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Build winning alliances with your raving fans
by Debra S. Valle

Fuel for your business

Our “raving fans” often hold the key to greater visibility for our careers and our businesses, but because we do not customarily see them as bridges to a wider audience, we rarely leverage these relationships.

Who are our raving fans?
Raving fans are clients and colleagues who love our work and us, who are willing to test new ideas, and who are delighted to promote and move our work forward.  They can provide the impetus we need to take that next bold step toward expanding our businesses—the development of alliance opportunities that create greater joy and fulfillment in our work, as well as increased visibility and profit.

Why form alliances?
We form alliances to grow business. We do this by exchanging something of value with an alliance partner in return for greater exposure to a shared target audience and increased revenues. Each partner brings to the relationship a product or a service that increases any (or all) of the following: credibility, visibility with target audiences, exposure to new markets, or greater revenues.

What's the hallmark of a great alliance? They're fun, hassle-free, and they're easy to get into, expand and get out of.

Your first alliance
There are many types of alliances. Typically, the easiest to set up are those created with your raving fans. Such alliances often represent a “safe” place to play, and are a great first step. 

When looking at your raving fans, ask yourself, “Does this potential alliance partner share a mutual target audience with me? Is this raving fan making contact with customers and prospects when the need for my product or service is highest?

A raving fan becomes a prime alliance opportunity when he or she is able to promote you and is willing to recommend your product or service at precisely the right time—the moment of truth when the customer is ready to buy.  Judy Feld and Ernest Oriente, authors of SmartMatch Alliances™, call these types of alliances “Just-in-time” (JIT) alliances.

Examples of JIT alliances are an orthodontist and a dentist; a sales coach and a software vendor that sells sales tracking software; a web developer and a marketing consultant; a printer and a graphic designer, and so on.

Head upstream
You can make even more out of your JIT alliances by asking your alliance partners to introduce you and your business to five or more individuals just like them. For example: if you are an orthodontist in alliance with a dentist, ask yourself, “Are there five more dentists I could be working with? And if there are five, where do they meet locally so I can get in front of more of them? And if they meet locally, do they meet regionally, nationally, and so on?” Think of the possibilities!

It works
Using this JIT alliance approach, my clients have seen amazing results. One writes articles for a newsletter with two million subscribers, another offers classes through schools training on software skills, and another sells products through third party vendors. 

What’s the key?
JIT alliances are typically easy to establish and quick to close because the relationships with your raving fans already exist— as do the products and services you and your raving fans bring to the table. The inspiration to create the alliance and the vision to see it through is all that’s missing! 

See Fuel cells for ways to identify the right raving fans to begin work with today.

 

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Fuel cells

You have a goldmine in your raving fans
To start, look to your own client/contact database and create a list of "raving fans"—people who love you and what you do.

Once you’ve created your list of raving fans, rank them based on the following criteria:

  1. Can this raving fan get me in front of my ideal target customer at the “moment of truth” when the customer is ready to buy?
  2. Does this raving fan communicate consistently with my ideal target market?
  3. To what extent will an alliance with this raving fan allow me to do the work I love to do?
  4. Will an alliance with this raving fan allow me to work with clients I love to work with and who appreciate and need my services?
  5. Is this opportunity financially lucrative for both my raving fan and me?
  6. Will this raving fan want to and be able to promote me easily?

For each criterion that applies, give yourself a point. Once you’ve scored your list, decide to let go of the “opportunities” that did not get at least five points. For those that do score five or more points, make these your first attempts at alliance building.

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Fuel for your soul

Consider these words of wisdom:

“One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems.”
– Anthony J. D'Angelo

“Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you're going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.”
– Oprah Winfrey

 

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