Graham McGregor: The power of other people's networks

Photo / Thinkstock

Marketing consultant Graham McGregor on the power of using other people's networks in your marketing.

I was chatting with my good friend, business strategy expert Tom Poland.

Tom's favourite saying is that 'one gram of strategy always beats a ton of hard work.' I always pay close attention to Tom's ideas because he has personally worked with 1476 different businesses and 173 industries on four continents to help them improve their sales and profits quickly. Some of his clients have become so successful they have been able to sell their business for huge sums of money.

Tom told me that one of his most important business strategies is to get his clients using OPN or other people's networks. Tom explained it like this...

"Let's say you want to do lead generation so you have large numbers of interested prospects who are eager to talk with you. You doing that prospecting yourself versus tapping into other people's networks is the difference between trying to go fishing with a single fishing line versus someone else inviting you and your fishing trawler into their well stocked private ocean."

A key point to remember with Other People's Networks is that they've already invested the time, energy (and probably money) to build up great relationships with a large number of people in their network. And if you follow certain steps you can take advantage of these powerful existing relationships.

Here are some of the steps to start using OPN:

1: Decide clearly who your ideal potential client or customer is. What are their demographics? What is their age, income, occupation etc? Or if it's a business, the size of the business, number of staff and so on. And what are their psychographics? Why might they want to buy? What unmet needs do they have or what frustrations do they have that they want to make disappear and so on?

2: Ask yourself, who already has large numbers of your ideal clients as part of their existing network? So if your ideal client is lawyers you might find that a business selling dictation equipment could already have large numbers of lawyers as clients. If your ideal customer is ladies who are keen on spending money to look good you might find that high end hair salons are a good starting point.

3: Create a high value offer that the business you have identified in step 2 can make to the people in their network on your behalf. Approach a number of businesses that have your ideal clients in their existing network and explain your offer.

Tom does this step very well.

He knows that many accountants have a wide range of business owner clients who could potentially use his services.

So he offers a no cost 75 minute webinar on making sales that he will present on behalf of an accounting firm for their business clients.

In this free webinar Tom will share some of his best ideas on how to increase revenues and get new clients. This offer is very attractive to a number of accounting firms as they look good by having Tom provide great ideas to their business clients. Their clients get proven ideas to improve sales and profits. And Tom gets to speak to a brand new audience of potential clients at very little cost.

A great win-win for everyone involved.

You can read my full interview with Tom in my 'Unfair Advantage Business Report. (In this interview he explains in full each of these key steps to using OPN.)

Action Step:

What can you do this week to start tapping into the power of other people's networks?

"One right and honest definition of business is mutual helpfulness."
William Feather

Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.' www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com (This is free and has now been read by business owners from 11 countries.) You can email Graham on graham@twomac.co.nz