3 simple steps to creating partnerships for your business

I remember the good old days, years ago, when I first started off in business. Here I was with no experience, no business background, no knowledge on marketing, financials, budgeting, or putting systems or process in place. I didn’t even have a business plan.

However I knew one thing: I couldn’t spend my time getting one new customer at a time or it would take me decades to reach my target. Therefore from Day One I asked myself “who else has my clients” and “how can I get them to share them with me.”

Regardless of your background, your financial literacy, whether you understand Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, apps, CRM systems; it doesn’t matter, all you need to understand in order to make sales instantly is how to create partnerships with people that have your own clientele.

Partnering with people isn’t new, it isn’t fancy, but it works and is the cheapest way to start making money in your business. However there are some simple rules to follow to ensure you have success.

1. You need to find the right sort of people to partner with

Not everyone thinks the same way as you and are happy to partner. Funnily enough, there are people out there that want to do it the hard way all by themselves and it’s fine to recognise that and move on from them. Make a list of 50+ people that you could partner with. People who sell to the same sorts of clients you sell to, people that have communities, clients and networks.

2. Speak to these people

Message them via email, social media message, etc to see if they are interested in creating some sort of collaboration. This message is just about setting up a meeting, phone call or chat to talk over the ideas and thoughts. To see where the collaboration exists and if it is a person you actually want to partner with. The people who answer you are serious and they’re the ones you want to work with first.

3. Create a mutually beneficial plan

If, after step two, you feel there is some good synergy, then it’s time to create an action plan to follow. What are you going to do for one another? How you are going to do this? What small steps need to be put in place to make the grand plan work? Quite often people get excited at this stage and look at the big picture, but forget to break the plan down into doable steps. That’s when the plan will fail.

So there you go: in three simple steps you will have identified who to partner with, spoken to them about such an opportunity and put a plan in place with the right people. Imagine if you did this with five people, ten people, twenty people? How quickly would you find new customers and make new sales.

The best part about the above? It can all be achieved within just a few days.