Alliance Science

What can we Learn from Lipitor's Alliance with the Inventor of the Artificial Heart?

Today, as I watched for the first time, Lipitor's new endorsement of Dr. Robert Jarvik, "Inventor of the Artificial Heart," I understood at the bottom of my gut that I was watching history.  Medical ethicist and NPR commentator, Katie Watson, believes it's the first time a doctor has been paid to endorse a prescription drug in an ad.

More importantly, my head was observing an important lesson in strategic endorsement, an example of a powerful automatous response mechanism, social proof. 

The power of the Doctor's backstory, a prime example of the power of third party testimony, launched the multi-targeted message like a compound bow, amplifying the message to the prospective customers and the distribution channel, the doctors who prescribe it.

Like below-the-surface eddies, other strategies are being used in this credibility juggernaut:  a unique selling proposition, the multi-faceted campaign and a pre-requisite unbranded "educational" public awareness campaign as revealed by Brandweek.

So what?

What if your product or service was personally endorsed by a champion of an affinity group, your target prospect?

Find a CPA Trainer to endorse your Financial Planning services.  Tell your clients a story about how you, a lender, solved a problem for another client, a top-producing Realtor.  As a recruiting firm, get the endorsement of the top sales rep at a high-volume newspaper selling help-wanted classifieds.

Now, put that in a mirror. 

If you're a top-producing Realtor, offer to endorse your lenders.  (oh, no!).  Go ahead, advertisement account reps, you can celebrate, through word of mouth, or even well placed feature article, your recruiting firm clients.

"Oh, I don't know if I could do that," you say.  That's a whole nother topic of discussion.

Imagine if all your Clients were Partners

Imagine if all your customers believed in your business, products and services as you did.  What would that look like?  Picture what you would do on a daily basis if your clients regularly introduced you, promoted you, and directed the process of selling your products and services to more clients.  What would that ideal customer do?

What if all of your customers were sales people?  Literally.  Of all the possible target prospects of your product or service, what if you chose to only sell to sales and marketing professionals?

What do all independant or high growth stage companies' sales and marketing professionals need to increase their sales?  What is fundamentally more important to them, more or enough?  What's the reason they decided to make sales a profession -- to make more money, to have more freedom, or to help other people?

What do all sales and marketing professionals want or need?

Now, how can your current product or service be positioned to meet those needs?

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What's Alliance Marketing?

I may not know. 

As a sales and marketing professional, I have made a career out of sitting down with other professionals for the purpose of discovering and pursuing how we can help each other's business.  I've met with over a thousand business owners, professionals, consultants, contractors and independent agents over the years with most meetings ending in a next step to help each other's business or careers and few -- I can count them on my hands and toes -- have resulted in a long term business alliance. 

The more I meet with people, the more I'm convinced that the synergy I quickly and clearly see should work.  I'm fascinated with best practices, successful people and what people do.  In discovering how something or someone works, I'm able to help others solve problems.  I'm a small-business leadership, sales and marketing consultant.

Of the many attributes I possess as a successful professional, a particular few packaged together often serve as a hindrance.  I find it very hard to give up.  In fact, the more challenging something proves to be, the harder it is for me to quit.  Couple this with an eternal optimism and sometimes you get a form of insanity:  doing something over and over again expecting different results.  And what fuels this insanity?  Creativity.  Each time I fail, I convince myself I understand what failed and how it should work next time.

As I look back, I realize how much time I have wasted in pursuing the yet largely unfulfilled potential of sales and marketing alliances with other businesses. 

But I have a dream, a vision.  I can clearly see how large and small businesses can help promote each other's services and products.  In fact, I'm constantly showing people how to do it and what to do.  I help them discover why they should do it and often get them to say they're going to do it and yet it rarely happens.  And if it gets off the ground, it rarely lasts long enough to be successful.

Now, here's the thing.  With the vast number of failings I've experienced in creating unofficial strategic alliances, I've learned well enough what doesn't work.  I've a wealth of experience people will pay for and I know what will work if only I can find the right people, train them in the right mindset and behaviors that will guarantee their success if they only do it long enough, show them what to do and do it for them.

So that is what this blog is about:  my continued pursuit to help people be phenomenally successful in driving revenue and increasing the bottom line and, while I'm at it, become magnificently successful, too.  I will show you how we can grow each other's business through systematic sales and marketing systems and practices. And the most importantly, I will identify those individuals and companies that need and want to participate and help them get out of their way and overcome they're biggest obstacle:  themselves.