To say there are thousands and thousands of prospective joint venture partners out there is an understatement. In actual fact there are probably millions.
Of course, you don’t need millions. You need just one. And to maximise your chances of success (and, of course, maximise your profits) you need to find notanyone but the very best prospective partner in that particular field.
So, golden rule number one : Be selective. Target, find and approach only the very best prospective joint venture partners.
Unfortunately, some business owners believe that competition is bad news. And, for many business owners, it is. But joint ventures thrive because of competition. You need to target prospects who understand that working with a close competitor is not a bad thing – but a very good one indeed. Although not everyone you target will be willing to joint venture with you, the most promising prospects will jump at the chance to become your partner – if you target them properly.
Step One:
Before you even attempt to go out and put together a JV deal you must be able to spot who your likely prospective partners are. Here are some questions to ask yourself now:
- If I was a customer for this product or service, what companies would I be looking for?
- Who else is selling lots of products similar to ours?
- Who is our direct competition?
- Where do our ideal customers go online?
- Who publishes content to our target market?
The answers to questions like these will lead you to ideal JV partners – especially when you consider partnering with your competition.
Step Two:
The second step is to choose the very best prospects, from amongst the many available to you.
Think of it this way: Joint ventures are the ultimate form of no-risk advertising because your partners do all of the marketing for you in exchange for a share
of the profits. You only have to pay when a sale is made. So in many ways joint ventures operate just like a normal affiliate programme – except that they are much,
much more powerful! In a normal affiliate programme only about 10% -15% of your affiliates will actually do any selling. This 10%-15% of affiliates will probably account for 85%- 90% of your sales. The other 80% of your affiliates will probably produce some occasional sales while the rest will never make any sales at all.
So, logically, in order to operate successful joint ventures you don’t just need ordinary affiliates but you need the cream of the crop – or ‘super affiliates’ as you might like to call them. By super affiliates we mean partners who have the marketing know how and resources to sell a large volume of your product or service on a consistent basis.
These super affiliate JV partners can be identified by three different characteristics:
- Those who have a website with high monthly traffic that targets the market you are working in.
- Those who have a large enough opt-in list to sell a large volume of your product/service in a short amount of time, such as an e-zine owner.
- Someone in the market place who consumers trust when it comes to making buying decisions.
The key to more success (and more profits) is to continuously find and recruit these highly productive partners to work with. So, whenever you are looking for more partners, check them off against each of these criteria. The result will guide you direct to the door of your perfect partners!
