A Fast Jump Into Many More Clients

I spent, I admit, a small but significant few hours dreading our family visit to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, simply because of the food.

A few months ago our family went completely gluten and dairy free because of worries about how those two culinary villains were affecting our children’s development. Miraculously, all the symptoms we were worried about cleared up within 36 hours of entering the brave new world of restricted diets.

What’s on at the beach but ice cream, funnel cakes, pizza, and other nefariously glutinous characters?

When my niece Sarah told us there was gluten free pizza, I was skeptical. Portland, sure, there’s plenty of decent gluten-free pizza around, but on the boardwalk, that great American comfort food pilgrimage site?

But, when we walked into the omnipresent Grotto Pizza (I think they have something like 497 locations within a four block radius), we saw the signs you see here:

“Aha!” I thought to myself, “They’ve got an agreement going with somebody who has the passion for gluten free pizza. They’re just selling the pizzas.”

I had thought maybe Still Riding Pizza was just a small, local or regional company, but looking up their website, I see they are bigger than that.

This Is Called a Strategic Alliance

A strategic alliance is when someone sells your products or services to their customers, clients, or community.

It is the fastest, most effective way to grow your business. Why?

There are two main reasons.

1. Instead of one by one, you make contact with a larger number of new potential clients with not too much more effort than it takes to enroll a single client on your own.
2. You benefit from “third party” selling, where someone else is recommending you. It always sounds better than anything you could say yourself when a reputable, trusted leader of a community says, “This is great! You should get it.”

There are some real keys to making a strategic alliance work, and I want to point out three things Still Riding Pizza has done incredibly effectively.

Thing One: Shift Your Marketing Perspective

When seeking strategic alliances, your marketing shifts. Instead of speaking directly to your end user, you need to speak to your potential strategic alliances.

Here’s Still Riding Pizza’s statement to the gluten-free pizza eaters they want to reach: “Finally, gluten free pizza that tastes like the real thing. You are on a gluten or wheat free diet and you feel great, but let’s be honest, how much you do you miss being able to eat real pizza from a pizza parlor?”

A direct, clear statement that almost any pizza-loving gluten-free person would respond to.

But what do they say to their potential strategic alliance partners, the restaurant owners?

“Are you leaving revenue on the table? Offering gluten free will increase your business.

• The gluten free customer is new business. They are not coming in now because menus are not typically GF friendly.
• People on a special diet are always asked to choose the restaurant, and they don’t dine alone; they have families, friends, business associates, etc.
• This customer will travel farther, widening the geographical draw of your restaurant.
• The GF customer is thankful and loyal and willingly pays a premium to be included.”

There’s not one word about how it tastes, or the benefits of a gluten free diet. Instead, everything is about helping increase revenue and audience.

When you’re passionate about what you do, it’s all too easy to get caught up in your own perspective. But in finding strategic alliances, you need to see things their way.

Questions: Who might sell your products or services for you? If their community buys your stuff what problem does that solve for your potential strategic alliance partner?

Thing Two: Make It Easy For Them

Providing gluten free is not easy. Having a wheat allergy is one thing, but having celiac (which my family does not have, thank God) is intense. The smallest whiff of gluten flour can cause agony in the digestive tract.

Still Riding Pizza makes it easy for pizza parlors, a notoriously glutinous environment, by providing equipment for the restaurant owner. This way the the gluten-free crusts aren’t contaminated by the flour.

They also provide marketing. The signs you saw in the picture above? Printed by Still Riding and provided to Grotto.

Question: What work can you do, what systems or tools can you provide to make it as easy as possible for a strategic alliance partner to sell your stuff?

Thing Three: Don’t Be An Invisible Supplier

I loved this testimonial on the Still Riding Pizza website:

“My 9 year old daughter was just diagnosed with Celiac Disease. We ordered your pizza crust (a box of 12) after eating it at Pizza Fusion. It’s fantastic… – Pam”

Did you notice that? Pam’s family ate out, and then ordered 12 pizza shells directly from Still Riding Pizza.

One of the big mistakes folks make with strategic alliances is not having a way to connect directly with potential customers, especially those who were interested but didn’t buy.

With those marketing signs Still Riding Pizza provides, their name and website are prominently displayed. I got home and looked them up. If we didn’t live in gluten-free pizza heaven here in Portland, I would definitely be tempted to buy from them.

And I think that Still Riding could take another step forward, by giving me a reason to go to their website. I went because I’m writing this article and wanted to research them.

However, if they had listed their website and said, “Find a gluten-free pizzeria anywhere in the U.S.!” they might get a lot more people visiting. Or if they had a little brochure or smart phone scannable QC code, I bet they’d get a lot more people visiting and, consequently, buying direct from them.

Question: How can you respectfully invite the strategic alliance’s community to connect directly with you?

You Don’t Have to Reach for the Stars

Best-selling authors. Huge power-house businesses. International communities. You don’t have to try to get their attention right out of the gate.

If you’re just starting out, don’t intimidate yourself into never doing it. Start with small communities. An accountant that has been in business for ten years might have a client list of 1000 people. Or a neighborhood arts store certainly has more foot track than your home office does. That’s a pretty darn good starting place.

Where can you start? If you take a moment in your heart and brainstorm, what kind of creative strategic alliances can you start working towards?

p.s. Sacred Selling Home Study Half-Off through Tomorrow

So you start to reach out to build Strategic Alliances. So… what do you say to the pizzeria owner? How do you have the conversation?

The Sacred Selling course isn’t just about getting the right people to say Yes and pay you, it will work fabulously well in conversations with strategic alliances, where the stakes are higher, and you might be more nervous than usual.

The Sacred Selling Home Study has been completely redesigned, and we’ll be shipping it around September 12. Through tomorrow, Thursday, you can get it for half-off- a special pre-release price.

Details and to buy: Sacred Selling Home Study