer should be things like electronic handouts or the promise of a bundle of more great content if people will leave you their name and email. Your goal is to leave with contact info of at least 65-70% of your audience.
These people are now part of your marketing funnel and you can directly warm them up to qualified leads that become customers. In two such events last fall I had a combined audience of about 65 people over the two events and this lead to well over $30,000 in new programs within out studio in just the days that followed the events.
In the format of the charity lunch and learn you majorly enhance your relationship with your strategic partner, value to them, you and your audience and ultimately position yourself for a stream of warm leads (and grow you contact list.)
Speaking engagements are incredibly powerful in this format they can be a game changer for your business.
Next time we’ll talk about finally establishing direct cross promotion.
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