Greetings Floor Dealers!
In the last post, I introduced you to a Joint Venture formula that has made literally millions of dollars for flooring dealers across North America. As a refresher, here are the 3 steps I mentioned:
- Send the business owner a dollar bill letter (which is fun, interesting and grabs their attention) in the mail to break the ice and introduce yourself and your company to them.
- Make a follow-up call. (In the letter you let them know the time and date you’ll be calling, and why, so they’re expecting to hear from you. This transforms cold calls into warm calls.)
- Meet in person.
Let’s pick up on the story here….
Over a 90 day period I put all 15-20 businesses through this process, and by the end I had secured over a dozen of them as JV partners, all sending me referrals on a regular basis. Did they all send me as many as my friend who owned the Carpet One? Nope. Until the day I sold my company he remained the undisputed referral champ. But that didn’t matter. All the businesses sent me ongoing referrals; customers that cost me zero in marketing costs, and they made up a significant portion of my company’s revenue.
Let’s run the numbers for a flooring business. I’ve done this before, but it bears repeating.
Let’s assume your average ticket is $3,000. Let’s say you get ten businesses to Joint Venture with you. And let’s be extremely conservative and say that each one sends you a measly four referrals per year.
10 businesses x 4 referrals x $3,000 = $160,000 in EXTRA revenue each year.
And this does not take into account the fact that referrals will generate higher-than-average tickets, and that referred clients tend to be better-than-average referrers. (Birds of a feather…) When you figure that in these factors, those ten businesses could easily represent $300,000 to $500,000 in revenue. With ZERO marketing costs.
Oh, and this does not take into account the occasional “superstar” JV partner (like my Carpet One friend) who sends you way more than four referrals per year.
This calculation was done on ten businesses, but there’s no reason to stop there. No-sirree, cowboy. If ten is great, twenty is super great. Thirty is super-duper great. Forty is, well, you get it.
FACT: you could build your entire flooring business, expand to multiple locations, and retire wealthy, by using this one strategy. (Or system of JV strategies, I should say.) That’s not fluff, hype or spin. The numbers don’t lie. There are savvy marketers from many different industries who have built their businesses using other people’s customer lists. Ultimately, that’s what the Joint Ventures module is about: using other businesses lists, harnessing the good will they have generated, and going in on “borrowed trust.”
I was doing a private coaching call with one of our newest Core 3 members who owns three flooring stores. He has a program where each sales person is required to develop and maintain relationships with 15 contractors. This is VERY good thinking. I told him about the Joint Ventures module, and suggested he train his sales team to use the dollar bill strategy to connect with contractors (they were mostly doing cold calls), and expand his list to include decorators, designers, Realtors, etc. (The JV module has a list of 25 industry categories to target.)
I’ve often said that having a full-time sales person devoted to rolling out the JV program is a smart move. I like this member’s approach, too, of requiring every sales team member to maintain relationships with a predetermined number of businesses. Either way, there is a Mt. Everest-size stack of unclaimed money that the vast majority of dealers are missing out on by not doing Joint Ventures. Don’t be one of them. This one module can literally transform your business and make you wealthy.
One last thing: I believe that JV relationships with other businesses are rapidly ceasing to be a luxury, and quickly becoming a necessity in order for your business to survive and prosper. As consumer skepticism and distractions continue to increase, cold marketing will continue to grow ever more expensive and less effective as a means of attracting new clients. This is why I believe the race is on to build, maintain and nurture a list of highly responsive buyers, and to JV with other businesses who have lists of buyers you can gain access to.
To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
See what real, live dealers are saying!