Strategic Alliances
Four Guidelines for Teaming Up
to Offer Your Customers
More
By Robert Spiegel
Can a home business deliver a
fully working team that can take on a business opportunity
usually reserved for large
business enterprises? Don’t limit yourself just because you
answer your business phone in the
same room that the kids play in. You can take on big,
team-managed projects if you find
the right partners. Strategic alliances with other
companies and professionals can
give the you ability to deliver the punch of a large
company.
There are many ways you can
extend the products and services you offer to your
customers. An example is an
accountant who works cooperatively with a bookkeeping and
payroll company to provide a complete
financial package to home-based businesses. The
goal is to provide additional
related services or products to serve the customer and increase
your profits.
Strategic alliances can also
increase referrals and extend market reach. An example is a
remodeling company that teams up
with a real estate company to present seminars that
introduce options for home im
provement. Another example is mutual referrals, where
companies negotiate agreements to
recommend each other to their customers. These
alliances can provide inexpensive
ways to reach new customers.
The reasons for developing
strategic alliances are to extend your market reach and to
provide a wider range of choices
for your customers as well as to increase convenience.
When you develop strategic al
liances, make sure the products relate to each other. A
nutritional consultant who also
sells gold coins comes across as an opportunist. A
nutritional consultant who also
provides a catalog of exercise equipment and instruction is
on target.
Here are four guidelines to keep
your strategic alliances productive.
Make Yourself a One-Stop Shop
In choosing strategic
partnerships, think in terms of making your company a one-stop for
customers who need anything in
your field. As an example, if you sell computer networks,
team up with a computer
furnishings business and a computer hard ware company. You
might also deliver software
packages your customer needs.
Another option is to work on the
basis of receiving a finder’s fee for direct referrals, or you
can offer a catalog of products
supplied by a different company. Then you buy wholesale
from the catalog company and sell
retail to your customer. This gives your customer a good
discount while making you a
profit on the transaction. It’s the best of both worlds. Your
customer gets a discount and you
get a profit.
When you are a one-stop for your
customer, you have the extra burden of customer service
and follow-up. Make sure you
bring on reliable partners who will stick through the good
times and the bad.
Team Up with Quality Players
Alliances need to meet your quality
level or surpass it. Lower quality partners “lower the
bar” for your company. Strive to
bring in partners with slightly higher quality standards. It
will lift the customer perception
of your company and reduce potential dissatisfaction. You
also need partners you can trust.
Finally, look for companies that have longer track records.
You can leverage their
credibility when you make sales calls.
Make It Easy
Strategic alliances work be cause
it is easier for customers to buy from one source. But you
need to make sure the alliance
provides a simple buying process. If difficult or hard to
understand, the buying process
will hurt your sales rather than help them. Flexibility is
helpful when offering your line
of products or services. For example, if you are a marketing
consultant and you recommend a media
package to your client, you can then offer to handle
the design, production and
printing of the package. If you explain that you have created a
team of designers, production
artists and a printer that can deliver high quality at a lower
price than your customer would
find on his own, the customer will choose your option. The
first hurdle was defining the
need for a media package. The rest was simple customer service
that increased profits.
Offer Customer Support on Your
Entire Package
Customer service must be seamless
and easy. If you are simply offering a referral and
receiving a finder’s fee, make
sure you are referring to a company that will provide good
customer service. But if you are
making the sale yourself, you need to deliver customer
service directly to your
customers. Don’t just sell a product and later give your customer an
800 number to call when there’s a
problem. If a problem arises, you need to take care of it for
the customer. If you don’t, it
lowers the perception of the entire strategic enterprise.
Strategic alliances can bring
additional profits without incurring additional investment, but
you need to make sure you follow
the above four guidelines. Once you get comfortable with
offering a wider range of
products and services to your customers, you can continue to
expand through strategic alliances. The
ultimate size of your home business is determined
by the size of your imagination,
not the size of your home office. HBM
Robert Spiegel owns Spiegel
Enterprises, a marketing company that helps emerging
businesses grow. Spiegel provides
marketing plans and publicity plans that help guide
companies to success. Spiegel
Enterprises also publishes a newsletter for freelance writers
entitled Freelancers Marketplace.
You can call Robert at 505/275-2556 or write him at
10308 Oso Grande NE, Albuquerque,
NM 87111.
