In the previous article, I wrote about referrals. I noticed that referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate leads quickly, better than personal branding and content production. There’s no harm in building trust but the process is just too freaking slow. From my own experience in creating the referral program and pushing the strategy through, I’ve generated 2 leads in October which both of them are now with us as customers. That’s not bad, really.
Another highly effective method, and potentially even faster than referrals, is establishing strategic partnerships. If you must know, this is even faster than referral. Do both in parallel and don’t do either or. The way you should approach partnership is like this. Run a research, find the first batch of 5 businesses that you can complement them with. The best way to select those businesses is to find those that already have existing customers. The idea here is to tap into their customers by working together with the business as a partner. Offer your products or services to the customers through that partner. Here, everybody wins. The other consideration you must consider when choosing a partner is their reputation. They must have at least a decent and positive reputation in the industry so that it will safeguard you from future problems.
Start small by working with the first 5 partners first. Understand the process, find the gap, improve the communications and refine the offer to suit the customers’ requirement. In short, both your products and services must complement and support the partner’s products and services well to make it work smoothly. Then only, you add another 5 new partners once everything is stabilised.
