Approaching Powerful JV Partners Part Three

So far in this series we’ve looked at how to make a persuasive approach to prospective joint venture collaborators. In the final article in the series, Robert Puddy leaves us with his parting words on what to do if we get a no and how to turn it into a yes.

Enjoy rejection

OK, nobody likes rejection. But successful joint venturers always appreciate it. Every knock-back is useful feedback on your offer, helping you hone it and shape it little by little. Thinking about rejection positively means that you’ll be able to handle it professionally, and is in fact your first step to getting a ‘yes’ next time.

If your chosen guru doesn’t agree to promote your product, simply thank him or her for considering your proposal and say “There’ll be another opportunity for us to work together, I’m sure.” In the next breath, offer them something for free. Choose one of the elements of your original reciprocal deal and say you’ll do it anyway.

Say for example, While I understand you cannot promote my product right now, with your permission, I’m going to add your product to my download page so you can get a better idea of who I am for the next time that I ask.

Consider giving complimentary access to your product as well.

Give a little to get a lot

Isn’t that beautiful? Bear in mind that this is not normally what happens when someone gets turned down: typically you would expect some kind of grumpy resentment. But if you can say Okay, I understand that right now I’m not successful enough, but I want to get better acquainted with you so I’ll do half of what I said I’d do, with no strings attached, you will be making yourself memorable. When you approach them next time around you will have reduced the likelihood of a second rejection simply by being on their radar.

This kind of attitude shows that you’re interested in working with this JV partner in the long term. You also now have an opportunity to prove what you’re worth: if you’ve offered to put them in a prominent position on one of your sites and they see that they’re actually paying you commissions every month, the next time you ask him to become a JV partner, there’s a 90% chance that you’ll get a ‘yes’.

Beef up your profile

While I strongly object to making a loss, the primary reason I speak at Internet Marketing seminars is not to make money. I try to cover at least my expenses through post-event sales, but my main objective in speaking, hosting or facilitating industry seminars, is to raise my profile within the community.

Why?

Because it makes it a whole lot easier for me to get some of the JV partners that I want to promote my websites.

I’m not saying that you should rush out and offer yourself up for speaking engagements; it’s not something you’re ready for until you have a lot of experience.

However, if you’re getting a string of refusals from your JV prospects, you probably need to take some proactive steps to raise your profile so that you make a stronger imprint in your niche. Whether it’s contributing to more discussions, commenting on more blogs or articles, you need to have more of a voice. Get networking!

And unfortunately folks, it’s no good dropping one-off comments or posting sporadically in a forum and considering the job done. Like traffic generation, building your profile is something you need to incorporate into your daily or weekly routine so that you’re incrementally enhancing your reputation in the IM community. Little and often is the way to go.

How to get JV partners to approach you

I’d like to leave you with one final trick up your sleeve: preferred partners. Done well, this can make potential JV partners actually beg you to let them promote your products! Here’s how.

First, create a new status of partnership – preferred partners. Allow these partners to offer their subscribers or members, a discount on your product. Here’s their first incentive: it makes them look good in the eyes of their members or subscribers. They can say, Normally, this product is $197 but for you, we have negotiated a discount of 30% if you go through our link.

Second, promise to tell everybody who visits your sales page that they can get a 30% discount on your product if they sign up on your preferred partner’s website first. Ta-da… their second incentive: in essence you’re going to be sending your interested buyers to their site for a discount code to use when they come back to your site to buy.

Third, tell them that as a preferred partner they also get commission on each completed sale. Spot the third incentive…

That is a huge difference between just being a JV partner and a preferred partner. That’s a permanent traffic stream of committed buyers from your site to the preferred partner’s site and back again. Most JV partners will see how powerful that offer is right away.

When you’re up and running with a couple of preferred partners, put it right up front on your sales page: The price of this product is normally this much but, if you’re a member of our preferred partner site, you can get this 30% cheaper. Give them a link where they can check out the sites offering that discount.

The word quickly spreads. As soon as you set up a few preferred partners, the phone will get busy. People see that your product is available considerably cheaper if customers go via a preferred partner route. We found that over a six-month period our list of partners went from three to 60 and nearly half of them had actually approached us!

Ready to play the finest game in internet marketing?

If there ever was an effortless way to make a profit on the internet, JVs might just be it. Once you’re up and running, JVs supercharge your marketing by giving you instant access to huge numbers of potential customers. Collaboration is a great way to do business and since you only pay commission on actual sales, what do you have to lose?

As they say… nothing “joint ventured”, nothing gained.

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Robert Puddy is the author of The LFMpire Coaching class…A course designed
to make you out promote other affiliates By Outsmarting Them. No matter what
skill level your at…

Use the little steps and tricks the super affiliate uses to get bigger commissions sell
more products and virtually spank all his affiliate competition into surrendering
http://lfmpirebuilders.com
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One response to “Approaching Powerful JV Partners Part Three”

  1. Alan Morrison

    Hi Robert, think your blog is generally quite good If anything I would focus on in my view, is to be as short specific and to the point with what you are talking about as possible, otherwise people tend to get bored and move on.

    This is what we were taught at college and uni in all our coursework. If you look at all the squeeze pages from American online marketing people they ramble on page after page, end result people get very bored and click away. Hope this helps.

    All the best,
    Alan.