One of the best ways to build your business coaching practice is through strategic partnerships.
Essentially, strategic partners provide referrals in bulk. They’re non-competitive companies that cater to your approximate customer profile. The objective is to build a partnership where the company will recommend your services to their client base.
The benefits of developing strategic partnerships are obvious: you get the credibility of a referred endorsement by someone your prospects already know and trust. This makes them the most leveraged and inexpensive way to generate coaching clients.
It’s also the most time-consuming and sophisticated. It takes skill, patience, and finesse to make this strategy work.
The benefits of developing strategic partnerships are obvious: you get the credibility of a referred endorsement by someone your prospects already know and trust. This makes them the most leveraged and inexpensive way to generate coaching clients.
So how do you make it happen?
Four Steps to Successful Strategic Partnerships
STEP 1: Find a non-competitive business that shares your approximate client profile. Think printers, accountants, office furniture retailers, attorneys, and so on.
STEP 2: Work out an offer your strategic partner can make to their customer base that will make them look like Santa Claus. For example, create a special price, group coaching cohort, or specialized training just for customers of your strategic partner.
STEP 3: Show your potential strategic partner how this can be good for them, you, and both of your customers. Make an arrangement to cross-promote each other’s products and services. Offer Complimentary Coaching Sessions to your partner’s customers–and pay your partner a fee for everyone you complete. Better yet, pay an even larger fee when one converts; this way, you pay nothing until you actually close a deal! There are literally hundreds of possibilities.
STEP 4: Be prepared to show when and how they’ll get paid. Be specific about this. And be impeccable with your follow-through.
Strategic partnerships is the best-kept secret you will ever find for building your business coaching practice.
In my coaching business, I had such powerful strategic partners that accountants and bankers called my cell phone to tell me they had a client set up to come to their office already primed and ready.
I’d show up, conduct the Complimentary Coaching Session, and leave with a $3,000 to $5,000 check for the first month of services!
So take the time to build up relationships with well-positioned strategic partners. It can make the world of difference for your practice.
Want more in-depth tips and tricks like this? Download our FREE ebook, Secrets of a Business Coaching Rock Star.
