Sales Strategy

Find more referral business with strategic alliances. 

Your best source of new clients is probably personal referrals.  Prospective clients are more likely to seek recommendations from people they trust than they are to respond to advertising or marketing campaigns.

Strategic alliances are formal agreements between two individuals who serve the same type of customer to refer business to each other.  The objective is simple – help your partner understand what you do for your customers, what your ideal customers look like, and how they can help by introducing you to people in their network who might be a fit for your product or service.

A couple of tips for establishing productive strategic alliances:

• Focus on giving your partner good referrals – demonstrate Emerson’s Rule “give more to get more”.
• Schedule a regular meeting time, every other week or once a month, with a firm agenda and clear expectations that you both should come to the meeting with at least one referral for the other.  You can make it fun and productive by agreeing that whoever brings the smaller number of referrals to a meeting buys the coffee.
• Be careful who you align with.  Make sure the person you pick is someone you want to have a long-standing relationship with.  If you find the fit isn’t right, end it quickly and invest you time in finding others who might be a better fit.
• Build in time each meeting to describe a new client, or maybe one of your best clients.  Specific examples of how you help your customers, why they came to you, and what they find most beneficial about your product or service will greatly increase the likelihood that your partner will be able to identify quality referrals for you.