By now, if you’ve read through the previous sections, you know how to find and grow your list of joint venture prospects and you know how to watch them like a hawk and select the ones that are appropriate to your business.

You know when, and how, to approach them and not get your offer deleted right away and how to put your offer forward in a beneficial way that doesn’t just involve instant extra profits. Put all these together and you have a great base for your joint venture journeys. Now getting them in the first place is probably the hardest part, but sending out an e-mail and just waiting for a response is only half of it.

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Following Up Your Prospects

Now comes the part that hardly anyone does for one reason or another. Maybe they’re too busy or it’ll cost too much calling internationally. Maybe they’re shy or worried about being told no, or being intrusive. If any of those describe you, put them aside right now. Remember, this is business. Nothing personal, and if you call someone up the worst that can happen is they’ll say no. It’s not like you’re cold calling them trying to get them to spend money or anything. It’s a mutually beneficial deal, so it’s likely if the deal is good, they’ll be glad to hear from you.

The reason that it’s more effective to go for the email then call approach, rather than a straight up call, is two-fold. First, you’ve got all the time in the world to plan and set your deal out on the table through the email. This is far easier to do when you have time to write rather than have to try to explain it in person. Plus you don’t forget to mention anything, and you’re more likely to get your initial point across.

Secondly, it’s far easier to grab someone’s attention when they already have the details as you’ve already contacted them via e-mail. They have a hard copy of your deal that they can refer to rather than having to take notes on the phone at a possibly bad time for them.

The reason it’s important to call in the first place is simple. How many times a week, or even a day, do you see things and think to yourself “Hey, yeah that’s cool, I’ll check that out later” and you just plain forget or get distracted or called away to something else. Prepare for your call. Have the basics in front of you for a start. There’s no guarantee that your mail actually got read. Be ready for that, and be ready with some back up plans and to change your original offer. The better the list, the higher the profile, the more you’re likely going to have to offer.

How To Stand Out From The Crowd

Ok we’re almost done now. You should be on the way to having some of those hugely powerful endorsements sent out to some of those private lists. I’m a big believer in treating people like individuals, something that’s increasingly rare these days with the anonymity of the Internet. If you can pull this off, they’re not going to forget you and it’s even more likely that you’re going to be able to reach similar agreements with your list of contacts in the future.

Something that’s very important that a lot of people miss, not just with joint ventures but marketing in general, is that you pave the way to the future and leave yourself open to these kind of repeat offers. As I mentioned earlier, it’s so much easier to sell a product, or in this case make a deal with someone, if you’ve been successful in the past. So my proposal; once you’re done with your JV, the ad has gone out to their lists and you’ve set up your site to make the most of these hugely important opportunities, you want to have the opportunity to repeat this. Which bring us nicely onto…

Cementing Future Relationships

So, what can you possibly give someone who already has a huge list, most likely one heck of an income, and pretty much all the knowledge they feel they need about their specific field of expertise? Well, that’s an easy one. Forget giving them free e-books, reports and dodgy stuff like that. Everyone gives away free e-books to everyone else. You won’t be remembered for that. You need to be a little smarter about this one.

So, to make an impact and benefit both of you in the future, what do you offer after the deal is complete? That’s easy. You offer them the opportunity to do the same to you. You create a gap for yourself as one of these people and your status is immediately elevated. When this happens, you’ll find people start coming to you with these types of offers. You offer them your list. “Hey [name here], a quick mail regarding the joint venture we carried out last week. Just to let you know that I also have a private list of people with one heck of a response rate that I don’t promote affiliate programs to, just my own stuff. In light of our recent deal you’re quite welcome to add me to your list of contacts ready to promote your products when they initially launch in the same fashion”.

Great, I’d jump at that offer. Granted, in my eyes, the list would first have to be relevant and substantial, but that won’t be too much of a problem if you managed to set up the joint ventures we’ve been talking about here and successfully prepared to capture leads rather than just initial sales. Don’t fall into that trap, because you’re missing out big time. The more you have to put on the table, the more you’re going to get in return. Things get easier after your first set of joint ventures which, of course, builds your list and your personal contacts as well as your sales and reputation. This is most important.

Stay Within The Lines Of Acceptability

Alright, now your joint venture offer is complete. You know how to go about finding joint venture prospects and how to approach them to maximum effect, quickly, efficiently and effectively and you know how to pave the way for future offers. We’re almost there. But before we finish up, there are a couple of general tips I’d like to give you.

Now even though they’re general tips and tricks, don’t underestimate them. I can’t tell you how ‘not to do’ and how ‘to do’ these right off the bat but I can show you what to avoid. This is going to fill the gaps now and really give you a solid foundation of knowledge and confidence about these joint ventures.

The first piece of advice I’d like to personally give you is: Don’t try to take advantage of people and, most importantly, don’t be taken advantage of yourself.

The idea here is that the offer is even. We give something, we receive something in return. That’s business, right? Sure, for most people it is, but either through ignorance or negligence, or through their sheer desire to make money, there will come a time when you find someone who is going to try and milk you for everything you have.

Now, the experienced guys will be able to spot this a mile off. So will you after this. But, sometimes the problem is that this starts off small and before you know it, it grows and grows. They’ve got so much from you and you’ve got little to show for it in return. You don’t have to be gullible for this to happen to you. Some people just have a knack and try it on every chance they get. Learn to see it, and when you see it, if you have doubts, cut the ties and know when to stop.

The world of business is indeed harsh. It’s the same online as it is offline. Don’t be taken advantage of no matter how big the name you’re dealing with. Not all of them will be nice enough to stop you and offer you something in return for your work. Don’t give a whole lot away then expect something in return here. Lay your cards out on the table first and make one hundred percent sure you know what’s going on. This is the dark side of online marketing. Trust me, people will try, and when they do, it’s going to be up to you to say no.

How Not To JV

Here’s a real life example of a joint venture approach that is an example of how NOT to do it.

So here’s me, sitting at my computer in the late evening, listening to my relaxing ambient music, while at the same time briefing a freelance programmer on some work I wanted doing to some affiliate software. From nowhere, up pops a message through my instant messenger “Hello”. Now, I don’t like to give out my IM addresses to just anyone, I generally keep them to the people I know or have had previous joint ventures with.

Anyway the conversation started with me trying to figure out who this was “Sorry do I know you?”. “No” came the reply. “Ok, are you one of my customers?”. “Yes”. Jackpot, so this is a customer of mine that somehow managed to get a hold of my instant messenger handle. Not a problem. I politely requested that if he has a problem to submit a ticket. “Oh no, I’m not here for that, I wanted to ask you to do something for me”. Ok now we’re getting somewhere. “Right ok, what’s that?” I replied. “Well, I’m launching a new website and wondered if you would promote for me”.

At this point I thought hey, joint venture offer. Strange approach but I have half an hour before heading out with a few friends. It’s a rare ‘not busy’ moment for me now I’m done with the programmer so I’ll hear him out. Normally I wouldn’t have had the time. I would have apologized and asked him to e-mail me but it was just a lucky break for him.

So he proceeds to send me to this website. It didn’t look too bad at first glance, but after reading the sales letter, something jumped out at me. I recognize this. I asked him when he wrote the product, which happened to be a very basic marketing training guide. He told me, in a round about way, that he didn’t write it at all. It was a re-sell product from the late nineties, not even a re-brandable one.

Yikes, ok this is where I start to back away. So the best way I know how I tell him, sorry no can do, and of course, why. The reason, this time around, was because he had a weak product. To be honest, with his indirect hidey type approach that took fifteen minutes longer to explain than it should have, he was lucky to get this far and even get my attention, or anybody else’s for that matter. However, I’m a patient guy.

Anyway, off I go thinking no more of the encounter. I return home, have some food, grab forty winks and jump online again to meet the programmer who I’d arranged to talk to later that day. By this point it was about three in the morning. On goes the computer, on goes the messenger, and take a guess what pops up. “Hello”. Uh oh. “I wonder if you’ve reconsidered my offer”. Well I hadn’t to be honest. “No sorry, the product isn’t strong enough”.

Alright so granted his product wasn’t strong enough, and the approach he used wasn’t exactly to his advantage, but if those two factors had been all present and correct, would I have said yes? Not likely. Where’s the evenness, the give and take of it all? He’s given me nothing at all that I would want in return. It was clear he hadn’t planned this well. I couldn’t resist it. Out came a little friendly advice.

“Look man, I’ll be honest. If you want to secure a joint venture like this with someone, you need to offer them something in return. A bit of give and take ya know?”. Big mistake. “But I want you to be my marketing manager”. The phrase which would eventually become the bane of my existence that week. He proceeded to tell me that he’d give me a dollar per sale on his fifty dollar product, which would go up to four dollars if I sold over a hundred copies.

So not only was his product dodgy and something I wouldn’t recommend, and not only would he not even give me it to see (He pointed me to the order link at the bottom of the page when I asked), but he was offering me the worst possible commissions ever. Everything about this deal is totally negative and a huge no. After a week of him messaging me every time I got online telling me “I want you to be my marketing manager” he was blocked, and it’s safe to say I’ll not be doing business with him anytime in the near future.

So you see what I’m showing you here? I’m not saying you’re like that at all, far from it, but what I am trying to demonstrate is no matter which factor we remove from the lessons you’ve learned in these reports, no matter which section, no matter how minute the detail, once it turns from a possible positive into a negative, you’ve totally lost your deal.

If you’ve forgotten anything, or you’re ever unsure of anything come back to this course, and read over these sections again. One slight mistake, one slight slip up, no matter how insignificant it seems to you, is the difference between a surefire “No leave me alone” response, and a “Yeah that sounds great, lets do it” response. There’s absolutely no room for sloppy work where joint ventures are concerned.

Another little thing you may have picked up from that story is that this guy was trying to hide something from me. He totally neglected to tell me in all his explaining about this product and what it did for his customers to be, that it was a re-sell product. Now I don’t have a problem with that at all. Re-sell products aren’t such a bad thing, especially when there are only a limited number of them that have gone out, but when they’re so old and decrepit that’s another story.

Whatever you do, don’t hold back information that could be important. When you have a good product, and you’re comfortable with it, and confident about it, more confident than you’ve ever been about something, then you shouldn’t have anything to hide anyway. If you do, then there’s something wrong.

Go back and fix the problem before offering up any joint ventures. To put it quite bluntly, if it sucks and you do fool someone and get them to promote it, when their long time customers come back with complaints or it dents their reputation because of it, they sure aren’t going to be happy. Remember, be open, be honest, and don’t hide stuff. If stuff needs to be hidden in a joint venture of this nature, there’s something wrong with your product and sales process. Go fix it, or you’ll have big problems later.

Adding to what we’ve just said above, if you’re not sure about something, fix it up, finish it and perfect it until you are sure. If there’s any doubt in your mind about your product, about your offer or your sales process, get it sorted for the same detrimental reasons we talked about above. Get it wrong, have it blow up in your face, and you may have just wrecked future business relationships. We know how fast word of mouth travels and how quickly people find out about bad stuff like that. Not good for your all important reputation.

Keep Track Of Your Offers

We’re coming to the end of this course now. But before we do, there’s one last piece of advice I’d like to give you and that is to plan well and keep a record. Who are you doing what deal with, and when? Who have you e-mailed for what product and on what date? Who have you called and who have you yet to call? Who replied who didn’t? And so on.

It’s a serious problem if you start to lose track of any of these details. It can hurt your joint venture possibilities now and in the future. Keep everything in order, clean, and tidy.

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