Want to know the secret to reaching 20X more people with your marketing message and get phenomenal results for your business?
One word: COLLABORATION
According to dictionary.com the word ‘collaboration’ means to work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort. That really says it best. To work TOGETHER with one or several who are interested in the same cause, mission and outcome that you are. Collaboration allows both parties to do more and better than they would on their own. By working with others in your community, you can take your business, your influence and your marketing to a whole new level. Begin developing collaborations immediately. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the relationships I’ve formed and will form due to collaboration are so much bigger than I could do on my own; not double but more like 20 times! That’s synergy… the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Let’s get started right away. Make three columns on a piece of paper or poster board. Title the 1st column Familiar, the 2nd column Unknown Known and the 3rd Well Known. Here’s what they mean. The Familiar’s are the folks you do business with regularly. They may be a chiropractor, massage therapist, the coffee shop owner in the mall, or the doctor you take your kids to.
The Unknown Known column consists of those you want to collaborate with, and are known in your market, but that you don’t know yet. This may be the most aggressive physician in town, the owner of the women’s clothing store that does the most business or even the manager of the most crowed supermarket. Get someone to introduce you. Now get something here. I’m referring to relationships with people, not just businesses. That’s the biggest difference between collaboration and business or charity co-oping. Relationships can then equal opportunity. Collaboration doesn’t happen well from simply one, cold introduction. It can if the other person is success-minded, looking for growth opportunities and open to new ideas, but it really occurs when the other person knows something about you. If your business is known in the area, it can happen faster with the Unknown Known group.
Like I said, this is not like collecting lives (leads). With that, you just help the promoter or advertiser with what’s important to them. You help them by raising money or building their business, and you then help the person attending the event or showing patronage to the business with what’s important to them, all with the single purpose of getting the message out.
The third column consists of the Well Known. These are the people in your town everyone knows. You need to get to know them. They could be in politics, they may own factories or they could be attorneys that have practiced for generations. You need to get to know them because there might be a relationship there, and they can probably connect you to many, many others.
Once these lists are complete, decide what kind of collaboration can take place. How can you cooperate with each other to build each other’s business? Remember, we’re not talking about just collecting lives. We’re talking about feeding, supporting and building each other’s businesses. Think about doing a talk show, teaching them about products they can give their patients or customers, sending out cooperative newsletters. You can get your mind moving by thinking about the cause or mission of each business and how you can help one another.
I want to make one very important point. The other business should NOT be a struggling one. Collaboration brings enormous success because it’s done by like-minded people. It’s done with folks who ‘get’ marketing, who ARE marketing and who want to market in bigger and more result-producing ways. Remember, in business and in life, we become who we hang around. Hang around people who are doing better than you’re doing in a different area and get involved with them. The results will be amazing.
Ready To Get Started?
I’d like to help you get started collaborating for yourself, with a free gift. It’s an audio recording of a teleseminar I did with my good friend Steve Harrison called Collaboration Connection.
On the call I go more detail and give some great examples you can use to get started and get the best possible results from your efforts.
Grab your Free copy of Collaboration Connection Now!
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