For example, in working our prospects we typically have a four to five day sales cycle but when it comes from a JV source and its accompanied by a referral the sales cycle can be as short as one to two days. That makes a huge difference when you’re pumping out a lot of deals.

The downside of JVs is they take a bit longer to setup because you have setup the JV, figure out exactly the best way to work together and to add value to each other’s business and then penetrate their client list with your offer which takes a bit longer.

However, that being said, once the JV is setup you can have a PHENOMENAL source of prospects for a very long time to come.

Examples:

I have a friend who’s in the mortgage business and he setup five different JV sources and that made him the #2 mortgage specialist in his district. All he did was approach real estate agents and told them they should establish a mutually-beneficial relationship where they can refer business to each other. He referred them business and they referred him business. From scratch he created a six figure income for himself which took a few months.

I built a chain of five clinics specializing in alternative health care and it was very common for us to work with doctors and other health professionals to share clients. I took this concept one step further and established a variety of JVs with corporations so they could send their employees to our clinics. With this corporate JVs I was able to promote our service via their newsletter, I did in-house promotions and gave them a lot of complimentary health services which they were thrilled about. Over the course of a few years I built up over 60 JVs which results in over 3000 clients visiting our clinics.

Another example would be the time I built and sold a residential cleaning service company. I had set a vision to build a company that produced a six figure income and sell it in one to two years. I setup JVs with several other “contractor” type companies like carpet cleaners who referred their clients to us. It was mutually-beneficial and as a result I built and sold this company in exactly twelve months.

With Gerry Robert and his FREE Millionaire Mindset Course, I established a JV with someone in England which included Gerry and his offer to 400,000 person mailing list.

With my chain of health care clinics I establish a JV with a local newspaper to create my own column which ran for a whole year and did not cost me a penny!

I broadly categorize JV partners as either “Referral Sources” or “Publishing JVs”. Publishing JVs are great to provide exposure and an opportunity to position yourself in the marketplace. If you can compliment a publishing JV with a good call-to-action and drive people to a capture page you can expand your leads and then turn those leads into prospects.

Building JVs takes a personal touch. You have to build a solid relationship and then work with that person to find out the best ways to work together and make it a mutually-beneficial relationship. That’s the catch! Mutually-beneficial is the word!! That means it works for both of you. This does not always mean money.

I’m working with Management Consultants right now to form JVs and we’re providing the opportunity to do an exchange of service which will lead to more business for them but also it will differentiate them from other management consultant which again will lead to more business for them so it’s a win-win for both of us.

If you have a good network of personal and business contacts, start there. If you don’t then start networking! Go to Chamber of Commerce, Board of Trade, Meetups, Charitable events, 40 under 40, business journal events, mayors breakfast or any other networking event. Just Google “Networking Event, <insert your city>”.

Another good source of leads for JVs (or prospects) is your local newspaper. In my case I focus on the business section because that’s my target market. Do this:

1. Pull out your local newspaper
2. Find the business section and find articles relevant and written about businesses in your community
3. Print out those articles and write a sticky note (yes the yellow paper type) and send a copy of the article to the person who’s being featured. In the note congratulate them and tell them you want to meet, include your phone number.
4. Call them to follow up (but don’t chase them!)
5. Rinse and repeat!

You will get bites on this approach. I know because I’ve done it! Do the same with the editor or columnist. That’s how I got my own column which ran for a whole year!

See here… I went into this little community and found in this single article 5 leads that I could contact. I PDF the article, print it out and put a sticky note on it. I did this in PDF just to give you an example but you would print, sticky note and send! Then don’t forget to follow up and don’t be afraid to give them some “value-first”. Attach an article or whitepaper or something that will be of value to them!

Download example here – How to get JV leads from your local newspaper

Jean-Guy (JG) Francoeur
Author, Answers You’re Aching To Know
Vice-President, Business Development
Black Card Marketing Group 

P.S. If you have a question or want to JV – fill out this form.

Tip #3 – Automatically Qualify Prospects and Convert Them to Customers

Converting your leads from prospects to paying customers is the end goal of online marketing.  Most people don’t do it right.  Here are some tips to make sure you are successful:

• Create follow up sequences that enable you to automatically qualify (or “temporarily” disqualify) individuals that have shown initial interest in your product or service
• Follow-up sequences should include various multi-media approaches (email, direct mail, audio, etc.)
• Systematically (and continuously) test, track and optimize your various marketing campaigns
• Utilize one-time offers that create a sense of urgency and scarcity

Need more help or someone to Do It For You – get DIFY Marketing! Our money-making 1formula: We do 5 things: Generate Traffic (a lot of eye balls), Capture Leads (build a database so you can market to them long-term), Qualify prospects (eliminate tire kickers so people you talk to are ready, willing and able to buy), Convert Sales (money for you in your bank!) and Nurture (create long-term customers who give you raving review and generate a massive amount of referrals)

This blog post was written by Andy Horner on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 6:03PM

As a salesperson, your blog is at the heart of the value you offer your customers. It’s the "open 24 hours" expertise hub, where your customers can gain wisdom, advice, and solutions that will help them make more money. The value of your blog posts influences their appreciation for you and their loyalty to your personal brand. Your blog helps separate you from your competitors – you know, the order-takers. It’s the platform where you slowly but surely establish yourself as a guiding force and go-to leader in your market.

But first, you must build a readership from your customer base and your social media network. If you promote it, they will come!
Start promoting your blog…

1. In your ezine and emails. After you add a new post to your blog, it’s time to promote it. Feature it in your next ezine or email it in a Branded Email from Ace of Sales. Ask your recipients to post a comment and make sure you include a subscription link to your blog’s RSS feed, so they can get your blog posts as soon as you post them.

2. In partner ezines. Chances are, several of your partners are forward-thinking enough to publish their own ezine too. Offer to promote them in your ezine, for the opportunity to publish your article (one of your blog posts) in theirs. A little back-scratching will help you fill up your ezine and give you exposure to a new contact base.

3. With your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts. To drive traffic to your blog, tweet your blog post titles with links to your blog! Do the same thing on Facebook and LinkedIn. Video yourself introducing a featured blog post and add it to your YouTube channel. Add a link to the post in the video title or notes area. Here’s another idea – tweet insightful comments posted to your blog by your readers along with a link to your blog.

4. By networking on other blogs. Participate on other blogs in your industry or region by becoming a regular commenter. By contributing to their community and conversations, you’ll earn the opportunity to invite them to visit yours. Many blogs will allow you to enter your website when you post your comments. Enter your blog’s web address or the link to one of your specific blog posts. The key here is to attract others to your blog because of the value you offer. Do not post comments like this: "Nice post, visit my blog here…" That’s not networking. That’s spamming.

5. On your business card. Most salespeople only include their company website on their business cards. But does your company website demonstrate to your customers that you’re an articulate professional, a thinker, or an expert who can help them make money? Get your blog address printed on your business cards! When you hand your card to a new contact with great customer potential, tell them to visit the blog tomorrow for a special message. That afternoon, post a shout out to them on your blog (first name only) and email them a link to it.

6. On EzineArticles.com. It’s a popular, widely-used Internet service that allows anyone to submit articles to their site. If they approve your article, it’s added to their repository and categorized by your industry. EzineArticles.com allows anyone to publish your article in their ezine for free. It’s like an open, public syndication. Why would you do this? EzineArticles.com requires people who use your article to credit you and include a link to your website in their ezine. This is a great way to gain widespread exposure to your blog.

Tip #2 – Capture More Leads

Lead capture is the most essential piece of marketing online.  Here are a few tips on how to capture more leads from prospective customers that are arriving at your site:

• Optimize the layout of your website and blog
• Create landing and sales pages with well-written copy
• Offer an attraction marketing device (white paper, free report, info product) as an incentive for the customer to provide their contact information

Create good-looking, well-placed webforms to capture contact information

Need more help or someone to Do It For You – get DIFY Marketing! Our money-making formula: We do 5 things: Generate Traffic (a lot of eye balls), Capture Leads (build a database so you can market to them long-term), Qualify prospects (eliminate tire kickers so people you talk to are ready, willing and able to buy), Convert Sales (money for you in your bank!) and Nurture (create long-term customers who give you raving review and generate a massive amount of referrals)

I find it fascinating that modern day marketing techniques (call it marketing 2.0) has reached bigger businesses. Look at ING Direct Canada a good size bank with branches all over the globe using a “launch sequence” to promote their new chequing account.

More evidence that marketing 2.0 and social media are here to stay because even big companies that could afford to pump millions into traditional advertising are opting for marketing 2.0 tactics (social media, blogging, conversation building, community building and so much more).

This is their traffic driving page: http://www.your185.ca/v/

This is their webpage (notice the connection between the message and URL): http://www.your185.ca/

Interesting facts:

• They are using twitter to build conversation
• They are using Flickr to keep visitors engaged in their “local” celebration
• They are using a webcast to announce new details
• The traffic driving page is a very “down-to-earth” kind of video, no fancy stuff
• Above the fold is just a video which almost appears to be a “live feed” although I don’t think that’s the case, it’s still cool
• The webpages are very clean and professional, no clutter
• Notice how the twitter conversation and Flickr is what I call “natural social proof”. It’s not a direct testimonial but still acts as social proof – very powerful (you can also do this with blog commenting)

I would of done some things differently and I know Jeff McLeod, our VP Marketing, will have great feedback especially about the social media component.

Jean-Guy (JG) Francoeur
Author, Answers You’re Aching To Know
Vice-President, Business Development
Black Card Marketing Group

Here are five solid insider tips that will help you make your business more social, connect with customers, energize fans and attract prospects:

Track Your Blog with Google Analytics – If you’re starting out your blog, it’s a good idea to measure the traffic with free website tracking provided by Google Analytics. You’ll discover useful data like bounce rates, time on site, trends and a lot of helpful data that serves as feedback. That helps us see how you use our blog, what you like and helps me make decisions about the blog. Nothing invasive — it’s aggregate data — individual privacy is still upheld.

Social Media Strategy: Identify Your Goals – I know this is beating a dead horse but it’s so crucial. Spend at least a few moments thinking about what you actually want from your small business’ social media activities. Sometimes it’s revenue; sometimes it’s entertaining discussion; sometimes it’s brand and buzz building; sometimes it’s customer service. It can be any (or none) of these and that’s perfectly fine. Knowing the goals, the strategy can be developed without too much Tylenol. For a few ideas, Dosh Dosh suggestssocial media goals to aim for.

Be Involved and Discover Your Community – Online communities are a powerful way to connect with leaders in your space. Communities frequently rally around a narrow set of topics and causes and people identify with each other. This helps weed out the interference and make connections that matter. Forums are popular, Tweet-Chats are growing in popularity, Facebook Community Pages may be next. A good example of online community that I referred to is Warrior Forum for entrepreneurs and Internet marketers.

You Can Be Great at Social Media and Not Use Twitter – In response to a question was about “What do you tell a business owner who doesn’t use Twitter to use Twitter?” This gives rise to the sense of overwhelm among business owners and I cant blame them. I made it a point that you don’t need to use Twitter to effectively use social media. Sure, it has 93 million users, over a billion Tweets, but it’s still only one channel to listen and engage with others. Here’s that Twitter Guide for Small Business that Twitter published for small business owner I mentioned during the show.

Think Critically – but Optimistically – About Your {Insert Social Media Device Here} – In this case, I picked on blogs, but it applies to any activity in social media. Gather the data, use the data to help ascertain conclusions and always work to improve the results. It helps to measure your content in context to “useful” (e.g., Wikipedia) and “interesting” (e.g., TMZ) so you can create awesome content. Exercising disciplined optimism in your social media activities is crucial – you won’t have overnight success, but you should be seeing results as you are consistently pushing out great content that engages, helps and inspires people.

Now it’s your turn – Go to work!

Jean-Guy (JG) Francoeur
Author, Answers You’re Aching To Know

Tip #1 – Generate More Traffic to Your Website

Traffic generation is one of the most important elements of getting more customers through online marketing.  Here are a few tips on how to make sure you are maximizing the amount of traffic being directed to your site:

• Become the #1 authority in your local market for your product or service by showing up at the top in local search, natural search and PPC ads
• Use social media to get the “buzz” going locally.  Make your presence known on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Write articles and record videos, podcasts and slide show presentations; then strategically distribute/publish them to top sites using proper SEO

Create your business listings online in the major directories (such as Yahoo) and the local directories (such as Local; Localize); then submit to review directories (such as Kudzu, Yelp)

Need more help or someone to Do It For You – get DIFY Marketing!

Until recently sales were flat! That’s a scary thought for internet marketing across the globe.

Now the numbers are in and sales of Old Spice Body wash are up 107% in the last month. It looks like Social Media FTW!

Read the entire post on Christina L Hug’s blog.

Some smarty-pants email marketers (please tell me you’ve never tried this) replace vowels with numbers in the words of their subject lines to try to get by with using "spammy" terms. Spammers have been doing this forever and still do it everyday! Therefore spam filters have their zappers set to kill for terms like these. Don’t do it – never ever! If you’re tempted to try this technique, I recommend a little self-assessment. Email is not meant for solicitation. It’s meant for valuable communication and relationship building.

Here are a few ugly examples:

• FR33
• Sp3cial
• W1n
• Pr0m0tion
• A M3ssag3 Fr0m
• 0ff3r
• Cl!ck H3re
• 0n3 T1me

How are you taking advantage of your knowledge?

I have been a student of sales since November 11, 1971. I was listening (via the brand new voice technology called the "cassette tape") to a guy named Jay Douglas Edwards, who uttered the sales tip, "If the customer says, ‘Do these come in green?’ you say, "Would you like them in green?" Cool.

That’s the day I realized that there was a science of selling. I wanted to learn more.

I will admit that most sales skills and sales tips taught in the 1970′s were somewhat manipulative. But at the time that’s all that existed. Over the last 40 or so years sales models have changed.

Probably the best example of change I can offer you comes from a column I wrote several years ago about the "Benjamin Franklin close."

You can get that column in its entirety by going to http://www.gitomer.com/articles/ColumnSearchResults.html and entering the keyword: Franklin.

Basically what the column says is rather than use an old, time-worn manipulative sales close on the customer, try using it on yourself before you go into the sale as a means of preparation.

I have read all or portions of hundreds of sales books over the past 40 years, but most of what I have learned has come from the spark of an idea gleaned from a book, and then it was somewhat altered once I got out into the field and had to actually apply the strategy. Kind of like you.

All sales books offer some form of valuable information. All sales experts offer some form of valuable information. As a student, your job is to determine how that information fits into your skill set, your environment, your marketplace, and your customer interactions.

Learning sales skills is a matter of understanding, adoption, application, and a bit of tweaking.

In my experience I have found that unless the tip or strategy is comfortable to me, I won’t use it. It has to fit with my personality and be in the framework of my comfortable conversation and ethics.

HOW TO READ: As a reader myself, I am challenging you to look at the ideas you read with an open mind, and strike from your mind the phrase, "I know that." Most salespeople already know everything. The problem is they don’t do it.

I would rather have you ask yourself, "How good am I at that on a scale of 1 to 10?"

Then ask yourself:

• How does this information apply to me?
• Do I agree with this?
• Am I comfortable with this?
• Does it fit my personality?
• Is this "me?"

If the answer to all of those questions is yes, then ask yourself the following three questions:

• Is this in the best interest of the customer?
• Will this lead me to a long-term relationship with the customer?

And finally the true self-test question:

• Will this make my mother proud?

Jeffrey, what about CDs and the Internet? YouTube, podcasts, and other forms

accessing sales skills information?

They’re all GREAT! They’re just not as great as reading a book. Of course there are multi-media forms of sales information you can access. But none are as flexible as reading. Reading gives you a chance to move at your own pace, underline, scribble notes in the margins, re-read what you may not understand, even dog-ear the important pages and where you left off.

Reading time is usually quiet time. It gives you a chance for reflection. Whenever you choose, you can stop and think about the meaning and the AHA!, or you can adapt and apply what you read.

The messages offered in books are from a combination of men and women, experts in their field, who have actually used these methods and strategies to build their own success. And your job is to adopt them, adapt them, and turn them into money.

Got book? Maybe you should try to read a book a month.

If you want my list of recommended reading, go to www.gitomer.com and enter the words SALES PILLS in the GitBit box.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Little Red Book of Selling and eight other business books on sales, customer loyalty, and personal development. President of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts Internet training programs on sales, customer loyalty, and personal development at www.trainone.com. Jeffrey conducts more than 100 personalized, customized seminars and keynotes a year. To find out more, visit www.gitomer.com. Jeffrey can be reached at 704.333.1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com