Pop Quiz: What products and services do your clients purchase besides yours?
For example, let’s say you coach small business owners. In addition to buying your coaching program, they might hire an outside financial firm to handle their accounting.
This accounting firm has grown and nurtured a list of clients and prospects, and many of them might be small business owners in your niche.
When you enter a joint venture relationship with the accounting firm, you gain exposure to this list. The firm’s clients trust them, and when they endorse you, you become the recipient of the client’s trust. Hopefully, this leads a lot of them buying your coaching program.
That’s the power of joint venture relationships and endorsed marketing. It gives you valuable exposure to new prospects and a platform to sell your coaching in a trusted environment.
As great as it is, though, coaches often have a hard time creating joint ventures that last — mainly because they lack the right process.
We recently talked about the first step of the process — to identify our ideal JV partners. These potential partners are business and organizations that have a good reputation in the industry, a decent size contact list, and are in your niche but not direct competitors.
Once we’ve identified who they are, we need to go after them.
Approach Them As Equals
Coaches have several fears and concerns that stand in the way of pursuing JV’s. Here’s one I hear over and over again: I’m very independent and I’ve built my business from cold traffic so I’m not used to asking favors from others.
I understand that feeling and to a certain degree, I can identify with it. We’re proud of the business we’ve built and aren’t just looking for handouts from other people.
If someone looks like a good JV partner we won’t approach them by asking them to help us out and promoting our stuff to their list. Quite frankly, doing a favor for someone they don’t know will be a very low priority to them.
We need to approach these potential partners, but we can’t come from a place of begging. We need to approach them as equals.
The day after Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for his role as Ray Charles in Ray, he was at home watching TV when the phone rang. When he answered it, he heard a familiar voice on the other end.
“Hey Jamie, it’s Denzel.”
Jamie started to freak out because Denzel Washington was one his acting heroes.
He said, “Denzel, what are you doing calling me?”
Denzel replied, “Kings talk to kings.”
The Cold-Calling Exception
I’ve been against cold-calling prospects forever. I think it’s stupid and low, and I just hate it. I want prospects to call us — not the other way around.
The only time I’m in favor of reaching out cold to someone who doesn’t know you is in the case of JV partners. I do it because kings talk to kings.
Whether they know you personally or not, if someone has posture in the industry and has cultivated a reputation of trust, then reaching out as two equals — two business owners, not servant and master — can be extremely effective.
I think email is probably the best way to reach out, but doing it through the phone is fine too. In the case of joint venture relationships, you can reach out cold without a third-party introduction and it works just great. The trick is, it doesn’t have to be wordy or complex. (Do you like reading long emails from people you don’t know?)
It can be as simple as this:
“Hey, I’ve heard really good stuff about the work you do. We’re not competitive in any way and we both work with small businesses. I’d love to chat and see if there’s any way we could help each other out. Would you be up for that?”
We’ve approached them as equals, not as someone pitching a deal too hard or begging for favors too soft.
Kings talk to kings, so act like one.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your coaching business:
1. Grab a free copy of my book
It’s the roadmap to attracting prospects, signing clients, and scaling your coaching business. — Click Here
2. Join the Coach Dojo and connect with coaches who are scaling too
It’s our new Facebook community where smart coaches learn to get more income, impact, and independence. — Click Here
3. Join our Implementation Program and be a Case Study
I’m putting together a new coaching case study group at Black Belt this month… stay tuned for details. If you’d like to work with me on your client-getting and scale plans… just send me a message with the words “Case Study”. — Click Here
4. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take you from 6 to 7 figures… just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! — Click Here
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