JV

JV

I want to market your product for you by having other businesses in related fields sell it for you.  All I want is 25% of the profit.”  Then you go to the other business (in this case, the host) and say, “I want to bring products to you that you can market and all I want is 25% of the profit I make for you.”

• Why JV
• JV Mindset and what to look for
• Highest and best use
• Ch 13:  Compensation
• Ch 14:  Endorsements
• CH 15:  Non linear thinking
• CH 16:  Deals with direct competitors
• CH 14:  Three motivations
• CH 18:  Common mistakes, radio ads, think tank, Licensing, millions ways to JV
• CH 19:  On every JV
• CH 20:  TSOP, focus, clarity…
• CH 21:  Six principles, processes other people use, JV mindsets and 12 elements
• Reactivating existing clients
• 8 power principles
• Integrity
• Broad brush business assessment
• Force multiplier effect
• CH 22:  JVs for EEs
• Distressed resources
• Unsold inventory
• Inactive customers
• Attrition
• How to recruit help
• Satellite offices
• Letters

Business owner’s letter to related products:

“Dear Business Owner,  I’m personally writing you because I have a great new profit center that you can easily add to your current business. It is guaranteed to get your current buyers to buy more things and spend more with you than they do now. – What’s great is that not one dollar of that expenditure will take away from the profits you currently make.  What’s great is that every new, windfall dollar I bring in to you will be more profitable than the ones you currently generate on your own.  What’s great is that I will do all the work to put the profit center together for you.  You can maintain total control of the profit center if you prefer.  If I am right, you will make as much as dollars or ____ a month from my efforts, plus your customers will be delighted that you did.  And oh yes … this activity has the enormous benefit of reactivating a ton of old, inactive buyers, plus it will appeal to new prospects who have never purchased before. They’ll start buying from you — and you’ll profit from them in a big way.  Please call at your earliest convenience at — to find out more. Sincerely, … ”

Employee’s letter to boss, for marketing:

“If I can create one or multiple profit centers for your business that costs you nothing… That you have 100% control of… Where I do all the work to orchestrate it… And I can get our current customers to buy MORE… And I can get our current customers to buy MORE OFTEN…  And I can get our old customers who haven’t purchased in a long time REACTIVATED… And I can bring in NEW customers who have NEVER purchased before… As well as get us penetrating new markets … And get us coming out with fabulous new products or services that make us more profit than we do now, but costs us nothing to create… Will you give me (choose from 10% to 25%) of the bottom-line profit it brings us for as long as I am here and keep doing it? Particularly for as long as I continue to do my other job by day?”

To be the middleman:  Consider all the products purchased before, during and after

SEC 1:  WHY JVS?

CH 1:  Power of JVs:  JVs are an educational process, a science.  Everyone is a prospect.

CH 2:  Value of JVs:  JVs are one of the most powerful ways to make a preemptive move.  Gain the trust and the hearts of the people you want to reach.

CH 3:  Power of JVs:  Limitless number of ways to use a JV:

• You can do it through your own business, going outside to others;
• You can do it with other peoples’ businesses providing products or services to you;
• You could do it as a middleperson, bringing the two together;
• You can do it as a business owner, joint venturing resources and expertise -consulting, sales training, services — anything that can be measured and quantified in either a savings, increase profit, greater production, greater anything;
• You can use it to acquire rights and/or control of things;
• You can license, sell, or rent to others;
• You can use it to create income streams for you that will operate for you 24/7.

JVs allow you to:  pg 27 -29.

Contribute to perceived client benefits:  When promoted to other people’s clients, always, give their clients bonuses and advantages for less than they would pay on the open market, with more benefits, with more risk reversal, etc.  Make your partner look like a hero.

Outsource your non-core competencies.

 

CH 4:  Ways to Use JVs:

Ex:  When going bankrupt: Sell your salesforce network intact, to take over for a fixed rate and an override percentage of all the residual that comes in for two years.

Ex:  Seminar business JVd with a bigger seminar business, putting their people through their program – for access to intellectual capital.

Ex: Dude in Australia that made a couple million dollars going downtown in Sydney, in Melbourne, in Brisbane… He went to all kinds of stores that had ground floor space and got an option to the rights to put signs in their windows advertising other people, and splitting the revenue with the store owner. He had hundreds of them in every city. I thought that was pretty clever.

Keys:

 

• Act in the best interest of their clients
• Make sure they benefit, but their clients will benefit more
• Never breach the integrity or the sanctity of the relationship

There are hundreds of ways to JV.  You can go to a company and build them new profit centers, get them new products or get them into new markets.  You can buy a business and/or get control of it with no money. You can be a middle person, a matchmaker, and make more money for being the orchestrator than either side makes.  You also can go to companies and get access to or functional control of their distressed or under-utilized assets or opportunities.

I went out and found big companies that had unused space, unused equipment, limited sales people, customers or prospects they had sold to only once.  I made joint ventures with them to use their warehouse space for somebody else. I made arrangements for them to have other people use their telephone sales department personnel when they weren’t being used. I made arrangements to use their delivery trucks to deliver other people’s goods. I made arrangements to joint venture space at people’s tradeshows.

 

SEC 2:  THE JV MINDSET:  Once you mastered the fundamentals, dynamics, psychology, and the mechanics, it is real easy. Get a few “test runs” under your belt, it will be equally rewarding.

CH 5:  Fundamentals:

Aspects of human nature that serve to funnel deals to you:

• Very few people that have all the money they want
• Very few people that have capitalized on, or exploited, or tapped all the opportunities they want
• Many people have problems they do not know how to solve
• Most people do not know how to put concepts and elements together
• Most people do not want to work very hard

When you can turnkey a deal for someone where you do all the work, put together all the elements and connect all the dots, it is almost irresistibly appealing, even to someone who isn’t necessarily looking to do a deal.  Overage of inventory?

Figure out who needs what you want to do worse than you.  Approach them with confidence and synergy.  One person’s distress is another person’s opportunity.  Recognize opportunities to solve other people’s problems that they could not solve themselves.  Everything in business is either solving a problem somebody has, or fulfilling an opportunity that they’ve wanted to accomplish but never been able to (or never even realized that they wanted to), verbalizing and then transacting it for them.

 

CH 6:  Power of Leverage:  Infinite upside leverage.  The key is to capitalize on other people’s underutilized, overlooked, undervalued, underperforming assets or opportunities.

 

CH 7:  Your Creative Genius:  Be curious.  Reconnect with your own creativity and let it function freely.  “OK, Creative Genius, your job is to figure out what in the heck I can do profitability with that piece of information.”

You make the rules in joint venturing. You do not have to go out and sell anybody.  There are a million people out there who are born salesmen and women.  There are a billion people out there who will move mountains, send letters, follow up, visit people for a minor share of the deal. You can structure a dozen ways to accomplish every task and aspect that your venture will require.

 

CH 8:  Finding the Deal:  Look for connections.  Look for the related, complimentary or essential products or services that are purchased just before, at the same time, or right after.  Ex:  new carpet makes other parts of your house look ugly.  Estate planners JV with ophthalmologists.

With control, understanding and master of the deal, you call all the shots.

Look for problems.  Overage of inventory:  have the stores sign a consignment sheet saying that we lent the stock to them in exchange for the curios. They were responsible for the stock, and if the items didn’t sell, they had to return them or pay for them.  Once you gain the distribution channel, keep it.

 

CH 9:  Highest and Best Use:

Jay:  Your goal in whatever business activity you are in is to get the maximum yield, the maximum result, the maximum payoff, the maximum success from the minimum time, effort, risk, and energy.  You cannot do that until you first understand all of the meaningful options, alternatives, possibilities and dangers surrounding you.  But when you are new to JV, start small.

John Dudeck:  Look at the three most important things your business is paying you to do and break them into the six or seven processes they require.  Value-rank your ability and performance from one to ten in each of those seven areas.   Use a scale from “brilliant” down to “imbecilic.  Do what you are great at and outsource the rest.

Julian Richer, world record of sales, use your time productively.  During London commutes, have a driver.  “But spending your time on something that you can have done for you for £10 an hour doesn’t make sense.”

Treat your time as precious, and delays as expensive.  With every day of inaction that passes you by after a great idea dawns on you, the passion wanes. You don’t feel as focused. The idea escapes you. You don’t feel as motivated.

 

CH 10:  Viability:  What has the highest probability of actually working?

Use logic.  Highest and best use has two implications:

• Going for the biggest payoff
• Going for the biggest probability of working

It has to be relative to your negotiability, to your stature, and to your level of confidence.  The bigger the deal, quite possibly, the more frustrating the experience.  In the beginning, the low-hanging fruit yields your sweetest rewards.

When you take a deal to someone, you need to be able to go into the situation as a confident leader in a leadership role. You must have unshakable confidence, clarity, believability and certainty that it is the right thing for the other side to do.

If you are going to be socially awkward, find someone who communicates well, to be your voice.

Have the back end of the deal already lined up, planned, else you will frustrate your JV partner and lose their trust.  Have a plan.  Specificity always out-produces abstract generalities.

In Navy Seal parlance:

• Identify the targets you’re trying to knock down. What is the first target?  What is the second?
• How are you going to get to each target?
• What weapon are you going to use to knock each one down, keep it down, and wipe it out?

 

CH 11:  Doability.

You have to find enterprises, organizations, non-profit associations, publications, individuals, experts or prominent people to joint venture with.

 

The only problems you’re interested in solving for purposes of joint venturing are problems that are easily felt, and enthusiastically and significantly responded to.

Your Infallible Success Equation:  Access + Affinity + Delivery =Perfect Setup

Access is not as good as affinity, but you at least have access to a desired market.

Affinity (trust) means the depth of the relationship.  This may not be the literal definition, but it is close. The deeper the affinity, the more probable the success of your venture, the more people will buy, the more money you and the other side will make.

Delivery.  How are you going to be able to get your opportunity, your proposition delivered?  E-mail, catalog, regular mailing, invoices, events, seminars, tradeshows, client technical updates, shipped packages, telephone, text, advertising, free report, another product offer, website, etc.  If it is going to cost you, test it first – make sure the deal is tied up first.

When you are looking for deals, remember:

• The deal must have value
• The partners should have assets, vehicles, delivery opportunities that you can take advantage of

Hooker analogy:  “A service is worth a lot more before it is rendered than after.”

Your Path To Prosperity:  Tie Up The Rights, Then Test The Venture.  You can always flip the deal.  Go to them and say: “I want to create and buy the rights to a whole new, unrecognized, revenue-generating part of your business.  I want to do all the work for you, and I want you to get at least half the profits, maybe more. I have a really cool model that nobody that I know has done before, but I think it can be very meaningful. It can only add, not take away, from the revenue that you are currently generating and put a lot more profit in your pocket.”

 

CH 12:  Distribution Network:

Every time you do a deal, you establish a relationship.  You are trying to establish through that vehicle, enterprise, or publication a continuous ability to bring all kinds of other logical, related, problem-solving products or services to them and through their distribution system. That way, instead of just having to live deal-to-deal, you are building for yourself an ongoing, permanent distribution system.

In the early days of newsletters, many writers were undercapitalizing.  Jay gave them ideas, strategies and supremely performing replacements.  Then said “Now that I have done that, can you trust me to make you millions more, and totally at my risk, not yours?” They were really and understandably critical, but I understood their fears and apprehensions. I understood the psychology of the other side, and responded:  “If I were in your shoes, what I would want from someone who was trying to add new revenue streams, new profit centers, new dimensions to my business? Here’s what I would want: I would want the money, but I would not want to do anything that would jeopardize my relationship with my mainstay market. I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize my income stream from them. I would want nothing that sold them out. I wouldn’t want anything that could go wrong.  “I would want to protect them at a better rate. I want to bring something to them that was at a superior level of pricing and protection than they could find for themselves on the open market.”  Because they could find products of their own to sell, it was essential to deliver what I promised.  I wanted to do it in a way such that 1 made the endorsers or the joint venture partners who were lending their name and the credibility of their enterprise to the deal to look great. I would make them a hero.  First, I brought propositions that were better than they could get on their own. Next, I studied how they communicated and gave them copy reflected in their words.  Next, I produced guarantees that exceeded the outside market.  I then added accelerating bonuses and took away the risk by telling the JV partner that if the product did not fit, they can keep the bonuses.  I was transparent in the deal. I always acted only as a representative or a voice for the endorser, the joint venture partner.

You double your take by JVing twice per transaction.  You JV with the distributor and JV for the bonus product.  To acquire the product you have to do “marketing arbitrage,” where I would  convince them that I could get access to a market they could not. And because I could, I deserved a lion’s share of the revenue, because this was all windfall money that, left to their own devices, they would never get, because they had other products to sell.  They had an excellent chance of making more money on repeat sales on the “back end,” so I was able to negotiate very, very advantageous deals that made me, frankly, come out with more profit than anyone else in the transaction.  Did I run into resistance? Yes and no.  However, I always put myself in their mind.  I would say:  “Mr. Smith, you sell this product for $100 in the outside market. I know that your hard cost is about $10.  I know that you normally market through renting mailing lists or running ads, and I know you have a good business.  If I can get you access to 50,000 of the best buyers in the world that you would never get access to with absolute credibility and endorsement coming out of the kazoo… and I could get 1,000 of them to buy right away… but the only way I could do that is if you didn’t make any money on the first sale, but you had the chance to: Number one, make a fortune on the back end, and; number two, have such credibility with the other 39,000 that whenever they saw your regular advertising or were impacted by any of the other marketing you did, they would be highly favorably disposed towards buying — and you got all that money — is it worth doing?”  This worked because I was super-logical and extremely sensitive and emphatic to their hot buttons.

I basically found an asset, an enterprise with incredible trusting relationship with a segment of a market that had a fanatical interest in a very specific subject. I asked myself, “What other related subjects would those people be interested in?”

I made a deal where I tied up the rights to an intangible asset that the company that owned it did not even value very highly, because they were doing nothing with it. They didn’t know how, wouldn’t have, and didn’t recognize its value.

Then I went out and I tied up the rights to promote to the niche market all kinds of related

products or services through that asset, through that distribution channel. I was basically the great visualizer. I was in the toll position. I was the man in the middle, the hub.

 

CH 13:  Creative Compensation, Creative Deals.

If you revere yourself, you have every right to say, “Hey, the way we are going to keep track is… I think you are probably a very honorable person, but I just structure my deals the same way you would probably structure yours.”

What to negotiate is as unique as every situation.  Always keep in mind the concept of lowest common denominator, path of least resistance, easiest way to lower the hurdle rate, fastest way to closure, easiest path to yes.  Make a deal for less than they pay so they do not think you are screwing them.

Whether you take money upfront, on the second sale, the backend, standard percentage, unlimited use of the name generated, you need to evaluate what somebody is bringing to the table, the market, the way you are delivering it, the product or service, the post sale follow-up, the distribution channel, incremental costs etc.  In the beginning, assume less just to make the deal.

Generally, provide a better deal, to gain access to their distribution.  Structure compensation when you have specifics

Study the big time, possibility based, creative real estate deal structures.  Study biographies or autobiographies of anyone who had to break ground on anything that was new.

How to ensure you are actually paid:

• Install yourself in the middle, in the “toll position.”  “I will set up the ordering system so that your customer order department knows, and I will give them the forms. They will basically report to me and to you every day.”  This is not a question.
• Have people cut two checks:  one for you, one for your JV partner.
• Get daily access to results, orders and names.  “I want the right to call your bookkeeper. I want the right to call your shipping department. I want the right to get copies of the reports.” And anybody who recoils from that, unless they have a very good reason…
• Make joint ownership of all the client’s information, but with the understanding you will never use unless you are not paid.
• Get something in writing, get paid on certain days, else some process goes into effect.
• Ask for an agreement and a simple, but a protective number of concessions in your deal.  You could get weekly reports, or copies of bank deposits. There are so many nuances that you must look carefully at each deal on a one-by-one basis.
• You could use a third party to control the dissemination of the product or service that you have either control of, or at least that reports to you.
• You can have money deposited into a separate bank account that either you control, or you get co-reports on.
• You can have an arrangement where you get shipping reports every day, week or month.

I was always mindful of what their hot button was. I would never try to do a deal with anyone until I first took a deep breath and thought through what would move them to action.

In certain deals, do not worry about collecting every last dime, because the longer you have the deal, the more they “resented it.”  If the mechanics of the deal are flowing, you have nothing to do.

Ideally you have the right relationship and you share total access to accounting.  In the beginning, you will have to accept a few concessions.  Do not get intimidated, nor try to have a 25 page long agreement and kill the deal before it ever gets going.  If you say:

“Look, I know you can appreciate this. This may not be a million dollar deal, but I am entering into it as if it is. If I were asking you to invest $20 million on a deal with me, wouldn’t you like some assurances that if it comes in, you would be paid? Of course you would.  “I want no more than you would want, and all I want is an agreement that I will get reports, that I can check with the accounting, that every time a check comes to you, I will get paid. If you hold the money, I’ll get paid every ten days. If you cannot tell accurately, I will at least get 80% of whatever the estimate is.”

Deal with the question without being awkward, timid or arrogant.  Use examples and analogies, as in every other business-like area. You can say:

“I’m not asking for a dime upfront. I’m investing massively with my time, my opportunity costs, my ability. All I ask is that when and after it works I get paid, just like you. Not an unreasonable request, I’m sure you’ll agree. I ask that I have access to the same data that you do, because we are joint venture partners in this deal.”

Make those parameters clear when the deal is being memorialized.  Say, “I put this deal together, and it is very simple. There are a couple of things that I have included that I think you would agree you’d want if the tables were turned.” I do analogies where I talk about any other transaction anybody has ever done with me. This is business, and you want to know that you are going to get paid when money is due.  By the same token, if it is not due, make it clear that you do not expect a dime.  A lot of people buy things and still have to pay even if it does not work. If the deal does not payoff, it is a waste. You only want to be paid after the deal is successful. Your partner actually should want you to look at the numbers, because then you can monitor the deal. You will know how to improve it. You should know how the deal is doing. If you do not, then you are really not partners, are you?

 

In the JV, there are many other compensations or considerations that could be more valuable than taking a share of the revenue.  For example, on some deals I would get someone to endorse me, and in exchange, I would be able to get other people to promote them. I would put a value on that promotion, saying, “What if I could get you promoted to this million-name list? Well, if you paid me, I could probably ask $100,000 for that and it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?” And they would say yes, and I would say, “I do not want cash. I just want you to endorse us, and we will also give you a share of the back end.” Or I would use the proceeds we made to fund marketing for their agenda, for their newsletter or their seminar.

If people are not interested in money, you can barter.

The key, again, is to put yourself in the middle, saying “Oh wow, here’s a company that has an asset, or an opportunity, or a distribution channel that they’re not using. Let me tie that up.  Let me find other people that have products or services that are perfect for that channel. Let me tie that up. Let me get in the middle, and let me make as much as each side does.”

“It is not the responsibility of the joint venture partner to appreciate the implication of the proposition you are making. It is totally incumbent on you. It is your responsibility.”  So when I go to somebody with a proposal, I reduce it down not just to “Will you do this deal with me, where you will get half the proceeds, or all the profit?” or whatever. I say, “Let me tell you what I think that would mean, worst case.” And I tell them, “I think you have 160,000 $100 subscribers (for example), is that right, Mr. Prospect and partner?” “Yes.” “Well I’m assuming that you will get 3% of those people to buy. That is the normal response that we get in a good offer.”  And then I challenge them, and I say, “I presume you have great affinity and a great connection and bond with your audience. If I am wrong, it will skew my estimate.  But if I am right, this is what should happen, and I am maybe even understating it if you have a super connectivity with them. Don’t you agree that you have a strong bond with them?”  Once they confirm:  “So here’s what I think. I think if we do this that you should get 3,000 responses in the three promotions we’ll do. The average response will be $200. The profit is $180. Your share is $90. $90 x 3,000 = $270,000. I think you should get $270,000.  “But that is not the real key here. What could you do with a $270,000 windfall profit you weren’t expecting?  “Well, let me give you a few examples: Maybe you could payoff debt. Maybe you could expand your facility. Maybe you could run marketing, advertising, direct mail, (or in an Internet case today) banner ads, pay per click… to get yourself another 2,000 people.  Maybe you could invest in a sales force. Maybe you could penetrate new markets. Maybe you could buy your competition. Maybe you could buy the Mercedes you always wanted. Maybe you and your family…  “If I prove it out once, I can probably deliver an equivalent yield to you two or three or five times a year for the rest of your life — as long as you keep maintaining that level of quality list and buyer group. “

Whoever I approached, I would always try to put myself in their place, not mine. One of the big mistakes people make is they try to do joint ventures just for the profit.  They are insensitive to the mindset, the perspective, the concerns, the psychology of the other side; 1) the company, the list owner, the website, the magazine that you want to do the deal with, and 2) their audience.

Your advantage over everyone; always approach it from the perspective of the other side, never for your own needs.  Have the capability of structuring and flexibly reconstructing the deal so it always worked massively for the other side.  Create an offer that made the JV partner look superior, like they were doing more for their audience. Create irresistible copy that takes all of the risk away from their audience.  Protect the JV partner in ways that no one else is sensitive to.

Who Has What You Want?  You can create value almost from scratch where it didn’t exist.  Give to them first, show them that you really know your business. Give them an education, enrapture them, and don’t titillate, but animate their sense of what is possible … and then they will trust you.

 

CH 14:  Endorsements:  With a strong affinity to their audience, endorsements can:

• You cut your marketing costs (2/3 – 100%)
• Increase the yield from everything you do (up to 10X)
• Shorten the buying cycle
• Instant credibility and predisposition to buy in the future.

You want to find companies, entities, and organizations that have invested lots of capital that you can take advantage of.  You are really leveraging a fortune for almost nothing — or for literally nothing — but your payoff on that combined five- or six types of capital effort is profound relative to the investment on your part.

You see that there are a lot of people out there that sell static products – tapes, CDs, videos, courses, seminars.  When people who buy those products are done with them, they have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but they don’t know how to organize it, execute it and sustain it.  You could go to all or some of the people that have the best, the most compatible products, programs, seminars, and set up a joint venture where they would endorse you as a consultant.  You could then split profits with them on any mutually agreeable basis.  If you’re successful at what you do and have testimonials, documentation and measurement, you go the person and say…  “You don’t know me, and I only know you by reputation, but I do know that 95% of the people that buy products or programs do very little with them. They don’t realize the success that your product can give them, and as a result, they wouldn’t testify as to its worth, nor will they probably ever buy another product.  “I can turn the 5% who do fully use your program into 40%, 50%.  “I can probably triple or quadruple the success result rate that you currently experience, and in the process, free up a lot more money for your clients so they will reinvest in you.  “I can probably put $50-, $70- — as much as $250,000 more in your pocket every month, and I can do all the heavy lifting and all the work. I have an idea, and let’s talk about it.”  And then you just set it up.  But remember, you have to prove to them that you can do it. You can say…  “If I were in your shoes, and somebody came to me with this proposition, I’d ask myself, ‘How would I respond?’ “And my answer is, maybe enthusiastically, maybe skeptically.  The concept would intrigue me. The probability that that person just wants to latch onto my coattails, and has no real value to offer, would be high.  “I agree. That is why I want to prove myself to you:  “Number one, here is what I do. Here are actual names of 25 people I have helped in the last year whose businesses have grown 25% or more. Here are the actual stats. Here is the data.  Here is a documented, notarized affidavit.  “Let me make this offer. You pick five people you know, either from your list, or your buyers, or your seminar, or your best friends.  I will work with them absolutely free for the next three months by phone. If I don’t produce at least a 15% or higher improvement in their business by then, I don’t deserve your consideration. But if I do, let’s do business.”

The overall point that I want to make about this, and every strategy and tactic that you use is that you don’t need a sophisticated education. You don’t need to wave an advanced degree in your prospects’ faces. You don’t need to be a masterful salesperson.  All you have to do is understand where the money lies, how to get it, and what the process is.  If you don’t possess some element of that process, you don’t have to develop it. All you have to do is joint venture and acquire, because in this world today, at this very moment, there are not thousands, or tens of thousands, but millions of people who, for example, can sell a business building tape, but don’t have the right feel for the big picture. They don’t have the wherewithal to put the whole concept together and get dollars and cents success for their buyers.  There are people who can manage, but they don’t know how to sell. There are people who have influence, who have access to industries, and they can close deals or get you introductions, but they don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.  The key is having the complete vision and the conceptual understanding of how to put it all together and architect it.

 

CH 15:  Non-Linear Thinking.  Synonymous with creativity.  An essential element of the JV mindset.  The ultimate architect of strategic alliance is Bill Gates.

Ex:  Unsold seminar for 5,000 only sold 1,000 with tickets retailing at $1,000 and included back end.  Jay bought an option to own the rest of the seats at the last minute, for $10 apiece.  He sold them for $50 to other clients as bonuses that they could give to their subscribers or their buyers. I made $40 a head on the front end, plus I got 10% of the profit for anything else they packaged on it. They made a bonus when somebody spent $500, and I got a share of the $400 profit.

The key is in showing them a weakness, a problem, a void, a need that they had that they had never verbalized — and then showing them that I understood it at a level they didn’t even know existed, but that they were a greater beneficiary than I was.  I showed them that they already had spent all the money to pre-build the lead and close all the sales they could. The cost appeared lost on the ones that didn’t close, but I showed them that those people were interested in something, just not their product.

EX:  Selling training programs to put people in business.  Sell their unsold leads, and back end for further development:   “Well, most people who take your training do one of three things: They do well and don’t want to do anything else; they do so well that they want to own other businesses; or they don’t do well at all, and they want to either get better, or do some other endeavor.  “For the people that don’t do well, let me offer them, under your auspices, superior training in selling, joint venturing, lead generating and closure. For the people that do well, let me show them how to add new profit centers. For the people that did very well, love what they’re doing, and have the money to buy other businesses, let me give them other things they could do.”

If you set up distribution channels (such as in the exercise wear example in Chapter 12) and national or international deals, profits can really balloon.  I have bought profit centers from companies that were not working, developed them, and then actually sold them back to them for a lump sum.

“How can I use joint ventures to either create a business for myself, or to create a significant, a meaningful, maybe a massive income stream?” And put together the combined power of geometric progression.  If you can bring economic advantage to someone that they never had before … and you see with clarity something they don’t. .. and you tum-key it. .. and you do all the work — how many people do you think are going to tum down that opportunity?

Diving board vs Power Parthenon:  If you are dependent upon one joint venture process, you can saturate that avenue, you can easily have competition emulate it, you can have changes in society, economics, regulation that can make it invalid, and you are compromised.

“If I bring you access to markets… if I bring you prospects, buyers, customers, clients… if I bring you advertising… if I bring you any of these that you never had before and I turnkey it all, can I have__?” You start by asking for at least half of the profits, and if they say no, you can always go down. In fact, I have made deals in which I got all the profits if I could prove to them that they made money on the second and third sale.

I had a client once that I literally put into business. We found a huge, huge air conditioning company that only had 80% utilization. In other words, they were paying full salaries to all their people, but 20% of their staff s time was not used.  I put my client in the air conditioning business with no investment on his part just by doing a joint venture with this big company to use their service people and schedule them when they were available.

You can find people that have underutilized personnel, underutilized storage capacity, underutilized production equipment, underutilized anything.  You can use their millions of dollars of equipment, their staff. .. and just pay them a variable, a share of the profit. You can get control of all kinds of business-to-business things that can be sold during the day.  And by the way, business-to-business is about five times more profitable to get connected to and get a sale from. Those are great opportunities for you.

Ex 28:  Just a short time ago I made a joint venture for a man that has search engine optimizing capability. He sells his services for $3,000 a month. I said, “That’s a waste if you’re really good.  Let’s go to people who we can make millions of dollars by joint venturing the search engine for a huge portion of the front end, and we can put together five or six other significant back end products or services. Instead of being a marginal little service company that makes a few dollars every month, we’ll make tens of millions.”

Licensing Successful Processes Extends Your Reach and Explodes Your Results.   Earlier I advised against tying up rights when you don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, or at least a good idea of where to find them. But I’ll modify that advice now…  Once you’ve gotten your ‘Joint venture sea legs,” you’ll be able to work deals from practically any starting point that you choose, because you’ll understand the parameters, the language, and your personal capacity for lateral creativity.

“The mindset of a dealmaker first and foremost has to be to bring greater value to the other side.” That is it in a nutshell. You have to say:  “Hey, I’m here because I can bring your product to a greater audience by bringing you new revenue streams, and selling systems, and distribution channels,” or “I can bring your clients greater benefit because if you don’t provide them, they’re going to buy these products from somebody else, but they are not going to get the greatest outcome. But because 1 add them and offer them through you, they are going to get a better price, better protection, greater performance and somebody who cares more about them.”

Remember, you are a connector of relationships. You are the person who can solve the Rubik’s cube that people don’t even know they are struggling with.

 

Section Three:  The “How Tos” of JV Presentations

CH 16:  Targeting Prospects:

Prospects include anyone and everyone who has an unrealized asset, an under-performing activity, or an overlooked opportunity.  Also anyone who has an area of expertise that the dealmaker currently does not, or has the contacts or audience he or she is targeting.

Consider deals with your direct competitors, because:

1. They have buyers you want that are active
2. They have old buyers you want that are now inactive
3. They have prospects you want that will never buy from them

But, you can go to them and show them that they can make more money by selling your product to their “sunk cost” non-purchasing prospects than they are right now. Why? Because it is already a lost cause for them.

You can also show them how the people that bought, that don’t buy anymore, could be reactivated. And if they made half of the profit with you doing all the work, they could still make a ton of money.

Figure out who the key decision maker is.  Then determine their role.  Next, decide whether or not they really are the right person to make the decision on the deal you’re proposing.  In larger enterprises or political-type enterprises, you want to reach the person who has decision making control over the particular activity that impacts your joint venture, which is not necessarily the owner/CEO.

When crafting your proposal:

• What will the other side respond to?
• How can I demonstrate a comprehensive appreciation and understanding of their situation?
• How can I demonstrate that I see the opportunity from an area of dimension that they do not see?
• How will I demonstrate I have competence and a capability that is evident just by my verbal expression?
• What are all the negatives that I would sense if the tables were turned, and how I can overcome them?
• What is going to evoke a relatively immediate action?

You want to be very straightforward and business-like, though in a very personalized and humanistic way.  Demonstrate from the get-go that you have a proposition that is meaningful, real, has enormous merit, and at the very least deserves very serious and immediate consideration.  Make it evident to the prospect that you have put a lot of thought into it, and that you in fact have the capability of making it all a reality, if they cooperate.

Communicate with such certainty that you have something of supreme value and enough comprehension of how to do it that they would be the loser if they do not talk to you.  Come from the angle that they are going to be an even greater beneficiary than you.

Most often, you do not want to give up all the details right up front, but rather lay the groundwork for future communication.

Sample letters in Appendix A: Deal Making Proposal Letters.  Use such a letter to open the door, set the stage. Then, establish another dialogue when the door is open.  For now, you don’t need to go into any detail about the deal in your first communication.  In the beginning, leave it blind, but make the letter very business-like.

Next step:  Components of the verbal conversation in the follow-up to the letters, e-mails, faxes, etc.:  If they call you, psychologically, you control the dynamic.  If you are going to be fearful and nervous, have someone else do your bidding.

Prepare in advance the “talking points and the talking mindset.”  There are an infinite number of applications.  Consider:

ONE:  “It’s All About Them,” so reiterate and mirror what you’ve already stated in your prior communications.  “I told you in my letter that I have looked at your company and that I found a profit center opportunity within it, or a revenue stream area that I don’t think you are seeing. I told you this, so let me explain it now.”

TWO: Set the stage, and get your prospect back in the state of mind of the letter. Then I would say:  “Let me give you the concept in a nutshell. You have a three-product company, and you have 500 sales people. I just estimated that number. You can tell me how many are there.“

THREE:  Make them interact with you a little bit, so you show that you’re confident. Show that you are not fearful.  “And you have spent, I don’t know, how long have you been in business? 20, 30, 40 years, building these distribution channels, and you can do three things with it.  “You make a lot of money because you have good products, but the thing in my mind, the biggest asset you really have isn’t the three products. It is the relationships with buyers at 7,852 different retail facilities.  “I would suggest to you that with my help we tie up the rights to take over–not distribute, but in essence own without any investment in inventory, product, development, insurance, staffing… up to five complementary but non-competitive products -‘ complementary’ meaning they go right to the same buyer.  They merchandise and display and are promoted in the same department, but they don’t take a dime away from you.  “I have identified what the product area should be. I have the formula for getting control of them, and by adding those through the sales system we should be able to increase revenue at a minimum of80%, conceivably up to 300%. But that incremental revenue could be two or three times more profitable.  “I have a couple models that have already done just that and made millions that I would like to use as reference. Let’s talk about it.”

FOUR: Then you would follow up with a proposal that reiterates that same message again. If I was presenting it on the phone or in a letter, I would go from the macro to the micro.

FIVE:  The next communication should only get a little more detailed.  “Let’s look at what you’ve really already sunk in that.” Because I have to show how they already have invested significant capital and resources, whether we do this deal or not.  “Five hundred salespeople, it would cost you (blank).  You have 30 years of relationship building that we can’t put a price tag on. You have access to stores that generate an aggregate of probably 50 million buyers or visitors a month.  You have commerce in that category that equals $85 billion a year, and you are selling an estimated $10 million.  “Doesn’t it make sense that since you’ve already sunk the cost, the time, the effort, and you have the distribution channel to try to turn that into more efficient profitability? Especially in light of the fact that I will do all the work for you and you can have all the control, and we can do it without any downside risk to you?”

The key to making a proposal is empathy, and empathy means appreciating the other side’s perspective.

1. They are probably not as evolved in thinking as you are;
2. They are probably control freaks;
3. They are looking for, “What’s my angle?”;
4. They think everybody has figured out how to get the best of them, take advantage of them;
5. They worry about control;
6. They worry about what they can’t even think about;
7. They are pretty set in their ways.

So when you make a verbal proposal, and when you follow it up with a written proposal, the key is to always write it with an absolute sense that you understand where they are, and where they’re coming from.  You need to show them you respect them. You know how hard they work. You respect the years they have invested, the reputation they’ve built, the investment they have made. That’s why you feel that they owe it to themselves — and you owe it to them — to give them the maximum ethical payoff return on their investment on an ongoing basis.  It is possible that quite unintentionally and unknowingly, they are leaving opportunity on the table. They are accepting a fraction of the yield that they could be getting. In the process, they are probably unknowingly under-serving their own clients, because there is a lot more that they could benefit from having, doing, whatever.

Then you get into your offer, and then you disclaim it and you examine it. You say:  “Now, I ask myself before I even came to present this, what I would say, how I would view it, what I would concern myself with in your position And I would think:

1. How do I know this is really going to be valued by my market?  (Give them a way to test it or show them proof)
2. How do I know it will be executed, implemented without a flaw?  (Show them the safeguards you have put in.)
3. How do I know that I will make a lot of money? (Talk them through the numbers you’ve prepared.)
4. How do I know that it is not going to cannibalize my existing revenue stream? (Show them why it absolutely, unquestionably is in fact incremental additional windfall income. It is not in any way shape or form supplanting or taking away from any income, only adding.  Show them howyou are making it available to their audience in a way that is risk free, how it is going to have risk reversal  above and beyond what they offer, and that that is the only way you would want it offered so that if it is not right, even if it is a great offer, their buyers have every right to a refund.)
5. How can I prove any of this? (Show them if they are at all apprehensive you could start with a small validating test and all you would ask is, if the test pays off, they automatically agree in advance to go forward.)

Take an assumptive role.  Go to a business and say:  “I know that you do well in the avenues you pursue, but I know you don’t do advertising. I know you don’t have a sales force. I know you don’t have anyone selling for you at seminars.  “I know you don’t have other people selling your products to the back end, to their buyers, and I have a way to set that all up for you in five different distribution channels in selling areas and markets you’re not covering, and it could be the tail that wags the dog. No promises…  (I always preface and disclaim, because there’s no promise that I can do it…but a very strong likelihood… )  “But since I am willing to set it all up, and since it is incrementally all windfall income… It’s something you never would do on your own, probably. If you did it, would be years from now, or decades.  “I can do it all. I can turnkey it all. Net/net/net, after everything, it will be found money for you. I want to split profits with you after we put money in your bank account. I will turnkey it all, and all I need is your confirmation that you really want to do the deal.  “And if you don’t, it’s fine. I have three people who probably are competitors. But you’re the one that 1 really favor, and the one that I think has the quality products and services, and the one that I think will get the most, and do the most, and deliver the most.  “Do you want me to pursue this, or should I go somewhere else?”

Be prepared. Even after such a convincing presentation, more often than not, the people you are proposing to just can’t seem to make the connection between why the deal you are proposing is such a good one AND WHY they should act on it.

EX 35:  Restaurant went to car dealer; to offer a ($120) meal to past clients, just for test driving.  Restaurant would bill dealer the ($40) hard cost.  She faced resistance.

 

CH 17:  Resistance.  Why do we do nothing with sound proposals?

The first factor in building trust is having confidence, having certainty that you’re there to help, certainty that you have a concept that makes sense.  You must convey that your concept mayor may not work, but if you do all the work and you insulate them, and they have all the control — the downside to them is zero and the upside is profound. If it doesn’t work, you are the loser, not them. But if it does work, they’ll be a big winner.

“Look if you’re going to spend, let’s say $20,000 to $30,000 on that full page ad that’s not guaranteed to bring you one sale, why not let me structure this joint venture deal, where you’re going to sell your high end plasma TVs to some luxury car dealer’s list — and  you only have to pay them when they actually perform and bring you a sale?”

There are three distinct motivations:

Challenge #1 – Make It Worth Their Time.  Most seem to work at a frenetic pace. Anything new across their desk is an intrusion.  You need to clearly demonstrate “The time needed to pull back for a moment from doing something else is far outweighed by the rewards they’ll get.”  To achieve that, we need to do more than simply present the logic of “dollars and cents.”  A successful person is already making plenty of those. So unless our proposal entails MEGA dollars, they really won’t be sidetracked or fully motivated by that argument alone.

Challenge #2 . Stay In Line With Their Goals.  Your proposal should be consistent with the “doer’s” vision.  They are single-minded and focused.  Before we present our case, we need to determine what their priorities are and structure our proposal in a way that what we want gives them what they want.  What can you offer that will (a) either help them get there faster… or (b) that it is so damn compelling, they’ll drop everything and start doing what you want…

Challenge #3 – Make it so easy that all they have to do is bank the money.

If people still refuse, say to them:  “You know, if the tables were turned and somebody I didn’t know came to me with a proposition — even one that was that appealing — I would probably say no in the beginning because I would wonder, ‘What’s the catch? What does he know that I don’t?’  “But then I’d think about it, and I’d realize, ‘He DOES know something I don’t. He knows how to deliver markets that I’m not going after. He knows how turnkey it.’  ” ‘He knows how to make me thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars I wouldn’t have had before — and he’s willing to do it all for me, and he’s willing to monetize, reclaim and massively enhance my yield, my revenue, my profitability relative to what I’m doing now. It is a win/win deal for both of us.'”

I also put controls in place. I always say, “Look, let me tell you the controls you need, because I have already done tens of thousands of them.”  I actually engineer a template for them of what they should demand of me as far as controls — editorial controls, performance controls, things like that that they would never think of. I demonstrate that I really know my business.

Start small and build a bunch of them up so you get ongoing streams of income. You can also either have somebody manage those streams for you, or sell them to someone else. A predictable, stable stream of income can be sold, or it can be borrowed against.  My recommendation is that in the beginning, go for safe, certain, no-brainer deals that you can do all day long.  You can then start doing deals and building a stream of income — and when you’ve built a stream of income, you’ve got the best of all worlds.

“The key to everything is controlling the deal.”

If you owned a business, ask yourself, “How can I get other people to open up new markets .for me? How can I get other people to make their products accessible to me? How can I use their selling systems? How can I get advertising for myself without paying/or it? How can I get markets? How can I get PR exposure?”  There are probably a hundred different cool things you could set up as a joint venture, where you only pay for results, or even trade or triangulate the resulting profit.

How To Keep The Deal Moving:  When you prospect will “think it over.”

1. Give them a deadline to respond. Create a level of urgency, as in, “This deal is a one-time deal, otherwise it gets taken off the table. I will be glad to reopen the opportunity with you at a later time, but all bets are off on this particular proposal.”  Consider this reality because deals are never executed in a perfect world.
2. Embrace a different approach/ mindset that it is only a matter of time before you do business with everybody you want to.

If they do not call back, say or write “You know, if I didn’t think it was going to make this big a difference… if I thought you didn’t need this — I would probably drop it completely. I realize that you’re not being very responsive. But I attribute that to the very likely reason that you’re probably fighting off alligators, trying to deal with momentum and inertia. That’s why I’m going to make this easy. Let’s do this first, this second… ” (And I gave him every scenario possible) “If you’re worried about ~ let’s do this. lf you have questions about Y, call me.  lf you have this..”  Give them a place to call, a day to call and an expectation.

Put forth the assumption that it is a done deal. They are just tied up.  Your job as the leader of the pack is to make it happen, but to acknowledge, “Hey, you’re busy. You don’t need to do this. Day-to-day is always going to seem more important than something new, and I recognize that.”

The key to making deals happen is to demonstrate that you have a vision so clear, so powerful, so important, and so valued that it would be tragedy not to commit the effort to push them forward. If you’re defensive and/or apologetic, it won’t get done if they don’t push forward. But that’s not their role. Right now they may far too many things on their plate.

It is always up to you to make it happen.  Make it clear that if they have any impediments, you’re willing to come in and deal with them, solve them, present to anybody, summarize the deal, write the memo… whatever has to be done.  True leaders have such certainty and take charge of the dynamic.

In closing, I think you have to say, “Look guys, this is why it’s so important. It’s going to take us three weeks, maybe months to get it going. We have to commit now. If you want to be here, the opportune time is June. I don’t want to be a thorn in your side, but you have to want to do this. There is no reason not to do this. You’re busy, I know. We have to move it to the top, get it resolved. Turn it over to me, and let’s move. Let’s validate it or invalidate it, because I think this will be a huge moneymaker, but it will never put a dime in your bank account or mine unless we get started.”

 

CH 18:  The Most Common Mistakes JV Beginners Make.

Common Mistake #1:  Dwelling Too Much on the Theory and not actually doing anything.

Common Mistake #2:  Not Knowing How to Communicate.  Hiding behind the Internet or e-mail.  This is a sequential process. It takes real communication, both verbal, telephone, in person.  If it is fear, you can start off by calling companies and say “Hey, I am getting ready to deals with other companies. I don’t want to do a deal with you, but I want to know some answers to some questions. “I have the ability to bring to a company like yours ‘blank,’ and again, I just want feedback because there are some other companies I am targeting. Before I go out to them, I want to hear what somebody very similar would say. They’re outside your marketing area so they are not going to be competitive.  “I have the ability to bring a very, very lucrative new profit center to a company like yours that can be installed in a matter of days, weeks at the most. It can be turnkey-initiated so that it doesn’t cost a cent for them to do. It can be totally managed by me and people I am associated with. It can bring them (and then this is a variation; it depends on what it is) probably as much, if not more profit than you’re making from your regular business.  “It doesn’t take a dime out of the profit or the revenue stream you normally get. It’s a way to expand and extend the revenue that comes from the people you sell to. It’s a way to reactivate people who no longer buy from you. It’s a way to monetize people who never bought from you, but who have inquired.  “It can bring in so much money that it can pay for all kinds of other primary objectives that you maybe haven’t been ready, able or financially comfortable doing because it can bring in thousands, tens of thousands of dollars a quarter, a month.  “lf somebody came to you with such a proposition, what would your reaction be? What more would you need to hear to feel comfortable?”

If in the beginning you’re uncomfortable about talking to people, you can find not one or two, but probably a million and one men or women who love selling, but don’t have enough creative capabilities to package what to sell.  You could get them to represent your interest, and they would be very, very eager to do it for a small fraction of your deal. If you gave them 10% to 25% of whatever you made…  “It’s he who controls the deal… he who has the idea… he who is the visionary– who wins.”  If you’re afraid to call somebody, don’t call them. Hire somebody else to do your calling.  There are people out there that love to cold call … that love talking on the phone… that love selling. You can centralize the deal.

And you can conceivably joint venture every facet of the process. You can actually set the whole deal up so that you don’t do anything.  You can just be in the middle, like the puppet master.  “You have that capability, that right, that opportunity the moment you let yourself have permission.”  “It’s all about posture — but not posture compared to somebody else. It’s posture in your own mind. You have to believe in, respect and revere what you bring to the table. ”

EX 36:  Paddy Lund, Australian Dentist $40k at 60 hrs vs 23 hours at $400k.  He made a conscious decision that if he was going to live and live happily, it had to be because he was doing business with a quality of people that respected him and the value he contributed to their lives.  Sent to referrals.

 

Common Mistake #3:  Biting Off More Than You Can Chew.  You must be able to work through what you do. You have to start very small.  Many people who are new to a skill think they understand a new thing – and they may, intellectually. But it’s a very different deal to understand it transactionaly.

It takes time to become an expert. The first time, you are probably going to fall down. But the next time, you’ll be able to stay up for ten seconds… and to translate, you are going to be able to do a better joint venture.

Trust yourself on three points:

1. The statistical probability that you’re going to be great the first, or second, or third time you do this is about zero.
2. The statistical probability that you’ll become proficient if you keep doing this, and improving, and adjusting, andrecalibrating, and believing in yourself and the ultimate achievement of the goal is 100%.
3. Where the economic yield lies between making you a few thousand dollars a month, or making you a few hundred thousand dollars a month, is pretty much a function of where you want to take it.

The reason most people do not do well in JVs is that most people don’t try to understand the realities of acquiring a proficiency.

Mentors can be invaluable.

A book has a retention rate and a success rate of about 7%. Tapes have a success rate of about 20%. Seminars about 25%.  A mentorship or an apprenticeship has almost 100% certainty

Practice your presentations.  If you get rejected with a “I have to think about it,” ask them: “Well let me ask you this. I really think this is a great idea, but tell me what it was about what I said that didn’t compel you to say yes now.”

There is a progression.  If it sounds too good to be true, send some stuff that proves you know what you are talking about.  In the follow up, if they want to talk about it, say “Well let me paint my vision, and then I’m going to be quiet and listen to you.”

Try things, and then go back and gauge how you do. I don’t think you are allowed legally to record the other side on the phone without their knowledge, but you certainly can record yourself and you can analyze it.

“Don’t dive into the deep end until you can swim.”  Here is a very straightforward and succinct way to begin a JV partnership, even though you have no experience yet…  If you were to contact people and say:  “I would like to bring you (and then you can fill in the blank) approximately 100 or more quality buyers every (again, fill in the blank) month, week, day. I have relationships with a ton of quality businesses, associations and publications who reach the same market you sell to.  I can probably get many of them to recommend, endorse or refer their people to you. I’ve never done this before, but I think it could be so lucrative that it would be worth us working out a deal together. If that makes sense, call or email me in the next week.”

Instead of trying to sell them on doing a deal, you approach them by bringing them something they want.

Do you have the assets? You will, because at the same time you are going to write a bunch of people in the related field and say:  “I represent a company in the (blank) or a publication or a (blank) that thinks your (whatever, you can fill it in) your members, your buyers, your prospects, your traffic is a perfect mix for us.  They have asked and authorized me to negotiate with you to try to work out some kind of a joint venture wherein I can make it wildly enriching to you to refer business to us.  “My job right now is to see if you have interest to see what the most appropriate, ethical and appealing way would be to structure a very conservative test for both sides to see if it makes sense, and to look at what the relative economics and profit picture might look like for both sides. I would like to talk to you. If you will email me back with a couple of days and times and the number most appropriate I will call. I want to stress that I cannot make a deal yet. My job is to explore and examine the practicality for the profitability, but not to confirm a deal until both sides are comfortable with each other’s values, ethics and approach.”

You do not necessarily need the relationship before you go out prospecting.

EX 38:  CPA Broker in CA wrote all 30k CPA’s saying:  “We have right now hundreds of CPAs who are eager to buy your practice, all cash, on terms with you staying or leaving, and they will pay a premium price — as long as you can prove the quality of your clients and your billings. Contact us in confidence, no obligation. We can talk and see what you’re trying to get, and we can review our client files and describe for you the kind of buyer we have. If it makes sense, we can go forward. If it doesn’t, you can withdraw any time.”  2% replied so they wrote the other 29,400 saying:  “We are sitting with 600 fabulously successful CPA firms that are for sale for various reasons. They want to retire. They want to pursue something else. They’re making more money with another investment. They are flexible. Some will stay on part-time, some will sell for terms.  If you want to add to your practice, start a practice, expand your practice, or set up a satellite practice, we probably have the exact situation you’re looking for.  Contact us.”

Right now, you have to start dialogue somewhere, don’t you? Find someone and ask them if you can be their client, so you have a company that’s in the field that you can represent.  Ultimately you bring 20 other people together, and you don’t even have to worry about that one.  You can shift relationships and be a matchmaker to any combination of the dynamics that are stimulated by your communications.  And remember — if you do fail your first time out, you have to keep going. That takes ambition, motivation, passion and desire.

Radio PI or PO (per inquiry/ per order):  even if they claim they do not do it, is reserved for unsold time, either for the highest and best use, or the most compelling, interesting and intriguing content. Getting them to choose your content for air time has to do with not just the ability to sell them on the economics or the mechanics, but to sell them on you, and the fact that you’re trustworthy, they can put their faith in you, and you will not compromise the opportunity costs or the relationship that they have with their viewers or listeners.

From Jay’s mentor about the radio:  “The first thing is you have to realize is that everyone is worried about what won’t work. They are worried about exposure. They are worried about wasting their opportunity cost.  They are worried about what happens if they get stuck with bad customer service, with bad will.”

Turn each negative into a positive:  As it relates to the PI or PO, most advertisers would not commit, because:

1. They didn’t think that they would get enough of a result;
2. Even if they got a result they didn’t know ifthe partner would ship the goods;
3. Even if they shipped the goods, they didn’t know if the recipient would like it;
4. If there were any customer service problems, they would be caught in the middle because they were the basic, credible and substantial entity that the customer had first turned to

In response:  “We wouldn’t even do the deal until you had in your hands six to twelve units of the product that you could have available if anyone ever had problem. That way, there would be no concern on your part of people having any complaints.  “Number two, because we are giving away 100% of the revenue — not the profit but the revenue — the only way we will make any profit is if the client reorders. And they won’t reorder unless our product not only performs as we say, but exceeds that. So we have a lot at stake in how well the product performs.  “Number three, we don’t even care if the other side keeps all of the monies, since they were going to keep it anyhow. All we care about is that they send orders to us in a timely way so that we can promptly fulfill them, and take care of the client’s need.”  Jay sent along 200 testimonials and encouraged them to test drive the process.

What To Do If Your Joint Venture Falls Flat:  If you make no money, just remember there are no guarantees in life.

When you make the deal, you say, “Let me start by the premise. 1) My assumption is that a market that is eager for ‘this’ (and you fill in the blank for the application) and we know ‘this’ about them. They should be monstrously receptive to ‘that,’ (which is the product or service you’re going to bring to them.) Would you agree?” And both sides should say, “Yes.”

Then you say:

“I am so confident, I’m going to put all my effort, all my opportunity costs and all my financial expectations into the deal.  Of course, it may not work out the way I want, but if it doesn’t you will have tested and validated or invalidated a very, very promising and lucrative assumption — at my risk, not yours. The odds of the deal returning zero are very low. “

There is no guarantee, and I think anyone who guarantees “X” return, I think is more suspect.  I think it’s wise to disclaim it by saying:  “Look, I don’t have control over the response of your markets.  I don’t know if they are really 100% viable and highly probable buyers of this. If they don’t buy, it is probably a function of some flaw in the relationship or in the assumption, and from a research or an insight basis… 1 don’t want a non-success, but a non-success would still be very valuable for you because you learn about something you have to correct if you want to have the most enduring profitable relationship with that market and those people.”

How To Make Progressive Communications YOUR Key To The JV Kingdom:  The stats are in, and they are fascinating. The average successful high-ticket sale takes nine to eleven progressive communications, and what you’re actually doing with joint ventures is selling an intangible high ticket sale.

If a deal gets lost, write back and say:  “You know, I wish I could let you drop this, but it’s so important to you that I am haunted by it. So even though you basically said it is not a viable deal, I can’t let you do that.”

Put The Awesome Power of Collaboration To Work FOR YOU

Form a collaborative “think tank,” a group of people who were all committed to a common goal.  The people that get what you’re doing understand that the ultimate joint venture is the power of creative, un-hedged collaboration.  Then you do what Harvard Business School learned to do long ago, which is case study — interactive, one-on-one analysis, review and dissection in groups. It is incredible.  There is a very fast growth curve when you analyze somebody who has done something really well.  Simply ask:  “Okay, what do you think the key to that was? What was the mindset? What were the key elements you executed? What did you have to do to overcome problems? What did you learn? What do you think everybody in this group can do differently? What would you recommend?”  This is the best way to teach anybody how to master joint venturing.

Find the movers and shakers in your area.  Call and ask them some questions. I would say, “You have the vision to create and think this big. I’m trying to do something totally unrelated, but it requires vision, a sense of reality, the ability to translate intangible to tangible,” and ask some questions about their motivation, their mindset, how they saw the light, how they make things happen, how they handle defeat.”

Four Keys to YOUR JV Success:

1.  You must be trained by someone who will mentor you through the process.
2. You have to be in for the long haul…
3. You have to understand that the odds that you will knock out a home run the first time up to bat are against you — unless you are an unusually gifted person…
4. You must realize that like everything else, it is a process.

… recognizing, acquiring, and controlling everything from the process of going into businesses or going out of business — buying their old buyers, their prospects, selling them to other people, buying phone numbers from companies that were going out of business that had Yellow Page ads and flipping them to other people…

Some people can sell like mad, but they can’t manage. Some people can manage and sell, but can’t come up with the idea. I’ve put all those people together with joint ventures.

Instead of franchising:  Go to the leading independent vendor and make a proposal to them. Offer to license their proven success system, then go out and do joint ventures with independent people — and have the equivalent of your own franchised network for no money and just a little effort!  You can say to them, “Hey, I will never compete with you, but give me the rights. You are never going to go into California.  Let me license to joint venture your system.”

And then you can license people in those non-competing markets. You can joint venture businesses with people. You can say, “Instead of spending $200,000 for a Starbucks franchise, if you will fund the thing, I will give you a turn-key system that’s driving the most successful company in Honolulu, and it has never been done here. The downside is $20,000, the upside is $200,000 or more – and let’s be partners.” And you could set up a hundred of those.

Unleash The JV Mindset:  There are a million, literally a million different ways to ethically exploit profit, monetize and prosper from joint ventures, internally or externally, whether you have a business, or whether you just want to keep buying, selling, controlling and accessing tangible and intangible assets.  You could have a field day looking at every business around you, and seeing what they’re missing, what they’re leaving on the table.

99% of your competitors don’t understand joint ventures.  The concept is so broad, it is so powerful, and it can be so simple that it’s unbelievable…yet at the same time it can be intimidating.  Many people want to be dealmakers, but don’t understand the nuances. You have to be able to share with people that you know what they’re thinking. If you’re trying to get rights to something, you’re trying to bring a deal to somebody else’s business … you’re trying to get them to give you something. It is a nurtured, educational, and trust-building process.

One of the best JV strategies:  Hedge deal.  Do a lot of little deals and do not discriminate.  Do simple, safe, high probability, high-viability deals.

 

SECTION FOUR:  REACH FOR THE STARS:  The Big Picture:

CH 19:  My Recommendation To You:  “Never accept practical, reasonable, realistic results.”

Very important concept:  Reverence for what you bring to the deal.  If you do not believe you will succeed, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Happily reap the rewards.  You are bringing people something they would not have done on their own.  Self-efface.   Realize the value you bring to the other side.  “I am the leader. 1 control this. I am bringing value to everybody. I understand it at a seminal level better than anybody else.”

On every joint venture I do, I say:  “Look, it might not work, but here is the upside, here is the

down. I’m doing everything for you. You have none of the risk.  Why in the world wouldn’t you, being a business person… you, being a speculator… you being a pragmatist — wouldn’t you want to at least play that out when the downside for you is zero, the upside could be a doubling or tripling or quadrupling of your business, of your income?“

My responsibility is to keep total control and track, with you having control of the money, if you like. I just need to be collaboratively in control of the transaction, because you have my promise that if I get involved with you with this product. .. service… client… business … or any other I bring after that — and I plan to, my goal is to show you how lucrative alternative products and services can be as a brand new profit center and a monumentally lucrative new income stream. In order to do all that, I need to protect your interest.

Orchestrate JVs with TSOP.  Lead them.  Take a proactive stance. Guide them.  Tell them the way to do it, and the right things to do.  Protect them.  Take the initiative.  Deal with them as their protector, their benefactor, and take that authoritative role from the beginning.  Read pages 186 –  about 10X.

I put the other side’s interest first, and operate at the highest levels of professionalism. I think through every element of the deal for their benefit.  I love the people that I work with dearly, or I wouldn’t help them at all. I love the markets they serve. I live in the context of seeing the impact my work has in their clients’ lives, in their own bank account, and in their family’s enrichment. I spend lots of time thinking carefully about putting into words voids and feelings they experience.

Be externally focused and the details become irrelevant.

CH 20:  TSOP:  Preeminence extols, advocates, and champions the role of the team member, supplier and customer. Its focus is on the receiver and what is in their best interest.  Serve them.  Subordinate your needs and totally focus on the other side.  You have to sell you fellow team members, suppliers, customers and JV prospects.  There is a keen commitment to empathy, to understanding in a very compassionate way and respectful role how the other side in the transaction feels, sees the situation — what their hopes, dreams, needs, feeling are, and expanded far past the mere limitation of the singular transaction you might be engaging in.

Always sell leadership: a definitive belief system, authoritative positioning, and conviction of their point of view in every communication, in everything you do, that you want to lead them to a great result or greater happiness or profit.  Give advice, “Here’s what you should do, and here’s how you should do it, and here’s why.” Being specific is incredibly powerful.

Provide Focus, page 189;  Focus is clarity. Clarity gives power. Power gives understanding. Understanding gives certainty. Certainty gives trust. Without trust, people won’t take action.

Focus:  Connect the dots and constantly think of the next layer.  What’s the next step to

graduate them forward? What am I not connecting for them? What are they thinking?  Put yourself in their shoes.  Sometimes you may need to break their paradigm so they will reflect differently.  I don’t want people to be wondering where I’m going to take advantage of them. I want to tell them up front exactly I’m going to do, why I’m going to do it, what I expect to happen if I am correct, what won’t happen if I am not, why it’s totally incumbent on me to perform, and why they should just go along for the ride with me for a moment, and let their defenses down.

Clarity:  It’s important for your prospects to define for themselves their biggest frustrations,

challenges and opportunities.  With a vague notion, they cannot take action.  Ask them “What would the picture look like if your business were operating the way you really want it to?”  Like on a road trip, most people either know where they are, but they have no idea of where they’re going… or they know where they’re going but they have no idea where they are!

Understanding:  Educate customers, clients and prospects as to what their real options are.  Just telling people what to do and not telling them why they should do it doesn’t give them the confidence that going through the process will produce the result they want.  Put into words what people want, and build on that.  First articulate the biggest result people then build a strategy of action they can take.

Certainty:  Strive to genuinely have a better and higher wish or hope for the client or prospect than they even had for themselves. They have the best wishes for every single prospect they come in contact with, even if that person never does business with them.

Trust:  Always provide customers and prospects with views and viewpoints those customers can absolutely trust. Never put your interest ahead of that of your customer. Refuse to sell more or less of what they need. Always provide what is in your customer’s best interest.

Leadership:  Most successful people base everything they do on absolute authoritative leadership.  A true leader knows what’s possible when often times the customer doesn’t.  People are searching for someone they trust, someone who understands their point of view, to point them in the right direction.  People really are angry when they don’t feel anyone is listening to what they really want, and yet they don’t know how to make anyone listen. They’re frustrated by shoddy service, shoddy workmanship, shoddy products and shoddy business practices.

Always ask: Who am I communicating with? What problems am I going to help them deal with?  How would I have the most positive impact on this person?  Remember: Your message doesn’t have any value unless it makes an impact. Information alone is not motivating.  People have to recognize your advice as a solution to a problem they feel emotionally, as well as rationally.

People will avoid making decisions because they don’t want to feel foolish. That’s another very powerful emotion. You don’t want them to feel foolish about what they’re currently doing. But you want them to know that there’s a “better” way. Or maybe you can provide a better result, or better feeling about what they are already doing.

Six Critical Questions to Ask Before You Do ANY Promotion:

• If I were on the receiving end, why would I want this?
• Why would I want to take advantage of this offer at this particular time?
• What’s in it for me?
• How will this product make me feel better about myself, my family, my business, my future, my life?
• Why is this better than doing what I’m doing – or doing nothing at all?
• So what?

Instead of falling in love with your deal, the message you want to convey is:  “You matter. Your well-being is important to me.”  To accomplish this you must believe that your primary purpose is to contribute great value, not to take their money, but to give them a great outcome or result for what they are doing. You

have to subordinate yourself and your interests and focus on them.

You MUST Sell End Result, Not Steps to Get There

Instead of saying “I’ve been very successful and I’d like to work with or for you,” say “Let me show you what I do and how my system works so you can sign on.”  Most people don’t want to see things as a process. They’d rather see things as a project with a beginning and an end. People need solutions, not strategy.  Do not be afraid to ask your prospects, “Is there a better way?”  A “Master of Preeminence” always leaves people with ideas that leave them better off than when they started.

Why “Show Me” Is More Powerful Than “Tell Me:”

Instead of making a conclusive statement, give me ammunition that allows me to come to my own conclusion.  When they draw the conclusion that, “Yes, this really will make my life easier, or make me richer, or more respected in my community, or more powerful in my business,” then they have begun to embrace the end result, and have a much higher likelihood of actually reaching it.

To become more successful, reduce the height of the hurdles. Lower the hurdles they have to jump over to work with you.  Talk about frustrations or desires they really feel. People worry about whether they stand out, whether they’re unique, whether people will care. Let them know you think they are special.  Let them know you care. Genuinely help them out.  Concepts are sometimes too difficult for many people to buy into completely on the first pass. Instead, give them an example of how things work.

Here are some tips to help you communicate, write, think, talk, with a “read” focus rather than a “subject” focus:

• Start each sentence with the word “you” rather than the word “I” or “me.”
• Talk about the end result in feelings, in emotional terms — what your proposition will bring, not how it will work.
• Ask your customers what they want.
• Listen.

 

SECTION FIVE:  YOUR JV PEP TALK:  Changing your focus can add richness to your life.  There is no joy in a life partially lived. Life is here to be lived fully.

There are seven very simple, basic principles that drive, that govern, that ensure that joint ventures really can work for anybody.

Principle #1: There Are No Rules.  You can play the game of life with any set of rules you want. You are not constrained. There is no law anywhere in this country or in the world that says that you are limited to play the way the rest of the world plays.

Everybody in life seems to believe that they are forced by some law that’s going to incarcerate them if they deviate one iota from the way everyone else operates their business, or their job, or their lives.  You are not constrained by self-limiting rules.  Once you adopt this changed mindset, that all kinds of possibilities will make themselves known to you.  Change the questions you ask yourself, all kinds of possibilities and opportunities become known.

Make a written list of the rules you currently live your life, your job, your relationship or your business by.  Start asking and examining and questioning:

• Why you do that
• What they are
• That they are
• Where you learn them
• Whether or not they’re necessary
• What the alternatives are
• How other people who don’t follow your rules live their lives, run their businesses, operate their relationships.

Me:

• I will accept whatever happens.  This should be plan B.  Take control.  Whether I choose to acknowledge it or not, I have total control over the money I make, the way I make it, working with the people I choose to work with, the hours I work, the location I work, the deals I make or do not make… I alone have total and absolute control.  Remember, it is all a game.  You can change the rules any time you want, as often as you want, for any reason you want.
• I will do whatever people ask of me
• I will not speak up and make my thoughts known
• I live by other people’s standards of success
• Follow the status quo
• I follow the path of least resistance

Principle #2: Waking Up From Cultural Hypnosis And Mental Myopia.  In short, stop living by tunnel vision. Convert that attitude to one of funnel vision. Travel outside of your job. Travel outside of your business. Borrow freely from other people and other industries and other situations that have already made the mistakes you don’t have to … that have already taken the years you don’t have to expend… that have already put the money you don’t have to invest on the line to learn the answers, and incorporate those into your life or business or career.

The way travelling broadens your awareness, the same basic premise holds true in a business, and in a career, and in a relationship.  Traveling outside of what is normal broadens your mindset.

The easiest, most powerful and effortless way to do this is to change your whole focus from being internal to being external.  Change your philosophy of life from trying to be the most interesting person to becoming the most interested.  Change your whole approach to being more curious.  Engage people and ask lots of questions.  The quality and the achievement of your life is going to be in direct proportion to the clarity and the quality of the questions you ask yourself and you ask others.

Start looking externally at how others do things. You want to start identifying, what is their process? What is their strategy? What are their rules? What do they do that I don’t?  Ask lots of questions ranging from “Tell me how you do this. Tell me the basis upon this. Tell me, what’s your strategy? Tell me who taught this to you. Tell me what you think the most important thing about how you do this is.”  What can you directly apply to your life?

Principle #3: It’s Easier To Make Large Leaps Than Little Steps.  Change the strategy. The same effort, the same time, the activity can give you so much more yield, so much more result, so much more effectiveness once you learn the options.

In whatever you do in your life it cost you the same effort, emotion and time to do something and produce “X” result as it does 2-,3-,4-, 5x. The difference in the outcome is a difference in strategy.  You owe it to yourself to always get the highest and best use.  It is a very simple process, you cannot get a lot until you give a lot.

You can’t give a lot until you understand the other side’s needs and desires, and you become very sensitive and compassionate towards what their objective is. And it’s a whole change of thrust. The moment you understand how to look outside yourself, the moment you’ll start making massive and quantum leaps in what you accomplish.

Principle #4: Knowing How And Where To Invest Your Time.  Be certain that you take action now so you will validate, so you will see proof, so you will have the belief system you need to have faith that will guide, will protect, will enrich you and your family for the rest of your life.

You will very quickly start seeing an almost limitless array of business, financial and relationship possibilities presenting themselves to you.  The way to organize and take fullest advantage is very simple. The first thing you need to do is identify the easiest, the most immediate, and the most tangible ways you can apply joint ventures to give you a result.  So the key is starting small and validating it. The key is showing yourself how easily, how immediately, how tangibly, and how wonderfully the principle works for you.

Principle #5: Stepping Outside Of Your Box.  Knock down all the limiting, self-imposed beliefs you have created. Realize that everything and anything truly is possible. You are your reality. It has nothing to do externally. It has nothing to do with the economy. It has nothing to do with your looks, your resources or your intellect. It has everything to do with how you leverage your time, your efforts and your opportunities – pure and simple.

The box you live in, work in and drive in,  It is the box that says you have to conduct your relationship the way it’s been conducted; to progress in your job the way you have progressed; that every day has got to be as monotonous or boring or passionless; that your business has to be run the same mundane, unfulfilling, beleaguering way.  It simply is not true. This limiting belief system is one you alone have imposed on yourself.

Principle #6: Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities.  Install yourself as the person who looks for a way to solve the difficulty; who understands that innovation is the mother of achievement and enrichment, and innovation is nothing more than helping people or businesses, individuals or organizations, get solutions. Instead of looking at the negative side of obstacles, look at all the boundless opportunity it holds for you.

The greatest achievements in life occur when people focus on the concept of innovation.  Innovation is nothing more than solving problems, than delivering products or services more effectively, more beneficially, more successfully for people.  Problems are actually screaming opportunities waiting to be solved.  When face with one, ask “Where is the opportunity? How can solving that problem produce a productive and a profitable advantage or outcome for me?”

The best part about this principle is that you can use the subconscious mind to help you leverage your solution to all these problems. When problems arise, you don’t have to strain. You don’t have to struggle. All you’ve got to do is take a deep breath and know that by acknowledging one simple distinction – that an obstacle or a problem is your greatest opportunity for growth and success and prosperity – and just relegate it to your subconscious.  Go on about what you’re doing, and in fact, have fun with what you’re doing.

Principle #7: Creative Emulation.  Let all the successful principles and techniques and strategies that all kinds of people outside of your realm of life and business have already perfected and developed work for you. Identify them. Study them. Learn them.  Question them. Incorporate the elements that work best and more powerfully, and more productively for you, and replace those factors you are currently using which are less effective and give you less leverage.

Start identifying and discovering the processes, strategies, philosophies that all kinds of other people use to drive, fuel, operate their lives, businesses and relationships by.  Every time you see, meet or hear of anybody who is successful at what they do, observe them, engage them, and ask them a simple series of very natural questions:

• “What is it about your job that gives you the most happiness?
• What is it you’re trying to do?
• What have you built your whole philosophy upon?”
• “What influenced you?
• What’s the basis that got you to approach this job the way you’re doing it?”

Take on a possibility mindset.  Add value.  “In everything you do, your purpose should be to help make someone’s life better.”  Another extremely important element in this mindset is passion.  This kind of passion has five critical factors.  There may be more, but these are absolutely essential:

One:  Energy.  Do not dissipate energy by dwelling on negative issues.  Have a healthy sense of self worth, and an appreciation for the value you bring to others.  Revere yourself first, if you want others to revere you.  Stop questioning your worth.

Two:  A  vision that inspires you, a clear picture of what is possible for you and what you can give to others.  Your vision is a picture of how you’re going to fulfill your purpose. And remember, your vision is only going to happen when you see it as worthwhile, when you see it in terms of what it’s going to do for others.  Give yourself permission to succeed and stop limiting what you can accomplish.  As your vision unfolds, you’ve got to know what your enterprise should look like at critical intervals along the way.

Three:  Laser-like focus on the worthiness of your purpose.  This comes very naturally when you have real conviction about the value your product or service can bring to others. And that conviction is based on defining value and promoting that value according to the perspective of those you serve.  Always try and see the situation from the other person’s point of view.

Four:  Commitment.  You have to mean business. You have to decide how you want it to be, and be totally dedicated to your purpose and totally unwilling to take no for an answer. You’ve got to be on a crusade to add value to as many people as possible, and have real conviction about it.  If you can fall in love with your vision and let yourself dwell on the benefits of staying with it, the struggle is over.  Make the decision.  Trust your subconscious mind to take over the process, and as you do, the specific steps you need to take day by day will become clear to you. And don’t forget to consider the consequences in your life of not following through.

Five:  To build and sustain your passion you need a code of conduct.  Take the high road.  Be of service to others.  Commit to excellence.  To experience success, you have to believe you deserve it.  Your whole focus should be helping to make someone’s life better.  Besides, it is a whole lot easier to regenerate revenue than it is to restore a tarnished reputation.

These five components of true passion – energy, a vision that inspires you, focus on the worthwhile-ness of your purpose, commitment, and a code of conduct – these are basic to the mindset of a marketing genius.

The JV venturer and the Entrepreneurial Mindset’s Twelve Elements:

One:  Look at everything and ask, “Where’s the opportunity in this?”  You’re constantly looking for hidden assets and opportunities, both tangible and intangible, in every area of your life. You define yourself as an opportunist.

Two:  Flexibility.  You realize there are always many ways to get where you’re going, so you remain open to discovering the ones that fit you best, that you’ll enjoy the most.  The ability to constantly adapt, improve and change strategies. You invite and celebrate change, rather than resisting it.  You grow or die.

Three:  You have a mindset is a bias towards action.  The entrepreneur’s concept is “Ready, fire, aim!” What this means to me is once you get the basic concept clear in your mind you go out and apply it, and then you adjust your aim as you go to hit the center of your target.  Do not fret over getting something perfect. If your strategy and the basic concept behind it is correct, it will work.  Get started. You can make any needed adjustments as you go.

Four:  You realize that marketing is the life force of all business achievement.  You know that marketing is educating your customers and prospects to appreciate and desire the results your product or service can give them.  Two points:  People cannot desire you over your competitor until they first want the benefits you’re offering.  And once someone becomes your customer, marketing to him or her does not stop.  In effect, you’re putting your customer or client into a continuing education program.  In other words, you take every opportunity to keep them aware of the fact that you understand and fulfill their wants and needs better than anyone else can.

Five:  Living in the present, not resting on past achievements, or dwelling on past failures, or worrying about the future.  This does not preclude learning from the past or planning for the future.  You are on the right path when you lose your sense of time while working.  Living in the present keeps you free of pressure and stress.  The past and the future are illusory.

Six:  Be tenacious.  This ultimately translates to having fun, not being enslaved to a neurotic obsession.  Tenacity also stems from your ability to see an idea as real, alive, taking shape, being implemented and succeeding wildly before it ever becomes visible in your world. In order to achieve greatness, you first have to fully identify yourself with greatness in your mind.

Seven:  Be pragmatic.  You focus on maximizing the quality and value of your product or service, along with maximizing your next profits and minimizing your risk.  Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to get their egos out of the way. They approach their businesses logically, intelligently and prudently.  They refuse to take unnecessary risks. They will never impetuously bet the farm on any idea just because it appeals to them. Instead, they prefer to safely test and pursue only those opportunities and challenges that offer the highest probability of success.

Eight:  Realizing there is a logical order to things.  Getting to where you want to be is not random. There’s an immutable order, and all you’ve got to do is figure out what the best order is for your particular objective. Once that’s done it becomes relatively simple to achieve what you want.

Nine:  Certainty and faith.  Certainty and faith come from being in touch with the life force within you. Being in touch means you trust it, respect it, and draw from it constantly. It’s about recognizing that you have a destiny and purpose you can choose to discover and fulfill. It involves respecting and trusting your natural talents and what interests you most.  Once you’ve found your own path, it is like you’re being swept along, and you’re unstoppable.

Ten:  Use leverage effectively.  You are predisposed to choosing methods and approaches that give you the greatest advantage and control.  You continue to improve the performance and yield of everything you do. Because you know how much is possible, you won’t settle for less than the highest and best result you can produce.

Eleven:  You become an idea-generator, an innovator.  You are inspired to constantly seek breakthroughs and improvements. You’re keen on finding out the driving principles behind every successful activity, and you find new and inventive ways to adapt and apply these principles and approaches to your enterprise.

Twelve:  Refusing to take yourself seriously.  Maintaining your integrity, never compromising your self-respect does not mean not having fun.  The most important gift I can share with you is the moment you become part of the process, and it’s no longer about you, and you’re not self-conscious, and you’re just having fun, and you’re watching it unfold, and you’re enjoying watching your customer or client benefit, and you’re having so much fun and excitement coming up with new ways to innovate and add value… And you get up on a Monday morning and you’re excited, you have it.  It is there.  Do not lose it, because frankly, the fun, the challenge, the excitement of the process is what it’s all about.

Life and business is a game and your business is a paying proposition.  As such, if you are a business, a business should be profit based. If you are profit based, you need to produce the maximum result from the effort, and that result has to be immediate and ongoing.  The reason some businesses are more successful than others is because they have identified and understood better than their competition exactly what their customers want and need, and they furnish it, and they provide it.

In your relationship, until and unless you understand what your spouse, or your significant other, or your lover, or your children want and need, and you are sensitive and understand and respect that, you can’t begin to possibly provide it, render it, and help them achieve it. And until they get what they want, you’ll find out in life, you will never be able to get what you want first.

FedEx set out selling business owners.  When they discovered their real customer was the secretary or the manager, that their purpose was to make the secretary a hero to· her or his superior, their business went from #279 to #1.  They empowered all their people to be sensitive to the needs and the desires of their customer, and to be responsive to them.

EX 43:  Software company that tripled sales because homegirl was able to demonstrate that just selling a product wasn’t their goal. Their goal was to help the buyer understand all the different ways he or she could use it to their maximum, and their continuous, and their changing advantage.

EX 44:  Reactivating old clients.  Each example converts from an attitude of “This is what we do and this is the way we do it, so take it or leave it” to questioning how they could serve or fulfill, or assist, or improve the quality of our customer’s business or life.  They turned their attitude from one of self serving, to one of selflessness.  These two people secured control over their life.

Adopt an attitude of a “super servant.”  This is one of the most wonderful secrets of joint venturing. The moment you switch your focus from internal to external .. from self-serving to selfless … from “What’s in it for me?” to “How can I be a super servant? How can I enrich the life, the business, the profitability, the satisfaction or the happiness of the other side”- your own situation starts improving massively.

Peter Drucker:  “Business, because its function is to create a customer and sustain it, has only two purposes: marketing and innovation.  Marketing and innovation are the only two functions that build business that sustain paying revenue. Everything else is an expense.”

Marketing is just the process you use to educate your customer (and the customer could be your mate, your spouse, your employer, your supervisor or your actual customer) to see, understand, appreciate, and want to seize the advantage you offer.  You have to educate and explain to those people why and how what you do is more valuable to them than what other people are doing, and why you make their life better off, more secure, or more profitable.

Society, the system, your employers and your competition is insistent on trying to relegate everybody to the role of being a commodity — nondescript, equally comparable, nothing unique.

Three ways to grow a business:  If you increase anyone of those factors, you increase your business linearly or arithmetically. But if you increase all three, the business grows by quantum leaps, because you bring to bear the quantum theory of geometric progression. It’s very exciting.

EX 45:  Schlitz Beer.  What assets are you concealing or not acknowledging and sharing that could be of significant and profound importance?

Are you limiting or restricting the amount of business, the frequency of business and the profitability of business – your customer could be doing with and from you because you don’t communicate clearly and powerfully the advantage and the significance of why it is important to them?

Power of Relationships:  The best, the easiest, the most powerful way to grow yourself, your mind, your mindset, your income-producing capabilities, your understanding of what’s possible, your empathic understanding of how others see situations – is not to sit in a vacuum and conjure up your own idealistic view. It’s to engage people in all aspects of your life, your business and your job and ask questions, and learn about their hopes, their dreams, their points of view, their interests, their goals, their philosophies. That’s what drives this world.

EX 47:  Australian man.  Most people have it all backwards. They’re struggling and striving to be interesting, when all you have to do is tum it around. If you are interested in others, genuinely, you will endear yourself.  If you practice this process of engaging people and being interested instead of trying to be interesting for only a few weeks, you will not believe the transformation that will occur – in their view of you, in your confidence and knowledge, and in your power from yourself. I urge you to adopt this philosophy.

New and old clients:  Most businesses, in fact, fail to recognize how much easier and economical it is to sustain, reactivate and continue the relationship with an existing customer.  You can get enormous business from them, just by asking.

Invest your energy in relationships where other people have more to gain by helping or seeing you be successful at your objective than not.  When people realize that your achieving your objective or your purpose gives them a bigger or greater self-serving payoff, they’re going to move heaven and earth to see to it that you get your outcome.

You have to be sensitive to their objectives and needs.  Realize they may not know what their needs are, so you have to go through this educational process to help them get a crisper, clearer understanding of what they want.  Help them understand their own interpretive awareness of the power of your proposition so that they can demand more of themselves.  If people don’t realize they are deserving and entitled to more richness, more achievement, more security, more of everything in their life … they aren’t going to help you get you what you want.  You have to be flexible.

Eight Power Principles That Will Guarantee Your JV Success

Principle #1: Be A Good Listener.  The way I do it is I have a picture in my mind of a valuable reward, and every time I engage in discussion with somebody I flash that picture, because I realize that contained in the gems of information they’re going to share with me, I will discover new and valuable ways to improve my performance in either my dealings with my customers, my dealings with my family, my dealings with my employees, my dealings with other associates, friends and colleagues in my life.

Principle #2: Speak To People In Their Own Language.  The best way to engage somebody is to discover through questioning and respectfully asking them to explain to you the key phrases, the key language, the references, the words and the phrases that are most usable in their situation.  Until and unless you understand what they are, what they relate to, how that relationship applies to their transacting whatever it is they transact in their business, in their life, in their situation – you cannot appreciate, you cannot communicate, you cannot contribute.

Principle #3: Let People Talk To You And Tell You What They Need.  People are only too happy to let you know their innermost needs and desires if you can make yourself accessible to them.  One of the easiest and most wonderful ways to do that is to be vulnerable and honest.  Go to people and share with them the fact that you’re not certain you fully understand what you can do best for them, or what they really want, or what you contribute, or how they see you, or what they want from you, or what you could do to be of more value. You think it’s such and such, but you are not certain.  Ask them questions, and then close your mouth and listen to their answers, and if their answers are clear, take them deeper. If they’re abstract, get them to clarify.  There is a profitable payoff in the answers you will get if you ask the right questions.  The quality of your life and the success you achieve will be in direct proportion to the quality, and the clarity, and the depth of the questions you ask yourself and others, and the answers you receive back.

Principle #4: Be A Solution Provider.  That’s another way of saying be a value creator. Always focus on what you can do for someone, not what you can’t do, or what they can do for you.  You always need to ask yourself, “How many additional, or different, or expansive ways can I add value?” Because adding value is nothing more than solving a problem, oftentimes a problem people have never even realized they have.

Principle #5: Be Externally Focused, Not Self-Absorbed.  Understand this about life: sadly but truly, people don’t care about what you need. They’re consumed about themselves. If you’re the one person who understands and respects that in them, and addresses it, and provides for it. .. they’re going to love you.

Principle #6: Uncover Emotions.  Try to understand what emotions drive other people.  Very rarely do they do things purely for financial or personal gain. There are so many underlying reasons.  If you learn to identify and speak to these emotions rather than talking about yourself, your product, enterprise or interests, you will gain great advantage in your pursuit of happiness, success, wellbeing and prosperity.  Understand this: You must talk from now on about results. You must talk from now on about benefits. You must look at what people want – and people only want a few things. They want love. They want happiness. They want distinction. They want wealth. They want comfort.  They want security. They want to be special, and they want to be acknowledged.  Observe and examine how they respond to different test communications you try with them to determine what their highest and most important hot button is

Principle #7: Don’t take people for granted.  Don’t assume you can keep relationships alive without attention.  You have to keep reinvesting in them.  Too many people believe that the moment they close a sale you have that person locked up and yours forever.  Proactively and continuously devise for yourself an ongoing strategy that keeps adding value, keeps contributing, keeps acknowledging, keeps solving problems, keeps communicating

Principle #8: Be Real.  Be genuine. Reveal yourself. Share real stories. Share emotional dimension about yourself.  If you work with people, talk about their lives. Reveal yourself. Tell them your feelings, your hopes, your dreams. Share your philosophies. Make yourself more dimensional.  If you’re dealing with a customer, deal on a deeper level than just them buying your widget or your gadget. Deal with them on a life issue. Tell them about life, your thoughts about their family, your family, raising children, making money, growing a business, preserving wealth, having fun, managing stress, staying healthy – anything that reveals what you’re all about.

It is impossible not to enjoy interacting with others. It is impossible not to enjoy sharing intimacies about your life, because it engages other people and compels them to share intimacies about their life – not embarrassing intimacies, but wonderful intimacies that show you the dimension, show you the richness, show you the emotion, show you the hopes, the dreams, the compassion, and all the wonderful gifts each person has to contribute to other people.

The Eternal Value of Integrity:  Integrity is defined in the dictionary as “firm adherence to a code of value.” In the real world it’s a matter of alignment with your true purpose, and it’s the key to uncovering true success in every sense of the word.

There’s a very interesting flip side to integrity, and that’s the question of how people perform under adversity.  Those serving at the highest level are the people whose code of conduct is the same in good times or bad.  Keep a good reputation at all times.  The keys to a good reputation:

1. Recognize the other side’s expectation, and acknowledging and fulfilling on any promise you possibly make.
2. Developing an attitude of promising less and performing more.
3. Always following up on everything you do.

Choose your world:  20% of their customers gave them 80% of their joy and their prosperity, and 80% gave them 100% of their grief, and they decided they didn’t want to work anymore with those 80%, and they politely and respectfully stopped working for or with employers that didn’t respect them.

You have every right and the expectation to do the same in your life. So if you start dealing with people and they do not perform the way you want them to perform, first and foremost I would contact them directly – preferably in person, but if not, on the phone – and I would engage them in a discussion.  I’d say something to the effect of, “You know, I really don’t understand. We entered into such and such transaction and when that happened it was implied or explicit that certain considerations would be given to one another. We both would perform certain responsibilities. We both would contribute certain things to one another.”  You discuss what the basis of the arrangement you entered into with them was based upon, and if something’s awry, you identify it. You say, “Maybe I’m not understanding the situation right, but from my point of view, that’s not what’s happening.” And then you approach it and stop, and ask them politely – not with anger, not with contempt, but with genuine concern and sadness, because you respect the situation too much. Ask them, seriously, “Have I failed you?  Because I must have for this to have happened. What did I do wrong?” Put the onus on them, because that will gauge immediately for you whether or not they are men or women or organizations of integrity. It’s a very simple process.  The thing not to do is go ballistic. The thing not to do is jump to conclusions. The thing not to do is not give them the benefit of the doubt, but do it intelligently, and do it strategically.

Integrity means to me:  What my reputation is supposed to look like:

• Practicing TSOP and reviewing TSOP on a regular schedule
• Living in gratitude and focusing on the positive
• Being committed to continued learning
• To respect other people’s time
• To give people the benefit of the doubt when circumstances are unclear
• Keep all promises or explain the difficulty to the other party as soon as you are aware of your inability to keep the promise
• To focus on performance
• To be consistent, authentic and transparent
• To not cover up bad news
• To fix processes rather than blame people
• To be disciplined
• To admit mistakes
• Honesty in all dealings.
• To resist the temptation to compartmentalize your life
• To conduct yourself as though your mother were watching
• To give credit where credit is due
• To believe in others
• To be humble
• To always be kind
• To hold yourself and others accountable
• To find out how other view you

 

SECTION SIX:   Your JV Asset Inventory:  To get the absolute most out of everything you do, you have to understand all your options.

An asset is something that has value.  When it comes to understanding your assets, tangible and hard assets are probably your least valuable possession.  An asset means anything – tangible or intangible, real or otherwise that has value and worth and can connect you to the outcome you seek.

EX 48: Curtis Publishing Company had the right to use the Norman Rockwell prints and license their image to anybody they wanted.  They found greeting cards companies. They found towel makers. They found pots and pan makers, and cups and saucers, and all kinds of oddities they were able to license those images to.

First and foremost, you want to identify, list and inventory all the elements and the intangible assets that combine together to help form your tangible and intangible asset base.  This is a process.  Create lists, and you keep adding to them, and refining them, and expanding them over two or three, or even five days.

The first list you’re going to make is what I call a “skills list.”  This could be writing sales letters, negotiating, selling, managing, computers, communication, organization skills; listening skills; nurturing skills; inspirational skills (being able to inspire people); learning skills; coaching skills; training skills; problem-solving skills; decision-making skills; public speaking skills; logic, reasoning skills; intuition skills; team player skills, etc.  If you have any difficulty doing this, ask a number of people who know you.

The next list you’re going to make is what we’ll call our “knowledge list.”  Knowledge is the familiarity with information or a subject, as opposed to the skill at it.  This is your education, specialization, literature, mechanics, cultural, applications, knowledge of your industry, human nature, etc.

The trick in life, is going from the abstract to the very specific — making life as tangible and real.

The next list we’re going to do is what we’re going to call “relationship lists.”  Very important list.  The first category is people in your company,  Then people you’ve worked with in the past, your family, friends, people you do and have done business with in your personal life, etc.

Your Greatest Opportunity:  “A great master in martial arts is exhilarated when they discover some part of their being they have not yet perfected because it shows them where to direct their efforts, where to direct their sense of discovery and direct their energy.”

 

SECTION SEVEN:  The Perfect JV Fit:  Take lessons from each scenario.

CH 21:  Business Owners.  Most people come to me in the market arena to make their businesses more profitable. They don’t come to me and ask, “Should I stay in that business?”  If it is not very lucrative…

Every new profit center (new source of distribution or new product/service) you put together will make your current business massively more profitable (on a market value basis).  First, make sure you’re optimizing what you already do.  Offer sales at continuing intervals, this makes the net worth of the business increase by multiples of ten.

Take a broad-brush inventory or assessment of your own business.  Consider these factors:

• Who are the people / businesses I want to reach?
• What other products, services and options do people typically purchase prior to buying or using my type of product / service?
• Who provides those products / services?
• What products / services, etc., do people typically need and/or acquire along with or in order to optimally use my product or service?
• Who provides those products / services?
• What events, activities or changes typically occur to cause someone to want or need your various products / services?
• What other products / services does the key decision maker that I am targeting also buy?
• Who provides those products / services?
• What assets do I need that I do not have?
• What periodicals / advisory materials are used by the market I want to reach?
• Who provides those products / services?
• What problem or opportunity does my product / service solve for my prospects/clients?
• What other type of business, organization, profession, etc., has more to gain than even I do by seeing me either acquire a client or sell a specific product, service, or combination, and why?
• What other market or industry could use / benefit from my product, selling system or methodologies?
• What is the Marginal Net Worth of my client / prospect worth to someone else?
• What are my highest margin products or services?
• What are my highest repeat purchase products or services?
• What logical products can I create, acquire, adapt or adopt?
• What markets can my products or services also apply to translate to?
• What related fields can I penetrate?
• What parallel universes are most similar to mine?
• What other business markets, products or services have I been thinking about?

Next, make a list of at least ten companies who sell complementary related products and services to people or companies, who have a similar or the same profile as the people you currently reach.  Make a list of people who sell products or services that people either buy right before, during, at the same or after they buy your product or products that are parallel.  Use the provider’s trust and goodwill to introduce other related relevant products or services to the buyer.  You need to expand your distribution.

You are overlooking an asset if you do not turn every person who compliments you, into a book of testimonials.

List each of those activities, and I want you to try to formulate what you do know about it in terms of the cost in time and money, the yield and result, the human capital demands, and its relative importance to your business.

Your leads, for example, will point you to logical connections.  You can look in a lot of different categories:

1. Complementary products or services
2. Maybe better, you can look at it psychographically and demographically

Make yet another list.  Is there anybody in your industry or market, anyone you compete against who has fundamentally got a decent or a good product, service or asset, but it’s only a matter of time until they’re going out of business? Can you contact them? Can you work out a deal to take over their active and their inactive clients – and even their unconverted recent prospects, because you’re a better marketer than they are? Can you take over their salespeople?  Can you take over any ads they run? A Yellow Page ad, if it’s working?  Can you take over anything else and consolidate it into your business, because incrementally, by doing that, that may double or triple your profits, because the cost of assimilating, or assembling, or adding that to your current overhead is normally very, very low.

I do not recommend email, but if you were to email, have it endorsed in such a manner:

“To: Fred Jones, XYZ Corporation

From: Jay Abraham

“RE: “John Schmidlapper urged me to send this.

“You know John. You trust John. You know his ability to identify powerful and profitable business building, money making, productivity enhancing people, activities and opportunities.

“That is probably why John urged me to write you immediately before anyone else, and share with you the proposal that I discussed with him as a concept for your business…”

The e-mail is meant to be very compelling, but not totally divulging the deal.  If you have to get past a gatekeeper, sometimes the best way to is to turn them into your greatest advocate.  Try saying in a manner that is not trying to sell them, but trying to candidly confide in them.  Say:

“I have a proposal that I think could be worth maybe $500,000, maybe $1 million a year or more to this company, and I have control of it. I do not know if it is right. I do not know if it is something I want to do. I do not want to be a harassing salesperson. I do not want to try to zigzag around you. I just want a chance to present it, and I would like to present it in its entirety.  If I have to, I can present it to you to represent, but there are a lot of complexities.  If I work on it I can probably reduce it down to maybe five minutes, and I can probably do it on the phone or in person.  If you could be willing to get me just five minutes, you have my permission to pull me out if I go one second over. And because it is such good idea, I would just feel bad if I end up taking it to somebody else just because I can get in there, when you are my first choice.”

Use any of the various tactics (one shoe), just make sure that everything you are doing is in the better interest of the company you connect with. Make sure you convey that they are going to be the greatest beneficiaries — and even more so, their buyers, clients, and prospects, because they are going to get greater service, greater product, greater outcome, greater protection, greater everything.

The gatekeeper will probably let you pass, but with a warning not to screw it up.  Give her permission, say:  “I know what you’re doing. You have my permission to pull me out. If I do anything I am not saying you can kill me, you can decimate me when I leave, you can kill the deal. Hey, I really believe Mr. X will appreciate this, and what I have to say has value. If it doesn’t, I will be out of here so fast because I don’t want to take up anybody’s time. I don’t want to be anything but an attribute, a benefit, and a profitable resource to everybody I’m involved with.”

So however you can get through – and personal presentation is best, but written is acceptable — you contact the specific person by name – email, letter, fax, script, phone call, presentation…or you find somebody who is comfortable presenting it if you are not, who can do it by phone, or can do it in person, or you get two different people to do it.  Communicate the following essence:

“Dear Name.

”I’m personally writing you because I have a great new profit center you can easily add to your current business. It is guaranteed to get your current buyers to buy more things and spend more with you than they do now.

“What’s great is that not one dollar of that expenditure will take away from the profits you currently make.”

The key psychology in doing deals is to convey to the other side that it will not take away, and just swap dollars, or cut their profits in half.  It will add monstrously greater revenue than they had before from sources they would have never penetrated, or accessed, and will only add to their bottom line, never takeaway or just swap.  At first, it’s human nature to fear that you, the dealmaker, are going to take advantage. So the way to overcome that is to show you understand, first in tonality, but then confidently in your ability to modify and extemporaneously respond to “felt fears,” implicit or explicit.  Implicit means the fears that you know they’re experiencing. Explicit means the fears they verbalize or voice. It’s imperative that you get it, that you show that you get it, and that you are absolutely not going to steal market that they already have.  It’s overcoming the “something for nothing” syndrome, so you continue by saying:

“What is great is that every new, windfall dollar I bring or it brings in to you will be more profitable than the ones you currently generate on your own.”

As a comment, you can explain to them that their current revenue has to go to pay their fixed overhead. If they have a $10,000 a month overhead and they generate $50,000, that money has to go to pay the overhead. Every dollar above that is really pure profit.  So it is much more profitable than the current dollars they are making.

“What is great is that I will do all the work to put the profit center together for you, turnkey, 100%.”

“But you could maintain total control of the profit center if you want. And if I am right you will make as much as (blank).”

It’s essential at this point that you have done your homework. What’s the best way to gather intelligence on a company’s relationship with its current customer base?  Talk to people who buy from them, who sell to them, with the BBB, industry trade organizations, their competitor, their salespeople, or wait outside their office, in their parking lot, or follow their delivery trucks, etc.  Say, “I want to learn about them. I want to do some business with them, and I want to know what you think about them.”

You can start with smaller quality companies that you can have greater control of.  If you want fast cash flow I would focus on real easy stuff like reactivating old buyers or adding new products and profit centers.  I would say I want to do something big but let’s do something little to start to validate it, more of a credibility builder:

“Look, if I ask myself what I would want if I was in your shoes, I realize that as neat as a $2 million might be, I’m a little conservative.  You probably are too. I would rather see some validation of the ability and the management of the person I was contemplating partnering with, and I decided that is what I should offer.  “Let’s do a little test right away, tomorrow, that takes advantage of an asset that is totally overlooked, that has already been written off that you wouldn’t expect to get a dime more out of. If I put, not big money, but $20,000, $30,000 in your pocket and I make $5,000 or $10,000 from it, that will at least validate that I know what I’m talking about. I will get your ear and your respect so we can sit down and really go after the big money that I think is in the second stage.”

Based on your research, plug in the monetary formula or anything you want that is realistic and not ludicrous, and say:

“lf I am right, you will make as much as $50,000 from my efforts plus (And this is the key) your customers will be absolutely delighted that you did it.  And oh yes, this activity has the enormous benefit of also reactivating a ton of old inactive buyers, plus it will appeal to new prospects and inquiries who have never yet purchased before and start them buying from you — and you profiting from them in a big way.  Please call me at your convenience at (blank) to find out more.  If I do not hear from you by the end of the week I will call and follow-up. The opportunity is too important to let too much time pass by.”

So you set them up and encouraged them to call.  If you pose that message to all of them, if you express it and execute it properly, at least half will enthusiastically want to know all the details and talk to you.

Key point: Right now, if you own a business, you send this message out and they call you .. you have to be ready and lucid .. meaning very fluid and clear .. on what the proposition is.

You have to be able to clearly and powerfully present what it is…  …how it works…   …what the selling mechanism is…   Because there has to be some mechanism or device… a letter, an email, a brochure, a script that their sales people or clerks use… signage you put up in their store or in their tradeshow booth… or something their delivery people include or that you put in with their packages.

Key point: Now, you can reverse this, too, and use the same strategy to bring other people’s products and services to your customers and prospects:  “I figured out an extremely profitable and appealing way you can extend your business by a huge margin.  “You can penetrate markets you wouldn’t normally get.  “You can get profits that would normally be unavailable to you.  “You can get very loyal buyers who can buy many times a year from you for years to come. I can do it all for you.  “It won’t cost you a cent to have it put together.  “I will do everything.  “You can control it and you will make more profit doing this than you do at your own business.”  Even if you share revenue with that company, as I said, they are still going to make more incremental profit. Because again, it is all above and beyond what they’re using right now to pay their overhead.

Key point: It is a mindset that once you are clear in expressing your proposal, you will make deal, after deal, after deal.  Because it is very compelling and you will be able to verbalize it… you will be able to do it on paper… you will be able to do it in email… you will be able to do on a pad in front of them… It will be second nature.

Letters have to be followed up with a phone call.  If you want to have a really great future in strategic alliances or joint ventures, you have to be prepared to master sequential marketing.  High ticket items such as this may require a dozen different sequences of communication.

The secret weapon to out-achieve everybody else is very simple.  I believe that if I pursue an activity, an individual, a joint venture, a relationship… that it’s only a matter of time before we will be doing business, until the vision that I have in my mind is going to become a tangible reality.  I believe that it is up to me to manifest that. It is NOT up to them to automatically see it.

So I am prepared for whatever sequence of events happens. I am prepared for having to go after the goal from many different vantage points.  I am not deluding myself into thinking it’s going to be a walk in the park, or a one-call close. Everything I do might not work brilliantly the first time.  Hence, sequential marketing.

When leaving voicemails, I always make the assumption they are listened to by the person I want to reach, and that we’re having a progressive, intimate discussion. So I make sure that every message I leave is a fascinating one.  I make sure it’s self-serving to the listener. It advances and enhances my message.  A strategic joint venturer prepares and expects voicemail, and is probably shocked when they get a live person. Plan what you’re going to say, and spend time as you should.  There is no secret to anything. The difference between mediocrity and millions is planning, strategy and execution.

Think about why your proposal is going to be appealing in a message that is designed to do three things:

• Get them to call you;
• Get them intrigued;
• Get them to want to listen to the next message that you leave in the event (which is high probability) that you don’t get them next time.

So if I were calling a prospect, I would probably say:  “Mr. Prospect, I don’t know you, but I know a lot about your company and somebody we both know has suggested that what I am doing probably is not being done in your company. They – and I – feel that the two or three minutes it will take for me to share it with you would probably make a bigger difference to you than me. It mayor may not be something we’ll ultimately do, but he says it’s something that you should probably know about.” And then I will leave a message to call me, but nothing will probably happen.

The next call I would probably say:  “I was talking to the person that recommended we talk, and we were talking about the application of this to another situation, and it was about $12 million. We don’t think it is going to be that big, although it might be. But, he made me promise that I would absolutely pursue talking this through with you.”  I just keep talking to him. I keep doing things with a certainty and advance your deal, enhance it, advance it, enhance it, advance, enhance it… At the same time, I’m not dependent upon a single activity.

The Force Multiplier Effect:  The problem with online marketers is they are deluded optimists that believe that all you need to do is send a single email, or put up a website, and treasures from heaven are bestowed upon you.  Force Multiplier Effect is actually a military term. It’s the process of having many different, powerful, penetrating activities on all fronts.  The army general knows there is a sequence of activities that will weaken and knock down the resistance of the target, and he also knows that the only certainty is that whatever they plan on probably won’t happen.

The whole plan changes the moment the first activity begins.  So you have contingency plans and many penetrating fronts.  All you care about is that you win.  Be willing, able and ready to plan on a sequence of communications.

I usually suggest a phone call, which will probably not reach the person. At best, you might get their gatekeeper. Either way, you will probably end up more than likely with voicemail.  So set up the scenario in the first call’s voicemail message that there is something forthcoming.  Describe what it is about and what it looks like, and leave a self-serving (for them) addendum that makes the payoff evident and realistic.

Then embark on a series of communications contacts that are advance and enhance your cause, until you get to the point of what I call “an audience,” where you have their undivided attention. It’s important to target a time when they can really pay attention. If your deal is important to you, it’s ludicrous to just insinuate yourself into somebody’s life, not knowing what is going on, on the other end.

Initiate a discussion, but respect yourself, and in the process, respect them as well by setting up enough quality time to state your case fully. If they have the time and if you sense that you are getting great resonance, great feedback and great attention, you can of course modify that time. And you should be fully prepared for both scenarios.

Back to the issue of leaving messages, one challenge that a lot of people have is once they get past the first or the second message, they really don’t know what to say. They don’t want to spill the beans about the entire deal. How do you come up with intriguing or inspiring topics and subject matter which will get the prospect to call back or take your call:  Preeminence and Preemptiveness.  It is redenominating one situation to another.  You could say:

“Mr. Prospect, you have one of the best joint venture businesses I have seen. You sell three really impressive categories, but you know you don’t sell the one area that I think is probably the most desired and probably ten times more lucrative, and I don’t think you ever will.  “I think that there is an easy way to do it. I would like to create that turnkey profit center for you, and I have an idea for what I think is the big, under-recognized opportunity. I think that in about, I don’t know, maybe ten, but possibly as little as three minutes, I can lay it out for you.  I can put it all together for you, and I can give you the basis. With a couple of calibrating questions, I can really find out whether or not it is that big for you.”

Reread TSOP.

Bring on somebody full or part-time whose permanent job it is to source, approach, and either close, or at least set up the telephone or in-person appointment for you to make the proposal presentation. This person can have management responsibility for making it happen once the deal is closed as well.  Ask yourself “How can I eliminate the heavy lifting, more clerical or first stage activities and free myself up for the more strategic lucrative JV activities?”

Highest and best use.  Consider referrals.  “What do you offer that is so differentiated and of so much greater value and benefit to the end user that it deserves a referral, or alternately, how much are you willing to pay them?” In other words, what is the client worth to you? What is their marginal net worth and lifetime value?  Pay accordingly.

The other thing he could do is have a little bit more of a strategic alliance, and have them create a profit center under their business. Let the partner white label his consulting services, and every time he or his employees went on a call for those clients’ referrals, “change shirts and hats,” so to speak. In other words, his JV partner would basically sell his services as the partner’s own, or “private label” it.

 

CH 22:  JV For Employees:  Say you work for a company that you like, but you don’t make enough money…  You could look for a company that has a lot of opportunities to place other products in their established distribution.  You could target the kind of company whose product could easily be the backend, or a subsequent ancillary product or service for a lot of other companies’ buyers. Another option is a company that’s only tapping a fraction of their selling opportunities, their revenue streams, their potential income channels.

“If I can create one or more profit centers for our business, your business, …that costs you nothing… …where I do all the work to orchestrate it… …where you have 100% of the control… …and I can get our current customers buying more… ...and I can get our current customers who haven’t purchased in a long time reactivated… ...and I can bring in new customers who have never purchased from us before… …as well as get us penetrating new markets… .. .and get us coming out with fabulous new products and services on a continuous basis that make us tons more profit, but in which we have no cost in developing, in manufacturing, in warehousing, in inventory… …will you give me (and you use a percentage) 10%, 15%, 25% Of the bottom line profit it brings us for as long as either I am here or I keep doing it — particularly as long as I can do my other job?”

Say you want to do deals with radio stations to get advertising time for your company.  First, find the most successful radio salespeople are.  Contact them at the station, invite them to lunch and present your concept to them.  Tell them that if they can sell their radio station ethically as your representative, they can get an override for life.  Or, run an ad saying.  “Looking for current or ex-salespeople that have a great relationship with their past or current clients to represent our joint venturing business, full or part-time. Could do this while you keep your other job. A profit share for life. Contact Jay.”

“Partners wanted. No investment required. I am looking for partners who could build long-term or lifetime joint venture relationships with (and then you fill in the blank) businesses of all kinds,” or “businesses in the ‘blank’ field.  “The prime candidate will have… “You will get a permanent equity forever in every deal/account/partnership you set up. I will provide all the details, all the effort, all the guidance. You just provide the time and effort. Realistic income potential, high six/seven figures over a period of time. Let me lay it out for you, work the numbers, answer any questions. I will sell you on us if you can sell me on you.”

The odds of an independent, privately-owned business making all the money that the owner wants are low.  The odds of that business penetrating all the markets, having all the products or services that their marketplace wants to buy, of converting all the prospects that come to them into buyers, having every distribution channel covered – sales, direct mail, catalog distribution, etc., are low.

You will be able to master the art of presentation, but practice is essential.  Enlist an objective friend, or somebody in the business world to whom you can say, “Hey, I want to make a presentation and I want you to critique me.”  To start, you want to be a specialist in some area, and it doesn’t matter in the beginning what that area is. But you should narrow your focus so you can be more authoritative, more definitive and more creditable.  Figure out the industry, the category, the positioning you want to target.  To go out “rudderlessly” or to spend all your time planning, do not work. Action is the key to everything.  “More is always accomplished in business with movement than is ever accomplished with meditation.”  Decide what your distinct focus niche or vertical position is going to be. Decide then what the logical cluster of generic (meaning the general type of businesses or organizations or publications) are that you want to either target or put deals together with.

I would rather tie up a distribution network than a product. If you own or control the distribution, the product has to go through you, regardless of who actually owns it.  I would rather tie up the relationship and sell them first on the big picture, and then be micro.  Let’s say you’ve gotten your boss to agree to use your company’s distribution network to sell related products. Identify a company with complementary products and say:  “I have a way for you to sell more of your product than you do right now, to markets you don’t currently reach. I want to basically create for you an ongoing, sustaining, meaningful revenue stream profit center that never costs you a dime, that never requires any of your time, that makes you significant money–conceivably more than you are making from your client base. It will never take a dime away from your income, from your current market. It will only add new revenue streams, new markets, etc. to your business. I will do it totally, but you will always have 100% control.”  Give them relevant examples of what other people and companies have done, and then take the time to explain:  “Look, let us be very clear. You could do this yourself, but you are not and would not. And if you tried, you probably would not be successful just because you have no experience with it. I have been educated by a master at it.”  (Don’t use my name, because I understandably cannot have everyone who reads this book act as if they are authorized by me.)  But I have been educated as a master. I understand the nuances and all the intricacies necessary, so that when I put these kinds of relationships together, I can maximize the success, the revenue, the way it is received and appreciated by your market. I eliminate, or certainly minimize to the absolute limit any negative factors. I orchestrate it, even if it has a lot of nuances. There’s virtually nothing that I cannot do.  “Anyone can understand the process intellectually. You have this market. You do not do a certain activity. I can bring this product to it, or I can bring new sources to you. That’s only logical.  But the difference between understanding that intellectually and realizing it economically, in a dollar-rendering, tangible, bank account-bulging or -building manner – that is the reason that you need me.”

Determine your skills, then measure, quantify and compare them.  Realize that if that skill is valuable to your company, a course that teaches that skill can be licensed to other non-competitive companies as well to create an entirely new profit center for your company.  Say you (or a coworker) are masterful at selling – more masterful, in fact, than anyone else you know. Say that skill produces an extra $200,000 in sales a year above any other salesperson’s performance. Say that $200,000 represents 200 new customers your company would have never had otherwise. What are the additional positive implications that no one else ever realized about your ability?  Well, perhaps the 200 additional customers your unique skills bring to your employer every year remain customers for 10 to 20 years, whether you stay there at the company or not.

That superior sales ability is almost never isolated to one particular product or service. It is an understanding of sales in general that can be applied to virtually any product or service. If you (or the sales expert) can develop a system to teach that skill to others, your company can license that method, train other salespeople in non-competing businesses, take an override of the increase in sales of which you can share a percentage — and everybody wins.

Point out also the fact that if you (or the expert) ever left their employ, one of two things would occur: once they would trained the rest of your own company’s staff, most of the productivity (if we use the sales example) would continue, so they would still benefit.  Number two, there’s the flip side. Every day he or she decides not to take action they are losing out on future benefits. So you’ve got basically the old carrot and the stick working for you.

You can also teach these sales skills to your current and future co-workers, telling your employer:  “Look, right now you can measure what the average salesperson is doing or what each individual salesperson is doing. John Schmidlapper has averaged $20,000 production a month. A good month might be $24,000. A bad month’s $18,000. Sara Stone over there, she has been doing $32,000. All you have to do is tell me what their baseline best case is and I don’t get anything for that. But if they start producing $45,000, we know pretty accurately that the increased $10,000 a month Came from my efforts. So I want either a fee to teach them, and/or some kind of a share or benefit that correlates to the added value my methods helped produce for you.”

You will be surprised what happens when you value yourself and your contribution – and you ask for it.  What other companies outside your employer’s direct marketplace would value learning.  Ask them for either a combination of a fee and/or an actual bonus that may be a percentage of the improved “whatever” – performance, savings, productivity – that your methods bring to their company…  always on risk reversal, where you don’t receive, or you do not ask for the benefit, or the reward until and unless you perform what you say you will.

It is critically important to identify and know value or contribution you are making to your relationships, your organization or your customers.  Think about what you do. Think about what it impacts. Think about the significance. Start analyzing the value and the advantage your efforts, your actions, your contributions mean to other people, other organizations and other relationships in your life.  Start focusing your attention on wherever opportunity lies. Where is that? Opportunity lies on the flip side of obstacles or problems. A slight shift…

There are more than 23 million small businesses in the United States alone. How many could you teach your specific skills to for a fee, or for a share of the improvement, or of the increase in savings, or profit, or productivity?  Identify five businesses outside your company – and they can be in a similar or a totally different and unrelated field – who would benefit by increasing their competency in the area you excel in.

Employers can go to your employees. You can get them to identify and package their skills so that they can be taught and applied to others. Then set up a separate profit center within the company whose rewards they can participate in, and get them to help you help them to help others prosper – and everybody benefits in the process.

You can also do this for the other people you know, or work for, or have ever known, or ever will know in your life that you can do this for also. You can profit from them in three ways:

First, you help them realize their true worth and value to themselves and to others. That is the most wonderful gift you can give anyone, and the reward you will get from doing it is one of the greatest feelings ever known.

Second, you can say to them, “If I can help you increase your own income or get a bigger raise or a promotion from your present employer than you ever thought you’d receive, will you give me 25% of the first year only?” Remind them that if you get them $10,000 or $25,000, or $500 a month that they never would have had on their own, it’s all found money, and that you want your 25% to be after taxes are taken out. Most will say yes.

Third, arrange to represent their skills as an agent, contacting all kinds of other people and businesses who could profit from learning and applying their skill methods. Arrange weekend, evening, telephone, tape or written means of teaching these methods to the companies and individuals you contact as their agent. You can instantly transform yourself and become a skills agent.

Take the time to make a list of your specific work skills, as well as the skills of five or six people outside your direct business, and you’ll begin to find countless sources for immediate profit.

EX 51:  Selling non-converted leads to your competitors.  “The point is, your company invested $900 of the $1,000 in the 45 non-converted leads that you are throwing away. Do not you think you owe it to yourself and your company to get a greater yield, to get greater salvage value out of that action?”  Say “I want you to give me a vote of confidence and take a leap of faith. Trust me blindly for about 30 days. Let me take all the unconverted leads that you throw away, and let me offer them (are you ready for this?) to your company’s competitors – to those companies that may have products or services, or financial terms, or payment plans, or pricings, or salespeople that are more appealing or appropriate for the people who turned your approach down.”  Without belaboring the issue I will just tell you this:  I negotiated a deal with all kinds of competitors where his company got 50% of the profits those competitors realized from the leads they had generated but not sold, and that his company shared with them. They ended up making more money from the people they did not sell than from the ones they did.   The whole premise, the whole basis, the whole essence is understanding where possibilities lie where others see impossibilities. This is a great philosophical example to get you to open your mind.

A starting block to think about. It might be a manufacturing process. It might be a selling approach. It might be an advertising approach, or copy that you use. It might be a production or management method. It might be a personnel approach you use that produces a higher-than-industry-average sustaining rate, a lower attrition rate, a higher satisfaction and performance rate. It might be a tax-savings approach you have used. It might be software you have created for your own application.

You have every right to request and receive some kind of a reward for helping your employer maximize his or her company’s performance. The reward can be a share, a percentage of the increased sales, or the number of new customers, or the dollars generated.  If your employer will not do that, you can then ask for a specific dollar bonus, or a fee if, when, and after your change of getting them to add risk reversal makes a positive impact. It is instantaneous and immediate.  Remember, you make the rules.

One of the final areas of joint venture opportunity that is right before your eyes lies in recognizing and identifying obsolete and abandoned opportunities and assets companies no longer appreciate or value. If you find tangible and intangible assets your company has that they no longer value or use, you can develop profitable and immediate applications for them.  Most companies have equipment, machinery, space, people or processes they either no longer use because the application in the business is no longer being done, or because it is been replaced by a newer or a better version.  In the process of testing, improving and eliminating certain processes that do not perform as well as others, you must recognize that just because something does not perform as well for your company, this obsolete process may still outperform the way somebody else outside of your situation is operating.

If you have service people that are not being fully utilized, and they are being paid on a salary basis but they are only being used 70% of the time, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find somebody else who would pay a premium to your employer just to have access to them for the other 30% of their time.

CH 22:  Middle-Person or JV broker or deal-maker:  “I find new profit centers, new streams of income, windfall profits, overlooked assets, hidden opportunities, under-performing distribution channels and monumentally more lucrative ways to monetize a company’s current business model — and I do it all on a pure performance basis.”

Get a copy of the Yellow Pages.  Note all the categories you are familiar with.  For all businesses out there, there are related products and/or services that precede, correspond and/or follow that original product purchase or service purchase.  These are natural pairings for joint venture deals.  You can also find demographic factors — affluence, blue color, geographic location, homeowners, apartment dwellers — that will point you in the direction of naturally occurring related purchasing trends.  So get a copy of the Yellow Pages and:

• Make a random list of a bunch of different types of businesses you are already familiar with. Make a list of all the things that people or companies buy either before, during and after they make the original purchase.  

• Make a list of all the demographic factors — locality, personality, affluence … any demographic or psychographic factor.

• Call all the companies in the multiple different types of businesses on the first list. Ask them if they currently offer any of the items that you have on your “related purchases” list.

 

Say you choose graphics designer.  They may design sales brochures, sales letters, space ads, packages, billboards, books, websites, etc.  Make a subsequent list of all the products and services that go along with their service.  Take packages.  Your subsequent list may include packaging companies that put the packages together, companies that manufacture the packaging, companies that ship the packaging, companies that sell the wrap around the packaging, etc. Or take sales brochures. The list may be companies that train sales people, companies that sell other sales related items, companies that recruit sales people.

Key point is the mindset:  There is an absolute, continuous relationship or correlation with the kind of buyer that buys that primary purchase …and the fact that that buyer is constantly buying other items that relate to that category, or secondary purchases.  Once they trust a provider, that provider can use that goodwill… and you, as the middle person, can ethically exploit or commandeer that goodwill to introduce other related and relevant products or services to the buyer.

Find that graphics designer, make a list of 5 – 20 products or services they could be selling.  Call them and ask: “Do you sell, represent or have any kind of a relationship right now with anybody in any of these areas?”  If yes, they or deal-oriented.  If no, the field is wide-open.  If they say, “Hey, I have a relationship with a printer,” you can say, “Well, give me the other categories you design.  If I can set up all the relationships with everybody else that are relevant to each of those other categories, would you joint venture with me?”  If they say yes, the door is open.  If no, go to a generic competitor and say “Hey, your biggest competitor does that, you should be doing it too. I can put it all together, run it, manage it, do due diligence, make sure it flies and runs like a charm –and you’ll make a killing off of it without doing anything.”  Once you get the mindset, you cannot lose.

The mindset of the deal-maker is:  Your job is to find business situations that have one- or two-way untapped opportunity that would do three things:

1. It would benefit that company’s clients because they are great products that both sides’ clients need, would benefit from, and are finding on their own – but not necessarily finding the best product provider or product.
2. You see relationships that they do not.
3. Left to their own devices, the odds are exceedingly high that the company you are approaching would never do it on their own.

You have the opportunity to generate for them a significant, and a continuous — or multiple continuous streams of profit income that might realistically exceed what they are making from the business itself.  Maybe they use space advertising, but they do not use direct mail… or they use advertising, but they do not have a sales force… or they sell to one market, but they do not sell to others… or they do not have any other distribution channels… or they maintain a mailing list of their customers, but instead of sending out new offers for new product they send out the same offers over and over again that people can get just by walking into the store… or they do not even send out offers. They just have a newsletter, and they do not use it for anything intelligent

Your goal, first of all, is to see and recognize untapped opportunities… overlooked and underdeveloped assets… under-performing activities… undervalued relationships… unrecognized…  Meaning that if people buy this product, they will also buy that product or that service.  OR, people who buy this product are probably affluent and/or they probably live in a certain area.  Just logical connections, “money connections” if you will.

It works two ways. You can take somebody’s products to all kinds of other places, or you can take other people’s products to companies.

90% of all JVs never produce loads of money because there is no employee assigned to manage it, maximize it, move it.  This is your role.

Starting with the host, the person with the assets, resources, buyers you want to do a deal with, say:  “You have invested continuously, significantly and unhedgingly in your relationship with these people. You have invested money, time, opportunity costs, materialistic effort. You get a certain yield out of the active ones. You’ve gotten certain past deals, but no current yield out of the inactive ones. You get zero yield out of the prospects that never converted.”

Depending on their business:

• “Your business is directly benefited by the level of economic success or prosperity your client achieves. The more money they make, the more they can spend on your product or service, or on repurchases.”
• You have two interesting parallel objectives, as I see it. The first is to do everything in your power to help improve, enhance, benefit, advance and enrich the life or the activities of your client, your customer, your member.  You can do that two ways. You can do it through your product, but there is a lot bigger scope. If you are able to bring them a product or a service that can make a profound advantage, difference, protection, enrichment, enhancement to their lives… and you could bring it to them in a more advantageous way than they would be able to get it themselves… and, in fact, they may not ever find it themselves, or if left to their own devices they probably wouldn’t even be able to discriminate between great and shabby.

“This is a great opportunity for you to work through us to bring this product to them, and in the process, act as their ombudsman.  Because if they try to get this product themselves… they’re left to the vagaries of their own discrimination or lack of knowledge — if they make a bad decision, they’re stuck with it and screwed.  “By following your recommendation and endorsement:

1. They’re protected;
2. They are going to get a more preferential price;
3. They are going to receive more benefits;
4. They are going to enjoy exceptionally greater risk protection;
5. If there is any issue or problem, you’re in a position to be the ombudsman, and we are in the position to always defer to what is in your client’s best interest.”

“You have a sunk cost in the relationship. You have the certain revenue that generates from that client. If you are able to render enormous benefit and service, and bring in significant incremental revenue that in no way or shape supplants, takes away from, it really augments or adds to the revenue base — you have an obligation as a business man, woman, owner, manager who is committed to profit maximization or optimization to seriously examine and consider anything ethical, qualitative that brings added value and increased revenue to your business.  “The way businesses grow today is through new revenue streams, new profit centers, new avenues, new products, new services. It is not cost effective for you to research, create, develop and produce most of them.  “By us bringing to you the equivalent of that, but letting you have more profit than you would probably make if you were to create it, own it, and produce it yourself – it is a good deal for you, but an even greater deal for your market.”

Perhaps you call people and say:  “I am a distressed product, service and resource expert. I go to companies and I figure out what resources they have that are under performing, or where they have excess, capacity, excess inventory or obsolete inventory, and I figure a way to monetize it for them consistent with the way they operate.  Do this two hours a day.   I cannot promise I will find a way to convert that to cash. but the odds are about 80%.  Let’s walk your business, walk your deliveries, walk your system, walk your inventory, walk your process … and let’s see if I can find something.”

Another thing:  You could target experts who have methodology, technology and expertise that when applied, makes a big difference to businesses–for example, efficiency experts, productivity consultants, cash flow management experts, collections specialists.  you could target experts who have methodology, technology and expertise that when applied, makes a big difference to businesses–for example, efficiency experts, productivity consultants, cash flow management experts, collections specialists.

I found people that had unsold inventory, got control of it, found the right spots for it, and put it on consignment.

“You have to first figure out, is he trying to say that he wants to refer his existing clients to you? Because when people are putting in air conditioning, they’re eager to remodel too. Does he have clear vision? Because if he does, you want to respond to that. If he doesn’t, you want to say, ‘Well, you’re in luck, Mr. Friend, because one of my new career activities is I structure and manage joint ventures. It’s interesting that you mention that because I think there is a perfect one for the remodeling and air conditioning both ways, both ways.  Here’s what it would look like.'”

Realize two things:  The incremental profit over the fixed overhead.  Say:  “Look, do you realize…” And you ask them questions so that they can explain to you and come to the same conclusion.  “If I could bring you an extra 20 deals a month, that’s $40,000 you would never have had, net profit — profit after everything. That’s giving money to the staff, for the trucks, for the labor, for the parts, and for the management. It was really no harder.  “Or if it was harder, and I gave you money for the extra office staff or the extra hours part-time people, would you be willing to share that with somebody else that generated revenue? Because the way you probably get it right now is spending money for ads that produce leads… that have to be closed by sales people… that have to get commissions.  So it really cost you that $2,000 probably anyhow, in advertising and sales commission. You will probably still have to pay a sales commission, but it will be much lower because it will come from an already-motivated prospect that came from a source they trusted. It’s more like a referral ready to be closed.”  “In exchange for putting it together, I would like 10% (or 15%, or…) of your side of the profit. Keep in mind, it’s all incremental. Any time you get too much business, I can always move this to another company.”  Demonstrate that you control the deal, not they.

Then you do the same thing on the other side. You say:  “I think I can make you $20,000, or $30,000 a month. In doing so, I think I can operate it so there is never a problem. I can do it with the best service provider in the field. I can act as ombudsman, or provide an ombudsman. What I would like for doing that is…”  You can have it be a sliding scale, such that you only want 10% of the first $10,000, then 15% of the next $10,000, then 20% of the next $10,000, and 25% thereafter.  “Look, I’m going to take a piece of yours and a piece of theirs because I am the one making it all work and adding the value.”

You are the salvation.  A great financial planner knows that left to their own devices, most people won’t accrue much money for retirement.  I’ve learned that if you go in with a posture that “It’s not going to be done anyway,” and if you don’t control or have authority inside of a particular deal it is going to unwind eventually.  I always took the role that I understood the transaction ten times better than my prospects did. I understood the up side, but I also understood the downside. I was the advocate, ultimately, for all three people involved.

EX 53:  There is a service in Chicago called “Betty’s List.” Betty’s List is nothing more than a referral, where she places ads saying that she has a list of the top remodelers, top air conditioning people, top painters, top handymen in the Chicago land area. Then she refers leads to remodelers, painters — whatever — and she takes a piece of it.

The Keys to Achieving Greatness:  If you’re truly committed to achieving greatness in any endeavor, and want to feel the confidence of certainly in joint ventures, the key is actually doing it — not thinking about it, wishing about it, frustrated and fretting over why success doesn’t manifest itself instantly.

Avoid The Salesman Trap, think big.

Seven Joint Ventures YOU Can Do:  Start by going to organizations that have a lot of inactive buyers.

JV Opportunity #1:  This would be a type of an enterprise that had as its basis a highly repetitively used, consumed, or needed product or service.  This could be a doctor, accountant, dentist, chiropractor, massage therapist, HVAC, painting or carpet company, an Internet service provider.  Look for a business where interruption of dealings occurred not because somebody went somewhere else and you’re trying to win them back, but more where they just stopped doing it. They procrastinated.  Winning back a client is a different story, and it’s a lot harder.  We’re looking for, for example, “I (as the carpet provider) sold you carpet five years ago. I know most people replace their carpet every four years. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Ask to get 40% to 50% (certainly 25%) of the profit from those non-responsive past clients.  In whatever form it takes, they’re rendered some kind of service, and the service is interrupted. Your job is to go to the provider of that service and say:  “Look, I am a specialist at getting past, inactive clients or buyers started up again. I am really good at doing it. There is no certainty what the numbers will be, but we can look at your business, and I will do all the work.  “We can analyze how many of the people you used to sell to do not buy from you anymore. I will spend all the time, the effort and even the expense of contacting them on your behalf with the goal of getting them back on a regular usage schedule. There might be a special application or service that you might do for them instead, or concurrently.  For my services, I would like (blank) percentage of the money that comes in for (blank) amount of time.”  People are more generous sharing money new found revenue they never would have had before.  “I am going to find you $100,000 you never would have had.   It is not going to cost you a cent. It is going to be pure profit. It is not going to take a dime out of your pocket. It is not going to cause one person not to buy from you who’s buying today and would buy tomorrow. If I do that after every bill is paid, after everything is said and done, and the money is clearly and evidently deposited in your bank account, will you give me back (blank) if I let you keep (blank)?”

Script 2:  Say you go to a publisher targeting their inactive subscribers – those who have become inactive in the last 18 months to two years.  Say:  “Look, you have invested so much in the past, but you’ve lost a lot of ground. Odds are you don’t have within your organization the ability, the understanding, the time or the people to mine the thousands, or even tens, and maybe even hundreds of thousands (and you’ll fill that in depending on the assessment of the size and the quantity of the business) of lost subscribers (or members).  “But I can do it. It’s what I do. I will take it on as a project, for no fee. I will do it strictly on a performance basis. I will do it where I share in the results and the rewards.  “If you do great, I will do great. If I don’t perform, I won’t and you’ll be in the same position you’re in right now.  “The deal is very simple. I will do all the work. I will sit down and I will analyze all your past subscribers, whether you have a computer or manual records, I will look at your sales. I will give you a confidentiality agreement that this will be non-disclosed and just for me, so I can mine a wind fall for you.  “I will figure out how many people have been inactive long enough so that it’s fair to call them dormant or non-earning for you.  I will contact those inactives by either phone, mail, e-mail, or, if it’s appropriate in person (if it’s a big enough deal). I will reactivate them with a proposition that I will present to you, and which you will approve ahead of time. I will reactivate them with a service or a product model that ties them into a regular, ongoing either weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual or annual service that has a high probability of producing recurring or ongoing income/profit stream income for you for a long time to come.  “I will share in at on performance as follows:

Remember, you should always emphasize as much as you can how little risk this is going to cause the prospect or client, especially in view of the fact that these are inactive clients that they’re already heavily invested in, and are now sitting idle.

Script 3:  “Look, the way I see it, you have been missing out on probably $10,000, $50,000, or, if I’m right, $100,000 or more in income that you’ve already made a huge investment in. You worked really hard in the past, but for reasons that are not your fault, you may not understand the elements of how to sustain it, and conserve, and contain, and maintain, and advance that investment the way I do.  What does it cost you to add ten more people every day or every month?”  You show them that it’s nothing, and you say, “I am going to do all the work. If I am wrong, which I don’t think I am, but if I am wrong I will have egg on my face. I will look pretty dumb at the end of a week, or a month, or six months. I will have gotten only a few dollars – or nothing — for a lot of effort.  “But what if I’m right? And remember, Mr. Prospective Client, all I have is my time and my opportunity cost. I only back the horses that I think have a really great chance of returning that cost, and you have a really good horse. I think you have a really great reputation.  I think you have a really great company. I think you have a real quality service, and I think it’s a shameful sin that people have fallen through the cracks only because you’re too busy doing the work, juggling all the issues of business, fighting the alligators.  “Let me relieve you of this burden that you wouldn’t even know how to get out from under. Let me do it for you systematically. Let me blitz it one or two months from today.  “If I am correct and I do my job right, you could be making an extra $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 a month, or have a lump sum in your bank account of another $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 that cost you nothing. And yes, I will get a share of it, but that share will only be from (and you can fill in the blank) the first transaction or the first two transactions. Thereafter, all the future revenue I have reinvigorated and recreated is going to be yours and yours entirely, and that is fair to me.”

Attrition is the first type of joint venture I would approach.  There are four reasons for attrition:

• They have an interruption in their life or their experiences that had nothing to do with the provider.  They got negatively habituated, and they never started up again. But it wasn’t because they were disloyal.
• They had a bad experience that they never explained or complained about.  This gives you the perfect opportunity to rekindle good will.  50% can be reactivated just by doing something to right the wrong.
• They outgrew the use of the service, though they had a great experience.  That’s a prefect situation to generate new business referrals.
• It may be the kind of a business and service that needs to be continuously marketed to reactivate.

There are a number of different ways to get somebody back. The basic way is just to offer the service again, and prevail upon their latent desire to re-enjoy that service.  The second is to shamelessly but ethically bribe them with one, or a combination of propositions. You can either give them a discount for the first month, or two, or three. It could be half price. Your imagination can supply a myriad of ideas.

When you approach a business owner, or a publisher, or a dentist, you need to show them that their overhead right now is already covered by whatever else they do. If you add one, or ten, or 20 more patients a day, as long as you don’t have to add staff, it’s “found money.”

Again, how do you get those people reactivated? You may get them started just by saying, “Hey, will you start?” That will pull a certain number. Others may be moved to action if you say, “We miss you and want you back so badly that we’ll let you come back again for the first month or the first three months for only (BLANK).” Make that offer a special, either half price, or a specific price that you denominate as a savings.

The big payoff that is going to come to you from your pursuit and dedicated endeavors in the JV or strategic alliance field are going to be the byproduct of building relationships. They may not take a long time, but it is rarely a one shot deal.  You have to demonstrate that you understand the field, that you deserve their respect.  You will do everything possible to maintain, enhance and solidify the connection, the relationship that exists.  I would actually use a reverse sell. I would actually say:  I don’t even want you to say yes to me today. I want you to see the opportunity. I want you to think about how, when we’re ready to do this, I can get the fastest access to your old buyer/subscriber/ patient! member list.  “I want you to think of whether I have to do it at my offices or home, or whether I can do it in yours. I want to see how many different categories you have so I can concentrate on the easiest, the fastest, the most lucrative mining and reactivation possible for you, and certainly for me.”

Email not recommended, but if you must, and say you are targeting dentists, find a bunch of different authors who are very reputable, and have been recognized by prestigious people. Contact them, and tell them what you’re doing.  Ask if they would be willing to let you buy copies of their book at a discount, and if they would send a letter to certain dentists for you with the book that says, “Hi, I’m Jay Abraham. You probably know my book. We may never have met, but I am the author of Growing a Dental Practice 18 Ways To Sunday. It’s been written up in Dental Economics.  I’m sending you a copy of my book with my compliments to introduce you to John Smith. He has a great way to reactivate your old, no-longer-active patients. I’ve asked him to e-mail you in about a week.”

Where to Find People To Promote You:  You probably know a bunch of people who have an ability to sell, but don’t know what to do.  You know what to do, you have the concept, and they have the ability.  Split profits, or 25%.  Another way: Run an ad in a local paper. I would say:  “Partners wanted. No investment. Earning potential in mid-jive to low-six figures selling business owners on mining their own business better. Call for complete details.”  When they call, just say, “Here is the deal. I have a service that pulls and mines hidden assets, overlooked income, and untapped revenue out of somebody’s existing but inactive buyers or clients.  “My business is turnkey, and I need people to present it. I have the concept. I have the mechanics. I have it all down pat, but frankly, I don’t have good sales capability. Rather than doing something I’m not good at, I would rather joint venture with you as a partner and share the profits continuously for every account or relationship or deal that you bring in.

Sometimes when you use the term “partner” it scares people off. The concept is too intimidating to someone who needs more structure. It has legal connotations that you don’t need to worry about. All you care about is them agreeing to your proposition.  For those people, you run an ad that says:  “Salesperson wanted, full or part-time, very professional. Every professional service company in the state is a prospect. They don’t have to buy anything, no money changes hands. We pull windfall profits out of their existing inactive client base and share the rewards, generous profit or commission share, and make potentially thousands of dollars a client or an account. Generate up to 100 accounts a year working part-time. Call for full details.”

When I put deals together, I try to do it right there in their office, because there is much more connection, more closeness, and less psychological or transactional reason to discount your contributions.  If I were doing it from outside, I would make sure that I was there at least once or twice a week, interacting with the staff and the professionals.

“With all due respect, just so there’s no misunderstanding… You’re in business. You have overhead. You have opportunity costs.  You render a very quality service (or publication, or professional service…) and you expect to be paid then and there unless separate arrangements have been made.  “I trust that we are clear. I want nothing more, but I want nothing less. So if I render the service, if I reactivate and mine for you thousands of dollars every month that you never would have had, and I am supposed to get 25% (or a third, or 50% after you back out the cost of the service…) all I would ask is that if my compensation is due on Monday, I get it on Monday. If there is a problem computing it, I trust that I have the right to assist in figuring it out, or we can at least guesstimate.  “In other words, you may not know exactly, but we know if we brought about 30 people in this week… and the average person is, worst case, paying $30… and worst case, you’re making $15… and $15 x 30 is $450… and I’m supposed to get half of that… and you are having trouble figuring the exact number of people — instead of giving me $225, give me $200 and we will adjust next week.”

Possible letter of agreement:  “We agree that you have within your business or your practice some number of once-active (buyers, subscribers, members, patients… ) who haven’t dealt with you for (three months, six months, nine months — whatever reasonable period you agree upon.)  “It is agreed that I have an ability, and you wouldn’t be doing a great job of reactivating on your own. “I have offered to come in on my own time, my own effort, my own expense and do it for you. We agree that you will make your records available to me in confidence on an absolute non-disclosure basis. I will go through them and identify them on a graduated basis – easiest, most recent, etc., etc. I will start by taking a small representative group and testing their relative responsiveness to our proposition.  “Together we will agree upon what the exact proposition is, and that will be added to this letter as an addition. Once I test it, if it shows life and we agree to means a minimum of(blank) people out of (blank) come back (or sign up, or start again, or take advantage…) then you agree that I will be able to do all of the remaining ones that I want.  In exchange for that we both agree that I get to keep (blank, either percentage or dollars) of the (blank). (It could be the first sale, or the first two sales of all the money that comes in. You have to figure out what works best for you.)

If JV prospect steals your idea and activates the strategy himself on his own, precluding you from the deal, say:  “I see that you are very resourceful. I have to say that I’m disappointed by your sense of morality. But since you did it, and it works, since you’re not going to pay me, I need to refer people to you so you can tell them how great my idea is.”  Very rare.

Keep the door open:  “You know, you got me for $5,000 on that idea. I’ve got other ones, but truthfully, I’m not even willing to reveal them to you until we have an understanding in writing that if I give you a strategy you’re not doing, you will only do it with me — or you will at least give me a kill fee for the idea.”

Go to their competitor and say:  “Hey, I presented this to Acme. They took it. I’m mad about that. But there’s a saying that ‘the greatest revenge is to profit monstrously from your enemy. ‘ I’m going to offer it to you. I can turnkey it…”

If they want you to sign a confidentiality agreement:  “Sure, I will agree not to use what you tell me. But you have to agree not to use what I tell you. And I can tell you that if you want to sign the deal and do this venture with me, I’m going to give you more valuable stuff than you are going to give me.”

 

Joint Venture Opportunity #2:  You can look for either retail businesses or sales organizations that are willing to let you add other categories of products to their offering, or who are willing to let you lease access to their facility.

I know a lot of chiropractors who have made a small fortune by leasing or acquiring a satellite office that they occupy either continually, or (for example) once a week every Tuesday. That satellite office could be in a health food store, or a health club… They either pay rent, or a share of the revenue, or they just do it as a draw, because it brings a fresh flow of different people to that facility.

There are many, many kinds of organizations that are prefect setups for that scenario.  Go to them and say:  “I want to bring additional revenue to you that should also bring additional, fresh, ongoing, quality traffic. I want to do it by bringing, on a trial basis, complimentary non-competitive products or services here. We will use either a little display area, or a little ancillary room, like the foyer. I will engineer a profit share or a rental for you, and we can share revenue.”

Decide whether to split 25/75 (with 75% to them), 33/66, or 50/50.  It depends on how compelling you are in your appeal.  Tie up the distribution first, say:  “I have a lot of different relationships with product (or service) people that I have access to. Once we make our deal, then I will figure out which one I think is best for us. We will agree that we will bring them in for a trial period.  “lf the product or service I decide on brings either/ or both of us a lot of new revenue, a lot of new traffic or a combination, we will continue. If not, I will replace it with something different.”

You can do it with health food stores.  Almost no chiropractor has full usage of his or her facility. You can place an acupuncturist, or something else in there. You can set up 25 deals like this in any reasonable community, and continuously take a share. It benefits everybody involved.  Remember, the deal is going to be that you are get control of their asset, which in this case is their space.  Sears and Allstate made billions.  Many other examples – they tie up the real estate, and both ends reap the rewards.

Here’s another spin: You could go to retail specialty stores, most of which in today’s market are not doing as well as they used to.  You can offer to lease either display space in a case, or put in a case, or have access to a segment of the store — a section in the back, in the front, in the corner, where you can place other merchandise. Your rent will be a share of the sales.  Once you’ve tied up the real estate, then you find local manufacturers or creators of specialty products that are complimentary – jewelry, candles and the like.  Get them to provide the inventory that you will, in essence, consign to the space you have tied up the real estate for. Then by experimenting with different product mixes, you may end up in 25 stores in your community.  Then once a week, take an inventory, and you get paid 50% of the merchandise sold. You’ll then split 50/50 with the person who supplied the specialty goods to you.

 

Joint Venture Opportunity #3:  If you live close to any major city that has major hotels or a convention center, all you have to do is two things: Get a list of all the events coming to those facilities. You can get a city-wide list from the tourism department or Chamber of Commerce. Get a list of all the exhibitors that will be there. You can get that from the promoter.

Go to the exhibitors, and ask them if they would be willing to let you rent a quarter of their exhibit space to promote an item that is totally complimentary, non-competitive and could make them a lot more money.  You can probably do this with at least a tenth to a fourth of the smaller, marginal exhibitors because they’re not making much money anyhow.  Once you tie the space up, find people locally who have appropriate products or services, and place them in the exhibitor space on profit splits.  Remember the Tom Sawyer School of Business: Control the asset, but let everybody else do all the work.

 

Joint Venture Opportunity #4:  Here’s another application. Get control of advertising space. Find people that have ground floor buildings with unused windows or walls, sides of the building that are legally zoned for advertising.  Secure the rights to use that real estate, and share revenue 50/50 with them on whatever advertising you bring in. Then make deals with people needing advertising, where most of their payment is performance-based and a little bit is fixed (so that they’re excited about using it.)  Use the advertisements you create to promote specific items, so that you can measurably tie those sales to that advertising promotion.

Consider a deal for about $200 for the signs, plus 15% of all the business that results. Make sure the signs are only focused on direct response, something that is very specific and direct.  Another twist on that same concept to make an additional revenue stream from the same promotion is to contract with a printer. Most of the people that want to advertise with you will have no idea of how to get the sign printed up. If you provide them that resource, you could take a cut from the printer for all the business you bring.  Or, you can just make it a package deal, where the space and the printing is all included, and the price reflects those combined benefits. For simplicity’s sake, I would probably opt for the package deal.

 

Joint Venture Opportunity #5:  Go any office building or any industrial park and say:  “Hi, my name is Jay Abraham, and I’m a surplus inventory/excess capacity disposal expert. I go to companies, large and small, and I identify their obsolete inventory, equipment, and underutilized capacity services. I figure out ways to monetize and generate significant monies for them, and I would like to schedule doing a quick assessment for you.  “The assessment will take about 15 minutes. I will ask you to walk through your office with me, in the front and the back room.  I’ll figure out what unused assets you have. I will look at your office operations to see if there is anything — extra space you’re not using… delivery people you are not using fully… service people you’re only using half of the time.  I will see if you have access to raw materials or finished goods, and I analyze the best, fastest, and most lucrative way to convert all of that into either a one-shot, windfall profit, a big check, or ongoing additional income stream for you.”

I don’t know how effective it is, but another piece of advertising real estate is, surprisingly, garbage cans.

Here’s another opportunity: Find service providers and product providers who generate leads, but don’t know how to work them systematically.  Blue collar craftsmen.  These are often quality people who have a good reputation, but even most quality craftsman can’t market or sell their way out of a paper bag.  Go to them and say: “Let me do two things. Let me have all the people you ever talked to, made a bid to, or visited and never did business with. Let me see if I can reactivate them for you, and if I can develop other complimentary business from them. Give me a 15% share of the business I get for you. ”

Example:  Most quality craftsman close the deal by sheer luck, not because of marketing aptitude.  Ask nearly any electrician, “How many calls do you get?  How many proposals do you make, bids do you send, people do you visit that you don’t close?”  “How long do you wait before you call a proposal or bid ‘dead’?” That’s where you can say, “Great. Let me work those leads for you after that amount of time.” Because a lot of people get a bid and never take action. They need to be pushed. A lot of people are just considering getting the work done. Some may have already done the electrical, but now they’re ready for the carpentry, or painting.

Get one team of people that go out and find the craftsman and women who are good, but are terrible marketers. Get another team of salespeople who follow up on the leads. Get a third team of salespeople who go out and make deals for those leads with other noncompetitive craftsman.  What do you do? You sit in the middle, and make between 25% and 50% of the money that changes hands.

And with your salesperson, the odds are if they give you 100 leads, it may take a week or two, but you will probably close three, five, ten deals.  If then you take those same leads and say:  “By the way, we represent a whole host of other craftsmen and women. We have carpenters. We have electricians. We have cabinet people. We have landscapers. We have spa builders. We have people who do garage door replacements. We have closet organizers… and we would love to come out and bid.”  Then you can get a much bigger piece of that business, because for those craftsmen and women, that’s a new lead that they didn’t have themselves.

 

Joint Venture Opportunity #6:  Find the cool items in starving Mom & Pop shops and ask the owners if they can put you in touch with the manufacturer for a totally different noncompetitive place across town.  Go to the manufacturer and say, “Look, I have access to retail distribution all over Kansas City. I can control 30 different locations. I am willing to take your inventory, put it into my real estate on consignment, warrant to you that once a week if your product is as cool as I think it is, if we put 30 pieces out there in a facility we should sell six or eight every week.  If we sell eight of them at $30, that’s $240. I have to give 50% to the store, and we could split the other half.  Your cost should be about 1/5, so you could double your money, and I will make about the same for the effort.  We can test it for a month. If we don’t sell enough inventory, we will get it back to you. If we sell a lot, all we have to do is keep supply up for as long as it works.” 

What makes that work is that you don’t have to put up the money for any of the inventory.  It can work with anything. It doesn’t have to be specialty. It can be any area you want books.  I’ve seen people who got control of a vacant lot, who found all kinds of people who had cars for sale.  They put signs in with their own numbers on it so they had control.  If they couldn’t, they would charge a rental fee that people only paid if the car sold.

How to Reactivate Customers:  You can send an e-mail. You can send a letter. You can go knock on the door and visit, if you have something that is high enough ticket to justify the time. You can hire staff to do that for you, strictly on commission. You can hire housewives at home, or mothers who only have a couple of hours a day, or retirees…  You could find people who are out of jobs, but have an area of expertise, and say, “Consult for us for high hourly fees.”  You could write an ad, and then tie up an inventory of maybe 500 people who are skilled at some application. Then match them to companies who you contact and say, “We have an excellent expert in transportation management. If you need any help there … ” Just by playing mix and match, you can make deals and share the revenue with them.  Crawl before you walk, analyze and improve on your own performance.  These ideas are no-brainers once you refine your understanding of the mindset.

How To Get People To Respond To Your Opportunities:  Use metaphors, similes and easy reference examples.

If you don’t want to call the prospect directly, send them a letter preferably (as opposed to an e-mail).  Regardless of how you word it, make sure it introduces you and says, “Obviously what I want to talk about is something that we probably need to spend dedicated time on. I am going to follow up this letter and contact you by phone, or in person, or bye-mail to see when we can talk next.”  And you keep advancing that message and the relationship. If you leave a message, presume that the prospect is in fact getting your communication. Presume, in fact, that it will only be a matter of time before the two of you will affirmatively transact business. Your job is to keep making the deal easier, more dimensional, more understood.  Don’t be afraid to designate and retain someone to be your representative, and interface by phone or in person with that prospect.  Study again TSOP.

“I think it’s a great idea, and if it pencils out the way I think it will, it is going to be huge, but it may not. So let’s do a small test. But if it works I ask, for your benefit as well mine, that you agree to roll it out with me. If you would rather not, I will go somewhere else and you will be the loser. But if it works here I can take it a lot of different places.”

Example of restaurant chain that grew to $3M from scratch with no advertising funds.  We analyzed what it cost to give away a meal, and got them to give away lunches and dinners for two. We got three representatives who were appointed assistant managers. They went out to different prominent individuals, professionals, store owners, and specific leaders in the community. They gave them a certificate for two and said, “The best marketing we can do is to satisfy repeat diners. Because you are influential in the community, we would like to give you lunch or dinner for two.”  The average person brought two more people, so the restaurant made money on the free meal promotion anyway. I can’t remember what the numbers were, but if 100 people came back every day and redeemed the certificate, 50 of them came back many times over and they built a $3 million business.

Now, the health club — they should wish that everybody used it. They should wish that people came in, because they spend probably $50 to $100 per person right now to get people to just come in, and they spend another $50 or $100 per member just in commission to their sales people.  You can bring people in for a week, or a month, or a six-week experience, and it doesn’t cost them anything. A third, or a half, or a fourth of those people come in, and if they give away 1,000 invitational memberships, and only 100 come in… and they sign up 50 who spend $500 apiece – that’s $25,000 every quarter that they never would have had. How good is that?  It’s all a matter of positioning yourself, and educating the individual that it is in their best interest to do that promotion.

 

JV Deal Making Proposal Letters:  Note that one letter does not a deal make.  JV deal making is a process, one that requires skill, practice, patience, knowledge and a sense of opportunity, as well as timing. Do not assume for a moment that one letter will automatically turn you into a JV deal maker, no matter how well it is written.  Each deal is so unique, making it foolish to copy these letters word for word and use them as is.

Proposal Letter #1: Jay’s Own Proposal Letter:  To introduce Jay and propose a deal.  Note the posture, you attitude, CTA, general benefits only (although sometimes it is appropriate and suggested).

Date

 

Name

Title

Company

Address

City, State Zip

 

Dear <First Name>,

You may not know of me, but my name is well known to people in the business building arena.

I’m renowned for finding hidden assets, overlooked opportunities, under performing activities, lucrative new revenue streams, profit centers and cash flow bonanzas that have heretofore escaped you and your staff s awareness.

I’ve looked at your business from afar and seen something very, very potentially lucrative that I don’t think you see yet. If I’m at all correct, conservatively speaking, it could be worth an extra $750,000 to $12 million a year, net/net, in newfound income.  Again, if my premise is correct, it should be sustainable for years to come.

Just so you know, when I make such a prediction, it is one you can take seriously.

I have to my credit over $7.5 billion of profit increases and windfalls for companies large and small in 450 industries the world over. My ideas and revenue- and income generation have been validated and credentialized by people ranging from Anthony Robbins, Steven Covey, Brian Tracy… and by publications from USA Today, to Forbes, to Investor’s Business Daily.

I would like to more fully discuss and explain my idea to you, and I’m willing to do it without even binding you to a confidentiality agreement. I am probably the only one that can make this happen, both because I understand it so intimately, and I have the skill set and the success experience to pull it off.

It’s that lucrative. It’s that overlooked. And it’s that immediate…

It requires virtually no effort, no expense, no risk on your part. My staff and I would be doing 99.9% of the work. You would have total control–including controlling the money generated from my efforts. You and I would share in the profits, with you getting the lion’s share of the revenue generated.

It could be very, very lucrative. If what I have said intrigues you and you would like to talk further in detail, call me at I (310) 265-1840. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours truly,

 

Proposal Letter #2:  Your Letter of Introduction:  This letter is similar to the one above.  NOTE: DO NOT USE JAY’S NAME.

I am a specialist in engineering new profit centers, income streams and strategic alliances for companies around the country.

I have been trained by the man who is acknowledged as being the preeminent expert in the field, and who has been recognized by over 300 experts and 40 major business publications.

He taught me his proprietary methods and his approaches, and I have been able to use one of them to create an opportunity I do not think your business has ever recognized you are sitting on.

If I am right, it should be worth a meaningful windfall to your company in the six to seven figures, in short order. I tend to be conservative.

If I am wrong, it would be evident to us very quickly and with almost no energy expended on your part.

I have taken the time because I think it is something you will be very eager to pursue, once I lay it out for you in its entirety. So I have spent a lot of time putting together a plan of action, working through the elements—really detailing it all out.

I would be very pleased to give you a very quick short-course, big picture overview of my idea and all it entails–plus why the probability of the financial payoff I am projecting is quite realistic and conservative.

I will call you, your associate or your assistant early next week to share my schedule and see if there is a time that is convenient with you.

But you do not have to wait. You are both welcome to call me weekdays at (XXX) XXX-XXXX between (blank) and (blank) to work it out.

In conclusion, I should probably tell you that I modeled this concept on a successful version that my mentor turned into a $12 million-a-year profit center for one of his personal clients.

I cannot promise anything close to that for you, but I would think that given its successful lineage and heritage, it is something you would at least benefit from talking through with me.

Again, here is my number (XXX) XXX-XXXX. I look forward to discussing this new idea with you.

Yours truly,

P.S One more thing.  It is probably significant.

When we talk, I will provide you with total details, with the rational, with the formula of projection I used and the assumptions and complete details on the successful activity it is modeled upon. Then you will be free to make your own well-reasoned decision of whether you want to go forward or not.

 

JV Letter #3:  Proposal Letter for Doing a Joint Ventures Between Two Companies:  To introduce yourself and your company to another company.  The goal is to get a phone call to explain the details further.

My name is John Smith, and I’m the President of ABC Company.

My company is a well respected enterprise in the (blank) field. We are specialists in developing unique and lucrative strategic alliances with complementary companies who have monstrous potential that they have never mined.

It tends to fall in three different areas:

1.  Hidden assets that you don’t even know exist within your business and its distribution channels and selling systems;
2. Overlooked opportnnities that are so intangible that they’re totally overlooked by everyone in your organization–including you;
3. Underperforming activities that you’re heavily involved in, but unintentionally reaping or accepting only a fraction of the yield due to your lack of understanding of superiorly-performing alternative ways to accomplish the same thing.

Bottom line, after looking at your business from afar and from a very objective and clinical point of view, I’ve identified no less than five different areas of windfall profit and revenue-generating opportunity that we could engineer for you.

Stated differently, we could totally turn-key generate that profit for you with no effort, no expense and no risk on your part–but you’d keep the lion’s share of the profit.

I can’t promise this specifically, but my conservative assessment of the worth of the opportunity that I most want to talk to you about is in the $500,000-plus per year income potential for your business. I have the knowledge, and ability to easily pass whatever kind of due diligence or credibility check you may need to make.

The important thing is that I have identified a way to make your business conceivably and conservatively an extra half million dollars or more a year, every year, from today forward–with my company assuming all of the work, effort and risk.

I would like to talk to you about whether or not it’s something you would like to take advantage of. If you would like to talk further about this singular opportunity, I will make myself available to you.

Call me at I (XXX) XXX-XXXX and I’ll lay out the concept I have in mind for you. I hope what I have shared is intriguing. The opportunity for you could be very, very lucrative.

Yours truly,

 

Proposal Letter #4:  Specific Letter of Introduction.  To introduce yourself to a business owner.  Describe the problem, not the solution, and point out the small amount of time they are going to invest to learn more.  What makes this letter work is the knowledge you have about their business and the desire to make it more successful.

You have a business that runs ads all over the country.

I estimate that you generate thousands, or potentially tens of thousands of leads and prospective inquiries each and every month.

I have called in and tested your process. While I want to compliment you on your very capable salesmen and saleswomen, if the truth be known (and please take this with the utmost of respect and good intent), I believe you are leaving opportunity (and money) on the table.

Stated differently, I believe you can and should be making more revenue and more profit from the leads you already have in your possession…much more.

I’ve identified a way you can probably multiply the yield of those leads by no less than 40% more revenue than you are currently getting. That windfall revenue increase would be totally complementary to what you are currently doing, and would require no investment, no risk and almost no labor on your part.

Plus, it could be far more profitable than any other sales you could get.

I would like to layout my plan on the phone with you. The plan is one that I can do totally for you. I have it already mapped out and pretty well framed.

It will take me just six minutes by phone to explain it. It will take me a minute more to demonstrate why its success is almost near certain. It will take me 30 seconds more to layout the very simple, no risk, preferential proposition I want to make to you, and the reasons why we can verify it and validate the premise in a handful of days–before the month is over.

Call me at 1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX, and we can discuss your situation in detail and how I can help you. Rest assured, there no risk, no obligation or no investment required …

I really understand what you are trying to accomplish. I’ve thought about it long and hard. I understand the issues you would be concerned about. I would like to explain them. I can give you the projections you need, and I will tell you what I want in return.  And then you alone will decide.

Overall, I think you will be very impressed with the implications for your business. Let’s talk soon. You can contact me at 1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX.

Yours truly,

 

JV Letter #5: Limited Opportunity Proposal Letter.   This ”pray you get this and not your competitor” approach must be executed masterfully.  This creates a sense of urgency.  Use this type of letter when you really understand the JV opportunity and can explain in detail when you talk to the prospect how they will profit from your proposal.

I am writing you because I have recently looked at your (blank) industry, and realized there is a screaming opportunity that no one in it seems to have picked up on.

I have gone so far as to have analyzed ten of the top companies–including yours-in depth. I have studied the reputations, the cultures and the general operating approaches and principles of all ten. I have isolated your company as being the one company that would probably do the most with this opportunity… benefit the biggest… appreciate it the most… and generally, really get the most out of it.

That is why I want to talk to you initially, and give you the equivalent of “first right of refusal”–without any obligation on your part. I think when I lay it all out to you, you will be very appreciative that I decided to contact you first.

As for me and what I do, I’m a specialist in engineering new profit centers for companies like yours. I’m an expert on adding and augmenting new income streams and structuring profitable strategic alliances for companies around the country.

It would mean a lot to me to lay this concept out for you first, before I contact others. I think it would mean a lot more to you and your business. That is why I don’t want to chase you, but I do want to encourage you that the two of us to talk soon and work through the opportunity-again, without any obligation or commitment on your part.

For the next week, I am willing to refrain from discussing this opportunity with anybody else–not because I’m that benevolent, but because, selfishly and honestly, I believe your company is the best suited for it.

You will make the most from it. It will lend itself the easiest and the best to you and your company. It will be the most obvious to you, over everyone else. And it will make the most sense to you the moment I explain it.

Again, I would like us to talk during the next week to explore the opportunity and see if it is as big (and overlooked) as I believe it is. My number is (XXX) XXX-XXXX.

 

Proposal Letter #6:  Joint Venture — Proposal Letter.  For setting up deals for a business owner using lots of joint ventures to provide backend products and services for their customers.  And remember, the concept works both ways. You can use their products and services as a back end for other businesses.

I’m personally writing you because I have a great new profit center you can easily add to your current business.

It is guaranteed to get your current buyers to buy more things and spend more with you than they do now.

What’s great is that not one dollar of that expenditure will take away from the profits you currently make.

What’s great is that every new, windfall dollar I bring in to you will be more profitable than the ones you currently generate on your own.

What’s great is that I will do all the work to put the profit center together for you.

You can maintain total control of the profit center if you want. If I am right, you will make as much as X dollars or Y a month from my efforts, plus your customers will be delighted that you did.

And oh yes, this activity has the enormous side benefit of reactivating a ton of old, inactive buyers, plus it will appeal to new prospects and inquires who have never purchased before–and start them buying from you and you profiting from them in a big way.

Please call at your earliest convenience at 1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX to find out more.

 

Proposal Letter #7: Joint Venture — Long Proposal Letter.  Used when you have already talked to a prospect and they want a written proposal. (Do not send this type of letter without first establishing personal contact).  Notice that it lacks “legalese.” Notice that it is very conversational and specific. Notice that it is personal, yet still very professional.  Although written to an association, it could be applied to any organization with an affinity group.

Dear <First Name>,

<First Name>, here in simple terms is the overview proposal that I promised in our conversation yesterday.

It probably has a few areas that we need to discuss, but I think you will agree that I thought it through very carefully from the vantage point of your organization, and I’ve addressed the kinds of questions and issues that I presume I would want answered if the tables were turned.

Let’s start out by repeating the general concept, just so we are clear:

You have an organization with 87,000 members around the world. Those members are all business owners who struggle with competition, cash flow, with maximizing their competitive efforts and their revenue generating and profit activities. Your job as an organization is to provide them with opportunities, education and access to the very best technology, methodology and processes.

I have a service that has a documented 20-year history of helping business owners with the exact same profile as your readership to increase their bottom line performance on an average of 20, and as much as 100% per year. When it’s used correctly, it ends up being a total profit center, not a cost.

I have proposed that we collaborate to make my service available to your readers in a strategic manner, whereby I take on all of the responsibility for marketing, for communicating, for rendering, for guaranteeing, for administering the whole process.  However, your organization would reap the greatest benefit, because you would be sharing either equally or (whatever you put in there).

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go through the mechanics of what I have in mind.

Your organization communicates with your members in four different ways. You send e-mails. You send a monthly magazine. You have a biweekly e-mail newsletter, and you have written communication that you send out intermittently.

I propose that we create for the organization a combination of all four communications to be sent out in a systematic manner. It would introduce, explain and offer a very generous no-risk service that members who are interested in dramatically boosting their profit can avail themselves of for 90 days, without any risk on their part.

I further suggest that because our goal is to make this a supreme value-added benefit/service your organization renders, that we extend to them on your behalf (meaning your organization has, in essence, arranged, negotiated and secured for them) a significant price reduction off of normal market value.

Specifically, the service normally costs $10,000 which is payable in equal monthly installments of $500 a month for 20 months. I propose that we offer it to your organization for a (blank), 50% savings and for payments that would be even more generous. Obviously we can afford to do that because of the economies of scale, and because of the lowered acquisition marketing costs that we will incorporate as an advantage for them.

Moving on, do I think every one of your members will avail themselves of this service? Absolutely not.

It would be wonderful. But I’m expecting a mere 3% to 5%, though with 87,000 members, that means if I’m even close to being right, 450 companies will avail themselves of a $5,000 service, which is $2 million worth of revenue. Our fulfillment cost is approximately 15%, leaving 85% that we will share.

Now there will be a small quantity who will avail themselves of the service, won’t implement and execute, and will probably want to exercise their refund. That is fine with us, so you have to reduce it a little bit.

But in essence, what I’m saying here is if my assumption is correct–if the affinity relationship that your association has with your members is as strong and as creditable as I perceive, if we do our part (and we’ll have to, because you are going to maintain total editorial approval and control with everything we do and everything we say)…

There is a very real probability that we can generate $2 million of revenue of which $1.7 million is profit. Realistically, we can put a check for $865,000 in your bank account within the next nine months or less.

Parenthetically, it does take about three to six months to close the leads and we don’t want to apply too much pressure. We want to do it in a very understated and very professionally manner. Towards that end, however, in an effort to significantly enhance and grow response, we are eager to create an irresistible bonus report called “Forty-eight Overlooked Ways Any (whatever kind of business it is) Can Instantly Boost Revenues And Profits.” This report can be gifted to them on your behalf by us, which will probably double or triple response and thereby probably increase net profits to you by as much as 40%, or another $320,000.

There are no guarantees, but everything that I know to be true tells me that if we execute this correctly, it is going to be very, very profitable. Can I guarantee $1.8 million? No.

But if it is only half that, and we ended up giving your company a check for $400,000 it wouldn’t be that bad. What could you do? What would $400,000 mean?  Well, you currently have 87,000 members, but I did a little research and found that there are 250,000 manufacturers out there.

That means you don’t have the remaining 170,000 as members. You could use that $400,000 to mail those 170,000 three different solicitation letters. You could use it to get a sales force of 15 people out there in the field for a year. You could use it to call everyone ten times.

You could use it to buy everybody a three-month membership for any of a number of other things I will walk through with you. Or you could put it in your treasury to distribute bonuses to your staff and yourself. .. or to expand facilities … or upgrade equipment or computers … or to put on bigger tradeshows… or to fund regional educational activities … or you tell me.

The point is I have a service that is perfect for your organization. We have credibility, as I’ve mentioned and as I have included with this proposal, which you are welcome to verify firsthand yourself. We have unimpeachable integrity. We have a service that has a track record of monumental profit performance for literally everyone who ever used it correctly. But if somebody doesn’t use it correctly, we are perfectly content to let it be our problem, not theirs, and refund their money or not charge them.

We have a risk-free way that you can be a hero. It will not take a dime out of your pocket. It will tremendously enhance and augment the contribution you could make to your people.

There is a bonus. I studied your membership cost structure and it is based on the size of the revenue.

If we are successful and get a 20% to 100% increase in 400 more companies, that should bump up their membership fees by an extra $1,000 to $2,000 apiece, which could be an extra $400,000 or $500,000 a year to you that will only grow and prosper. Though it will grow for you, we won’t benefit at all from that.

That is the proposal. I propose that we agree in principle to do it in the next week or two. If you have a board that needs to review it, I would respectfully suggest and recommend that you allow me to present it either in person or by group conference call, not because I think you would do the proposal a disservice, but because it is so unique that the greatest advocate for it is obviously the person who gave birth to it.

Furthermore, I would be glad to personally stand for any due diligence or any questions anyone may have. Our timeline is probably the next six months. Month one, we will be preparing the marketing and submitting it to you for adjustment, approval or changes. In month two, we would probably start with the e-mails to gauge a response.  After that, we would probably go to on page advertising, or an insert in your advertisement. After that we would go to another e-mail.

Once you have read my proposal and your board of directors has had a chance to digest it, let’s talk. I’d like to move as quickly as possible, not because I want to rush the process, but I want to keep our momentum strong.

Call me this week and we can take the next appropriate step. I look forward to talking with you soon.

Your truly,

 

Proposal Letter #8:  Restaurant Proposal Letter.  This letter is very specific, but the format is general. It is used for doing a co-op advertising deal with a restaurant. In it, the deal and opportunity are quickly spelled out.  It would also work well as a script.

You have a really good business. I have been in your restaurant for lunch for the last three days, and I’ve counted 80 people, 70 people, and 90 people respectively. I have two questions that are very important:

1. If those numbers doubled or tripled, could you handle them?
2. Realistically, if those numbers doubled or tripled and stayed at those elevated levels, what would the increase in revenue be worth to your small business in a week, in a month, in a year?

No guarantees, but I think I have a way to deliver that to you–and I could even maybe deliver it to you in the off hours.

I know a little bit about the restaurant business. You have food costs of 15%, and your average ticket is $X. You are working on a gross profit of 80%, so you’re making $6 per head. If you added an extra 150 people a day, that would be $900 in additional revenue.

Here is my concept: I own control of prime advertising space in six buildings that has a combined lunch hour traffic of 22,000 people. Those people travel a maximum of 6.3 blocks to get lunch.

Your sandwich shop is three blocks from the furthest building, and that is the good news. But let me give you the bad news. I interviewed a very significant sampling of the last three days’ worth of traffic, and less than one out often people came from the areas that my buildings are situated in.

I would like to work out an arrangement with your sandwich shop where I put specific offers or general offers on my signage, and I risk most of my outcome on you. I want to get a modest fixed payment for the effort so that I know you are committed to it, and then I want to work out a deal with you where we try to gauge the potential increase.  I have a couple of ways I can do that–just by headcounts, by interviewing people as they come and go to where they work… any number of things. We can at least get a pretty accurate indication. If it is worth an extra $8 a sandwich to you, I would like to make the equivalent of $1.50 a sandwich converted to some kind of an easy basis or formula.

If that’s awkward, I’m willing to do one of two things: Sell you advertising outright right now for a fee. Or if you are at all skeptical or unsure of what the outcome would be, I would be willing to make you a combined deal where you would give me a modest amount now, and we adjust it to a fixed rate after we gauge what our advertising will do.

I have to tell you that I would only do this with you if I thought it would be worth at least an extra $3,000 a week in profit to you, which would be $1,000 to me. I don’t want $1,000 for the advertising right now. I’m willing to take only $250 a week right now, and I will assume 75% of the risk if you will assume 25%.

I would ask you to only do it for three weeks, because people have to gain awareness of your restaurant. At the end of three weeks, if we haven’t made a significant difference well above and beyond the cost to you, either in the cost of the fixed rate plus the variable, or if we need to adjust and agree upon a new fixed rate–you are welcome to stop and do nothing.

I would also entertain taking part or all of my fee in food credits, as long as I could assign it to third parties and sell it to offices for meetings and the like. We can discuss that.

If you can see the profitability for yourself in this type of arrangement, let’s you and I move on it. Contact me at 1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX. This is the type of deal which could be very profitable for you—very quickly.

Yours truly,

 

 

JV Strategy Consultation Transcript:  pg 412:

Tell us who you are… what you do… who you do it for … how you do it… what your marketing is… why you’re here.

Make sure you can pitch your product, that it is saleable.

Now the question is strategizing… getting your USP.  Go after the “big fish” and diversify.  Jay’s strategy would be a split. I’d go long term for Chet’s Dream 100 AND short for a Dream 1000, small ones. They would be a piece of cake to implement, because you’re going to need five of them and all of a sudden, you’re even and you’re out of Chapter 11.  The first thing is you’ve got to get your overall presentation strategy clear…  And ask a lot of questions… before you start pitching.

Consider trade associations, referral fees – either singular or a residual.  So Strategy One, the first filament or pillar, of your master marketing strategy has got to be, let’s identify out there, not just the biggest, but…  I’d go for the low-hanging fruit AND the biggest, and have a long-and a short-term strategy.  And I want to know who they are…  l would be diverse, because you don’t really care if it’s a publication, if it’s a newsletter, if it is an association, if it’s a business-to-business mail order company, if it’s a professional group…  First thing, you’ve got to figure out who you are trying to sell. Then I think you’ve got to create what you are trying to sell so that it is decisively, not just different, but turn-key — infinitely more appealing, and a no-brainer.

Now for the JV:

Now, I put myself in your place, and thought to myself, “What would the questions that Will would either consciously ask or should ask. Before I would think about it, before I make a decision?”

1. Number one, I would want to know about the people you serve.
2. Number two, I would want to know about the certainty that you’ve got this really done.
3. Number three, I want to see how long you’ve sustained those relationships.
4. Number four, I want to see the kind of money you are paying people.

From my perspective, your marketing strategy first of all, is to first figure out what everyone else doesn’t see, externally focused, not self-consumed. And then focus on that, number one.  Number two, is go to people with this concept that there’s no risk. It’s got to be really dimensionalized.  “Here’s what we think the issues and the problems are… Are we right?” And they’ll respect you for asking and then if you accurately assessed it.

Number two, is figuring out how to demonstrate to them that you’ve covered every base imaginable, but that they always have control.  And number three, that you realize that it’s a sustained process, and that you have all elements for that. But they always control it, and it’s not going to be offensive or overwhelming.  Number four, that over the course of doing this three, or four, or seven times, plus every time somebody comes in, plus even the expirees — You believe from experience that you are going to do a much greater job in getting buy-in than you’ve ever experienced — which will be good for their members, but it will also be not inconsequential for them.

Number four, you do talk about the economics, but you analogize it to something more tangible they can do with it.  Like they can… if it is somebody who works for an organization, they can use it to fund an initiative…or marketing…or reduce debt. If it’s an individual, $75,000 a month can fund a $20 million mortgage. It will pay whatever it will pay.  “It will pay for you and your wife, to put all seven of your kids in the best private school forever. It will pay for you to take ten trips around the world. It will pay for you to buy yourself the brand new Ferrari, or a 6008 Mercedes, and have an extra $70,000 a month left to do something else. And analogizing it, and analogizing it, and analogizing it, and analogizing it…”

And you have…and this is true…people will tell you this: I think the reason that my, not only marketing, but almost every other endeavor I ever did, such as selling, was successful — not just successful, but massively successful — is because my intent was right.   The meta-strategy is the level of caring and concern you bring to it.

Absolutely. And I submit that if you men and women get that and that alone, and you drive it through the mindset that absorbs, through just observation and experiencing it up here or on the phone, you can’t NOT have a more externally-focused, empathic and sensitive respectful…  Because that’s what it’s all about!  It’s about making their lives better. It’s about making their success more assured…

And if you talk about money, the reason that I correlate joint venture money to tangible actions is not merely because I know that metaphors, similes and picture examples are what drive people… but because I think in terms of what it could really mean to them, and that’s how I see it.  I see it as basically a chance to reduce their debt, or eliminate it. I have a chance at basically tripling their membership, because I can help them generate the money that they could use to hire a sales force … or run full page ads…or send out two million letters … or I can basically let this man and this wife have a lifestyle they never would have imagined -in the process of helping people.  And it’s all a very genuine attitudinal belief system that I live and translate into everything that I do.  And in multiple ways, because they don’t necessarily have the same value scale that you do. So if you think “Wow! They are going to want to put this into their pocket”… They may not. They may want to put it into something noble.  So you have to give them three, four, five very varied examples of how it could be translated, so you could have a shot of resonating with them.  And note: You want to have a sequential effort for it all.

For JVs:

Also, what I do is insinuate my bad self into their lives innovatively and say:  “We are going to do some really cool things that nobody else has ever done, like (and we’ll pay for it of course) …we are going to send tapes out. We are doing this. We are going to have a conference call. We are going to create a custom book on it for you.”

You have my permission to use my “process v. event” analogy which makes a difference in anything. You don’t get good at anything by an event. You get good by a process.

And one of the things 1 always try to do is preemptively attack the uncertainty, or the negative as a positive. I’ll say:  “Hey, let me tell you why most programs don’t work. Or let me tell you what most self-consumed companies out there don’t even sense. Or let me tell you the questions that I would ask, and questions I doubt if you would think to ask, that you should…”

Nobody does that, because they sort of want to skirt all that. I say this:  “Hey, we want a long term relationship. It isn’t going to be worthwhile if I’m bamboozling you, or you get 15,000 people and we screw up, and you hate our guts, and you lose it and we funded it all… put all our front end-loaded expenses in it, and all our capital in it, and everything, and all our hopes. Do you think we get anything out of it? And all your bad will in the world? We have nothing to gain and everything to lose. We’re more long term-oriented.”  “So we need you to know everything we think to make sure we are compatible. We need you to know where our brain is, and where our focus is. We are 100% long term-oriented. If you don’t win and sustain with us, we don’t win and sustain with you and your people… and that’s our primary focus.”

You “storyboard” it. You build that core story.

So you start off with broad information: “But one of those problems you are having is with telephone systems.” And then you go into another layer of why they fail and then you go, “Here’s how you make them succeed.”  And if I’m agreeing… It’s called the “head and pendulum.” “Yeah, I agree with that… Yeah, I agree with this …” And they are agreeing all the way down the line. If and when we get to here, at the bottom of this funnel, I call it “logical conclusion.” It’s pretty hard if you’ve been going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” to start going, “No!”

And then, I’d have the “how to buy,” and then that’s a set-up, whether they buy from you or not. Just like Jay said, “Whether you work with me or not, here’s the three or four things you’ve got to have in your telephone relationships … ”

And at that point you are ready to talk about “Now let me just tell you a little bit about how we work.” And you just pretty much set it up that you are the logical choice. And if you do a good job with this and I’ve offered the one that I’ve complimented on…

For hiring people:

There’s people in here… Superstars have a psychological profile. Top producers have a certain type of psychological profile. And they have it at whatever age.  When I went from movie theaters to selling furniture, I had the psychological profile at nineteen. So God bless you, if you would have gotten me at 19 and I could have tripled the sales of your business, instead of the furniture store business…  So those guys are out there, and a lot of them don’t realize it. So I put a low figure in the ad of $50K. We put $250K PLUS, and then it says, “Build an empire in our company.” It’s all these things that attract a certain type of mental type… the people who need an opportunity.   Put the ad in the paper. Have a big number in there. In other words, what will you pay Jay, or what could Jay make? Or what could I make if tomorrow I went to work for you, and I could bring you ten monster associations? What kind of money could I make?  The point is that there are people out there who don’t need a base salary.  There are guys out there.  You can have these ads running every other week, and you can cycle through. Even if they don’t work out, they’ll still bring stuff…

So the first part of your strategy is figuring out all the different entities and organizations are. The second part of your strategy is figuring out who has influence. The third strategy is building… by the way… if l were you, I would build at least the model marketing, before I’d try to talk to them because people are going to say, “Show me what you are talking about.” And then you are not going to have it. From the time they are interested, to the time you get stuff to them, there’s going to be lost torque.

A powerful concept will trump perfect execution.  You never do anything for the money.  First and foremost, it’s the value to the organization. If that is your guiding, driving force, you’ll never lose, because no one else operates that way.

“Who implements?” And I said it’s always the responsibility of the company setting up the strategic alliance. If you depend on the affinity group to implement, you might as well go into another business.  If you depend on it to be as important to them as it is to you, it will not be. If you think they will execute anything correctly on a timeline, they won’t. And you just naturally assume that and take the responsibility away from them, but make darn certain you always communicate to them that you are basically going to do things turn-key.  But they will always have total editorial approval. They won’t care.  But it makes them feel like you are not trying to take over, or exploit negatively their organization.  You have to realize it’s a secondary stream to them, and sometimes they get wrapped up in their primary business.

 

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