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Create Strategic Alliances

Guest post by: Terri Levine

Article Overview: Creating strategic alliances with other small business owners is an excellent way to build your business while keeping your costs low.

Create Strategic Alliances

The goal of building a referral-based business is that your clients will refer to you and that other business owners will refer to you. Referrals are a reciprocal relationship. You help me and I'll help you. Since I want to meet new people and expose more people to coaching, it's important to me to form strategic alliances with the databases of other businesses that I would like to work with.

I know the businesses that I use on a regular basis because they offer extraordinary products or services. I think my customer base would love to know who I use and experience the same type of service. I'm certain that the vendors and other professionals that I utilize would love to be introduced to my client base as well. By establishing strategic alliances, I form a proactive way to refer people in my customer base to other businesses and professionals. It also is a way of adding even more value to my current clients and serving them by sharing the exceptional people in my network with them.

Using the concept of reciprocity, strategic alliances also train other professionals how to refer to me. I recommend forming strategic alliances with 8 - 12 people. These are the professionals that you do business with that return calls promptly, that have extraordinary quality of work, that do things right the first time, that offer fair prices, and excellent customer service.

You may be wondering, in a coaching practice, how does this work? For example, at Comprehensive Coaching, we serve clients internationally. So what good is recommending my massage therapist here in Pennsylvania to my clients in the UK or the Philippines or California? The professionals that I utilize in my strategic alliances are professionals that can provide services to my clients internationally. For example, my printer can download files off the Internet from any of my clients, do an outstanding printing job for them at incredible prices, as he does for me, and can mail this anywhere in the world. So he is one of my strategic alliances.

I make it a point to meet with my strategic alliances on a regular basis. In fact, I recommend meeting with them once a month, maybe for an early morning breakfast meeting. We're our own little referral group to decide and determine how we can best make referrals to one another. I put together a strategic alliance mailing to my clients on a fairly regular basis. You can do this as often as once a month. This would be a value add for your clients where you simply list the best of the best resources for them. You might also incorporate tips within this newsletter or flyer that someone in your strategic alliance group writes for you. Because there is a cost involved in writing and developing this type of newsletter and strategy, you can actually charge members of your strategic alliance to cover the cost. Something like $30 or $40 a month per strategic alliance would probably allow you to do a pretty terrific mailing or newsletter.

You can even feature one of your strategic alliances each month doing a different one and profiling one. For example, I might profile my printer by a letter that introduces my printer and the kinds of service he's provided me and the pricing, and how he can do this on an international basis. My printer may even want to put a coupon or certificate at the bottom of my letter that would be a real value add to my clients. Then on the back of this letter would be the other ads of services from the other people in my strategic alliance. It is critically important that you trust the people in your strategic alliance to absolutely, positively, 100% of the time deliver extraordinary service to your clients. If there's any doubt, leave them out!

I make it a point each week, to think of who in my strategic alliance group I can make referrals to. My goal is to enhance their business the way that they are enhancing my business and referring people to me. It's all about reciprocity.

Coaches can even form strategic alliances with other coaches. For example, if you don't work with restorative clients, you may do a strategic alliance with a coach that specializes in restorative coaching. Or, if you know a coach who is a coach and also has a clinical therapy practice, you may be able to promote their therapy practice service for them. Don't be afraid to think outside the box on this.

I know a coach who specializes in health and wellness, who did a strategic alliance with a dietician, with a personal trainer, and with a hypnotist. Everyone in this person's alliance has the same mission and purpose in mind. What a great service and value to the clients.

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Article Tags: alliances, create alliances, entrepreneur, partnerships, small business, strategic alliances



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