It shocks me how many entrepreneurs fail to understand the value of a relationship. They give lip service to it. But then they waste time trying to generate leads, then even more time trying to convert those leads, and often, in inhospitable conditions, against great skepticism from the consumer, and against high hurdles of distrust… The solution, which is so apparent to me, which I learned from the founder of the most successful division of Agora Inc., Porter Stansberry, is to focus 90% of your time on strategic partnerships — relationships — that can lead to dozens, even hundreds, or thousands of future transactions, depending on the business you are in, and, of course, what the product or service is that you sell.

As a quick background. In one 18-month period, I wrote sales copy for a division of Agora, not Stansberry’s division, that moved over $25,000,000 in product and services. At age 27, I became the Chief Marketing Officer of this division, moving from junior copywriter, to senior, to eventually replacing the guy who hired me in just 12 months. In that time, we went from being a $10-million division, to a $30-million division.

But here was the problem. This jump was on the strength of the copywriting, mine, not on the foundation of a superior business model.

Hopefully, you see the problem with that. There is no stability. In tough times, like the financial crash, or in a period when your sales copy is not superior, revenue and sales struggle. And further, because the traffic to your offers is dependent on marketing and advertising dollars, when sales drop, the ability to buy (more) traffic takes a hit too.

In other words, the good times are good. And the bad times, are really bad.

This is where, by the way, most business owners and entrepreneurs live their entire business lives. In this fucking mouse trap, where they can just reach the cheese with their long tongue in the good times, and as the cheese starts to disappear, and, as they must get closer to get that taste, under the pressure of the tightly wound spring. Snap!

Hear me loud. Relationships that you can lean on in the bad times, are what keep you from getting your head caught in the snap! So please, explain it to me — why do more business owners not have a platform built-in to their business that facilitates the acquisition of more of these strategic relationships, and more specifically, partnerships? If I came to you, in your business, and asked to see your process for securing high value strategic partnerships, what would you show me?

And please don’t tell me that you “network,” that you’re a member of the Chamber or are in a local “leads” group. I hate hearing those things. Those things kill authority. Networking, in the traditional sense; handing out business cards and giving elevator speeches, is a form of public begging. And trust me, nobody wants to associate with a beggar. Just look at the bum on the street corner, he is ignored. And despite his pleads, people walk by him like he doesn’t even exist.

I want you to show me something like this:

There are 5 different platforms diagrammed there, four are focused on the acquisition of strategic partnerships. Not sales. If I could leave you with one concept, commit this to memory:

“Pros focus on relationships. Amateurs focus on sales.”

Here is an example from Porter. And rather than tell you Porter’s strategy, I will borrow a paragraph from Mike Dillard, founder of The Elevation Group, because he has a few pictures that make this story all the more real.

— Begin —

“A few months ago I was invited to attend the annual Stansberry corporate meeting down in the Bahamas.

(Yes, this is an pic I took with my iPhone at dinner one night!)

Each year the executive staff gets together for two days to discuss their company goals for the coming year. In most companies, this would be considered ultra-secret stuff.

Well… not only does Stansberry invite their competitors, but they also give out a copy of their corporate handbook that they’ve spent the past 15 years writing and updating.

This is literally their company blueprint, and considering that they’re the largest and most successful financial publishing company in the world, it’s priceless.

Yet they handed myself and everyone else in that room a copy for two reasons…

Porter believes in abundance, and he believes in transparency.

At the end of the day, we all need mentors to learn from, and while I diligently study their work on the economy and investing, I primarily study Porter’s actions as an entrepreneur, a father, and a man.

If you want to REALLY get to know him as a person, the best way to do that is to subscribe to his Podcast here.”

— End —

Did you catch that?

Mike has become an evangelist. Mike is endorsing Porter. He is praising his character. And… he invites his entire audience, without condition or any ulterior motive, to subscribe to Porter’s podcast where they can get to know him further.

To put this into perspective.

Mike has an audience that ranges into the hundreds of thousands. This is an audience that Mike has spent years to build, putting in untold man hours, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in paid traffic… And Porter, from one relationship with Mike, just circumvented that entire “painful” process, and just benefited from the size of Mike’s audience, plus, got his authentic endorsement.

Now multiply this by the 100 or 200 in attendance.

What if you had an army of evangelists that couldn’t wait to introduce you to their entire audience? The strength of a business is often determined, by how many platforms there are built-in to the business model… to secure and nurture new relationships.

———

Thanks for reading! Ryan Fletcher hosts the Agent Marketing Syndicate Podcast, is the author of Defeat Mega Agents, and Editor-in-Chief of Broken Industry—a monthly print publication. You can learn more on his website at: www.AgentMarketingSyndicate.com