Give Your Joint Venture Customers A Reason To Buy

Have you formed a joint venture and experienced less-than-stellar sales compared to your expectations? Usually two or more entrepreneurs or business owners partner up to form a JV with the full intention of making more profit. However, the problem may be in the marketing of your JV product or service. Simply putting a product on the market doesn’t necessarily convince a potential buyer to make a purchase. That’s why you need to use marketing psychology to give your potential customers a reason to choose your product.

Triggering Psychology for Sales

Picture this situation: I recently was at the grocery store standing before an aisle full of different brands of green beans. There must have been 10 or more options, all with different price and packaging. As I stood there scratching my head trying to determine which can would have the best tasting green beans, I found one brand with a simple marketing line: “Picked fresh from local farmers and canned the same day for freshness”.  I remember picking greens beans fresh from my grandma’s garden when I was a kid and enjoying a tasty meal that same evening. I chose that brand because I wanted the same kind of freshness, despite the fact it cost 20% more than the basic generic brand.

This example illustrates why your JV product must differentiate itself from the competition. Consumers are indecisive. Help guide their choice by giving them a reason to buy your JV product. It doesn’t even have to be a proverbial grocery list of reasons. But simply highlighting a few simple benefits can help solidify a consumer’s decision.

Reasons Your Customers Buy

Here is a small list that is by no means complete regarding why your customers buy.

• Price – Some people will always base a decision on price. However, that doesn’t mean your product has to be the cheapest. You could promote that your product costs less than the leading competitor. Or you could charge a premium, but give a good reason why your JV product is worth it.

• Quality – Consumers like quality. Be sure that your product is manufactured or produced using quality and durable materials. Or if you offer a service, make it the best quality service and be sure to explain why it’s better than the other company.

• Innovation – Something new always attracts customers. Highlight how your JV product is innovative and can solve their problems better than standard products seen on the market today.

• Warranty/Guaranty – People also like to know that you will stand behind what you sell. Offering a warranty on a product or guarantying satisfaction can provide them with the impetus needed to buy your product.

Make sure your JV product or service stands out from the crowd. If you want to see your profits expand, then take the time to provide the reasons why customers should buy your product.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

How To Add More Value To Your JV With Intellectual Property

Necessity is the mother of invention. However, invention can be just good business too, especially when two great entrepreneurial minds come together to form a joint venture and develop an innovative new product. If your JV is in business with something new, innovative, and that excites consumers, make sure you make the most of it.

Joint Venture and Innovation: A Perfect Match

A JV joins the minds and resources of two individual businesses or business owners and creates a third business with a new product. Many times, a JV team will discover that their initial enthusiasm for the venture has created something even bigger than their imaginations first suspected. When that happens, and innovation and creativity reign, a truly remarkable thing can happen in the intellectual property world.

Let’s say you are an expert software programmer and an enterprising individual approaches you to form a joint venture using your programming skills and his database designing expertise. The original idea was to develop a database system that would make invoicing, billing, and purchase easier and cross-referenced for coding and authorization for distribution businesses. The final product was such a success that it has found useful application in almost any business that does shipping of manufactured items.

How to Protect Your Innovation

What you and your JV partner created was highly valuable intellectual property. Your patent for the software and licensing potential can shoot your joint venture equity through the roof. If you are working with a JV partner and have developed intellectual property, here are some things you should do to protect it.

• Patents – New inventions, such as the software program, should be patented for your protection. With a sole patent on the product, you can license it for sale or for others to manufacture and sell. Residual income can amount to millions of dollars with the right patent and licensing strategy.

• Trademarks – A trademark can be a highly valuable identification. A product or even your JV business name can be trademarked if it becomes highly reputable and recognizable. A word, phrase, logo, or a combination of these can become a trademark.

• Copyright – A copyright is any creative artistic or literary endeavor that has manifested into a concrete, tangible item. Books, articles, paintings, graphic designs, sculptures, music compositions – all these can be copyrighted and licensed to others for publication, performance, or display. If you and your JV partner create copyrighted material, be sure to carefully manage the licensing and use of these items to increase the maximum profit.

Intellectual property is sometimes overlooked. Take time to make an inventory of the intellectual property developed by you and your joint venture partner. The inventory may surprise you. It is also recommended to hire an attorney who specializes in intellectual property to help not only protect these assets, but to help license them to the maximum benefit of your JV business.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Follow Wal-Mart’s Joint Venture Example

If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur who wants to find a way to increase sales and enter new business arenas, a joint venture is a great way to break into new horizons. An entrepreneur with savvy business acumen can research, find, and negotiate a JV deal with another business that can help achieve new business goals. And a few lessons from the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, may be helpful in finding creative JVs that will help expand your business.

How Wal-Mart Entered India with a JV

In 2009, Wal-Mart started doing business in India for the first time. However, the Indian Wal-Mart is not the typical Wal-Mart retail superstores you see in most every small, medium, and large city in America. Rather, the retail giant formed a joint venture in 2006 with Bharti Enterprises, Inc., one of India’s leading business groups.

For the last three years, they have found a way to do business in India that complies with the strict government foreign-business investment restrictions and does not compete with domestic retailers. Rather than be an everyday retail store, the new Indian Wal-Mart is a wholesale business catering to the specific needs of vegetable vendors, hospitals, restaurants, and hotels, operating under the name BestPrice Modern Wholesale.

Wal-Mart is a world leader in consumer marketing and product logistics. Even you can take lessons from Wal-Mart’s India presence. Here’s how:

Find The Right JV Partner

First, Wal-Mart had to find a retail leader in India with a good reputation. Through their combined efforts, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises were able to form a working business entity.

Your efforts to find the best JV partner with a high reputation for quality and service are vital. If your goal is to enter new markets and larger market segments, a JV with another reputable business can aid your efforts to succeed quickly and more efficiently.

Jostle Your Paradigm

Wal-Mart is known worldwide for its large retail stores with low prices on popular consumer products. However, that paradigm would not work in India due to strict government non-competing laws on foreign businesses. Therefore, a new wholesale business paradigm was designed to help Wal-Mart play into the non-retail sector of India’s business economy.

Your JV entity and structure may need to change the way it normally does business. If you’re a retailer, you may need to work wholesale only. If you provide consumer services, you may need to change to a business-to-business format for your JV to succeed. Stay open to business paradigm changes.

Beat Competition Through Stealth

Of course, India is familiar with the Wal-Mart name, and it has a large controversy as a foreign business trying to steal customers from local retailers. Thus, along with changing to wholesale business, they changed their name to BestPrice Modern Wholesale.

If you are looking to beat competition, you and your JV partner can work under a new business name and entity that can succeed at penetrating a higher market share. Of course, this requires market research and marketing strategies so make sure to carefully evaluate this decision.

Your next JV may be the right formula to thrust your business into new heights. With the right JV partner and strategies, you can find ways to make your business work in new areas that were previously impenetrable.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

How You Can Improve Your Well-Being with a Joint Venture

When was the last time you made a bad decision? Perhaps it was just this morning when you decided to skip breakfast. Your decision to skip the most important meal of the day was a personal one, which only affected you. However, what if your decision had an impact on your joint venture or your JV partner? If you didn’t fuel up properly and your body and mind did not function at its highest level, could you be on a path to making more bad decisions that affect the success of your JV? It’s possible. That’s why simply becoming a member of a JV can help you make better decisions and improve your well-being.

Responsibility of Human Cooperation

Psychological studies have shown that when individuals act only for themselves, they tend to make decisions based almost solely on emotion. A key factor in a successful JV is cooperation, which requires each partner to focus not only on his own needs and wants, but his partner’s as well. When someone else may be affected by a decision, we as humans tend to act more rationally, rather than seek to maximize our own benefits.

What this says is that your involvement with a JV can help you make better decisions when someone else’s well-being is also at stake. The power of cooperation is the leverage needed to get group members to contribute their highest efforts for the collective benefit of the group.

Improvement of Information Processing Capabilities

As mentioned, when you make decisions that may have an impact on others, you will tend to be more rational. We as humans are emotional creatures. And emotions can sometimes lead to irrational behavior, especially when it comes to competing with others for resources.

However, if you pool resources and share in a common goal with a joint venture partner, you will tend to take in more information and process the information more thoroughly on a non-competitive level. In essence, your shared culture develops a better processing system for mutual benefit.

Better Behavior Makes a Better Person

Cooperation for mutual advantage is evidenced in basic society. We have developed societal regulators who help make the laws that benefit society as a whole and have enforcers who make sure that no one benefits at another’s expense. This is the entire basis for the term “civilization”. We have become better people and improved society by not remaining barbaric or savage in nature.

The same goes for you as an individual. You can improve your personal emotional and cognitive maturity with the decisions you make for the benefit of your JV. Your financial situation can improve with the pooling of resources and cooperation you get with your JV partner. In addition, you will feel more compassion and enter a more rational psychological state when you know that your decisions are benefiting both you and someone else. So go ahead, have that bagel and make better decisions today.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

3 Psychological Secrets of JV Marketing

What causes a joint venture to fail? Usually it is due to the lack of enthusiasm on one or both parts of the partners. However, many times it will fail because the JV partners simply didn’t market or promote their product or service properly.

What is your JV product or service? Tell your customers! But how do you tell them in a way that will get them to try your product or service? Try these promotional secrets that utilize the psychology of the customer who want to indulge themselves.

1. Pricing

How do you price your JV product? Does your service run an even $400? The psychology of pricing can make a big difference in how many sales you make. It has been proven that the pricing method of your product can determine its success.

Take, for instance, your $400 service package. Do you think customers will find it a bargain at $395? Pay no attention to the lost $5 and do take note of how many more sales you will make.

Try pricing in bulk as well. One item may cost $20, but try offering 3 for $50. You will sell more and your profits will prove it.

2. Not All Is Lost

What do your customers stand to lose by NOT using your product? One way to create demand for your product is not to emphasize the benefits, but to let a potential customer know what is lost by not using it. Think of all the side-by-side tests found on TV commercials. Your bathtub will remain dirty with mildew if you fail to use Product X. Your dishes will have spots unless Product Z is placed in your dishwasher. Don’t just promote the benefits, but emphasize what will be lost if your product or service isn’t in use.

3. The Picture That Sells

And speaking of promoting the benefits of your product, are you doing it correctly? Of course, it’s easy to say, “our product will help you by doing A, B, C…” etc. But a list of features is boring and monotonous. Instead, put your features into a colorful description, or better yet, a photograph. Would you rather buy a hamburger, or “a sizzling, fresh, 100% beef burger charbroiled to perfection, inspired by the warm breezes of the Caribbean?” The use of photos can also bring your product closer to your potential customer. Again on the food theme, have you ever noticed that popular restaurants use menus with tantalizing photos of the food items? A picture can truly be worth a thousand words.

Get your JV out of the doldrums. It doesn’t take but a little bit of creativity and imagination to get your product in the proper promotional mindset. Use the tricks that major corporations have been using for decades and you may find that your JV sales will take off.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

How To Market Your New Joint Venture

For many entrepreneurs who wish to dive into the joint venture arena, getting the first partner is the hardest part. But once you have found a suitable and enthusiastic partner and performed all the proper paperwork, how do you take your newly formed JV and advertise it to the masses?

A great JV idea is like an acorn: it is unfilled potential until it is planted, watered, and finally grows into a new and majestic oak tree. The next step in getting the word out about your JV is to plant that seed and give it some water.

Here are some ideas that can get your JV information to new customers and clients:

Blogs – Form a blog with your JV partner. You can start a blog for free. You and your JV partner can trade writing short blog posts that promote your JV business. Also, get a following from other blogs to get traffic to yours. You might also ask about writing guest blog posts for other blogs to help promote your JV.

Articles – There are many websites that want your articles. Some will even pay you.  Write informative articles related to your industry and JV to publish throughout the web.

eZines – Many websites specialize in subscription ezines. In addition, many online businesses create their own ezine for their customer database. Talk with one of these about writing a helpful article for their ezine and get your business noticed by their customers.

Website – Don’t forget about the possibility of a separate website for your new JV. It can simply be a well designed website that is search engine optimized (SEO) and provides information to potential customers. Or you may go full speed with Flash animation and an online shopping cart to sell more business.

Press Release - A well-written press release to local or regional media can help get the word out about your new JV. Especially if either you or your JV partner has a prominent role in the region to begin with, a joint venture can pique a reporter’s interest to write a more detailed interview.

Email - The nice aspect about forming a JV is that you already have two established businesses with marketing lists.  Join up your databases and send out a promotional email to your joint customers about your new JV. Offer special deals to get them to try your new JV product or service.

Advertise – Don’t forget the traditional route of promotion – advertising. Create ads for print, radio, TV, and even online advertising such as pay per click or pay per call. Research the best venues for your target market and spend the money to promote your new JV. Remember, you are splitting the costs, making advertising more affordable to both parties.

Your newly formed JV doesn’t have to sit stagnant while you try and build a new customer base. Take the initiative and get the word out about your new JV business.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Increase Your JV Profits by Paying For Advertising Results

How would you like to save money on advertising AND make more money? Your joint venture is a business vehicle that lives or dies by the bottom line. Doesn’t it make sense to use win-win methods that help your JV grow and become profitable? That’s why results-based advertising can help your JV increase sales while reducing your marketing budget.

Why pay for advertising when you get zero sales and no quantifiable leads? It ends up becoming wasted advertising, wasted money lost forever. “Results-based” means you only pay when you see results. It puts you at less risk to waste money, and your advertisers end up making more money than a set, pre-determined fee.

Results-Based Advertising

Your advertising budget can get inflated quickly. Print, radio, and TV ads can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in a short time. What you need is a method that helps retain dollars in your bank account until you are able to attract and convert leads from advertisements.

Pay Per Click - The Internet has become one of the most-used advertising systems in the world. Pay per click advertising uses prominent search engines to get your JV business on top of search results for specific keywords and phrases. You simply make a bid on certain keywords for which your ad should appear. And when a user clicks on your paid sponsor link to your Internet landing page, only then do you pay for the advertising. This system is easy and can generate thousands, or depending on the keyword, even millions of potential leads.

Pay Per Call – Similar to pay per click, this system provides an actual phone number rather than a website link in the paid ad. When a user makes a search and finds your ad, they call your JV business directly for more information. Your telephone sales staff then has the opportunity to gather information about the customer/client, and formulate a sales pitch to meet their needs. Pay per call is more expensive than pay per click, but the sales conversion ratio is much better at 45 percent, compared to about 3 percent for pay per click.

Results-Based Advertising - During a recession, advertising space grows. Magazines, newspapers, TV stations all have trouble selling space and time when the economy is down. As a result, advertisers become motivated to sell space at a discount rather than lose money.

When you talk to advertisers about purchasing space or time on their platform, do you ask them whether they believe your JV business will see sales by advertising with them? And if the answer is “yes,” then you can progress to discussions of another type of joint venture with them.

Using a similar method from pay per click or pay per call, offer to pay the advertiser a pre-determined fee or commission only when a quantifiable lead comes to your JV business. You can set up the lead generation so that the advertiser can track them. With every lead that comes from their advertising space, you pay them a set fee. This could result in higher fees for the advertiser, while reducing your risk for ineffective advertising.

Make the most out of your precious marketing budget for your JV. Start utilizing a system that makes advertisers work for you with a focused, results-based advertising.  The results can be more profit for you and your advertisers.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Increase Sales With Results-Based Compensation

Why pay salespeople who are not motivated or do not make adequate sales? If your joint venture product or service depends upon face-to-face or direct contact with potential customers and clients, you should consider using a results-based compensation system.

Auto dealers do it. Real estate agents earn it. Corporations pay brokers with it. What is it? Commissions. People who meet face-to-face or talk directly with a potential lead earn their keep by commissions. They close a sale and enjoy commission earned.

A set salary can become un-motivational when sales staffs realize that they still get paid regardless of whether a sale is made. If you use in-house staff, set up a motivational compensation system that pays them a percentage of every sale they make. Set sales goals so that each staff has a purpose and destination to reach with total sales. And incorporate bonuses for meeting and exceeding goals.

This type of results-based compensation will ultimately bring your JV sales staff greater salaries, and ensure that you hire and retain the best sales force available. If you prefer not to have in-house staff and your JV product or service can use an independent contractor, such as a licensed broker, set up a similar compensation system with them.

Structure for Results-Based Compensation

Simple Gross Percentage - This is the easiest type of results-based compensation structure. When a salesperson makes a sale, a percentage of the total sale goes back to the seller. For instance, if one of your sales staff makes a $5,000 sale with a 10% commission, they earn $500 for that transaction.

Gross percentage can be tiered as the value of the product or service increases. For instance, you may pay a commission of 10% for items valuing $0-$999, 8% for items $1,000-$4,999, 6% for items $5,000-$9,999, etc. You can structure a tiered commission any way you like to motivate your sales staff, and when items increase in value, so does the commission percentage.

Residual Commission Income – Many JV businesses are offering not a product but a continual service. Service subscriptions are the way these businesses make money. When a customer subscribes, they pay a fee, usually on a monthly basis to have continual access to the service. The more subscriptions gathered, the more income your joint venture can realize.

Salespeople can be motivated to sell subscriptions for a residual commission fee. Every time they sell a subscription, they receive a portion of the monthly service fee for as long as the customer remains a subscriber. With this type of result-based compensation, a salesperson may have unlimited income potential.

Bonus - Bonuses are important for sales staff to remain motivated. As well as receiving compensation for each sale, a salesperson can earn a pre-specified bonus for meeting sales goals. A bonus could be cash, or something else of value such as an automobile, a Hawaiian vacation, or even stock options if your JV structure is a corporation.

Be wary of how you pay your people to sell what your JV produces. With results-based compensation, your income grows, and you attract the most talented and motivated sales staff. Make sure your JV business compensation is win-win.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Use Business Psychology to Help Your JV Succeed

Business psychology is one of the fastest-growing and exciting areas of business application. Major colleges and universities are creating undergraduate and graduate programs that deal specifically with business psychology. Business leaders in larger corporations are finding that business psychology helps their organizations perform more efficiently and run at optimum levels.

Business psychology can be a vital factor to the success of your joint venture since psychology plays a part in every person-to-person transaction you perform. Here are some of the important ways your JV can grow and succeed when you implement positive business psychology:

Relationship Building

Starting with your own JV partner, you must form, build, and maintain business relationships. Your relationship with your JV partner needs to be cooperative, progressive, and encourage creativity. You’re a team, and teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common goal.

• Interpersonal skills - How do you communicate with people? Does your approach make others feel welcome and receptive, or chastised and put down? Interpersonal communication is a skill and sometimes needs to be learned, honed, and practiced. Learn to be able to communicate effectively with business partners, customers, and employees.

• Build lasting relationships – Using your interpersonal skills along with your personality, you must build relationships in order for your JV to succeed. Talk to others. Make friends and acquaintances. Network. Even shy and introverted individuals can learn to use their strengths to build relationships that help their respective businesses succeed and be a pleasure to with whom to work.

• Teamwork – Are you a team player? Or do you play by your own rules? If you want to build your JV business relationships, be prepared to leave your ego behind and contribute to the greater good of the team. It is important for every member of a team to contribute. And even if you are the leader, your job is to encourage that contribution from everyone and help them do their best, rather than an autocratic “do it my way” approach.

Networking

Whatever your JV business, networking will help you and your JV partner experience growth better than simply hanging out the proverbial shingle and advertising. People carry news to other people more effectively than any other method. Be sure you use positive business psychology and your relationship building techniques to help promote your JV through networking with other business owners, customers, and anyone who can potentially put in a good word about your business.

Professional Development

What about your own professional development? Take classes in business psychology, interpersonal skills, or even classes that can help you work through shyness. Many community colleges offer such classes usually at cheap tuition. Other for-profit companies offer professional development for reasonable prices. Take the time to develop your business psychological skills with your own personal development training program.

Business psychology, whether you recognize it or not, is employed continually around any business. Don’t let it work against you. Develop your business psychology skills so your JV can grow and prosper.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Your JV Consumer Psychological Strategy

Do you know how your customers view your joint venture business? And how do you treat your customers? Consumer psychology is important when you consider how you promote your JV business and develop products or services. In fact, it’s an integral part of the business process. You and your JV partner should be aware and understand consumer needs in order for your joint venture to expand and be successful.

Consumer psychology is based on several factors. The following are just a few of the important factors that help shape the consumer psychological profile for a particular business.

Purchase Experience

A consumer wants to have a pleasant purchasing experience. Spending hard-earned money, especially in a down economy, is a big responsibility to the consumer. They want to know that they are getting value.

Is your product or service a faceless, anonymous item with no personality? Or do you market and package your product with style and flair? The packaging of your product plays a big part in how a consumer views the quality. Even if your JV offers a service, the method of marketing and promotion gives the consumer a good idea of the quality.

Pricing also fits under this category. You don’t have to sell the cheapest product, but be sure you offer great value for your pricing strategy.

Customer service is also very important. If you sell your product or service directly, the more personable your sales clerks and staff are, the better experience your customers will have. Also, be ready to satisfy customers who have complaints and questions about your JV product or service.

Quality

The quality of your product or service will determine whether your customer returns and spreads the word about your JV business. If you sell a product that falls apart or turns out to be low quality for the price, you can be sure it will have a negative effect on future business.

Your JV business should always focus on quality. Your service should always have experienced staff (which may be you), which serves the client well. If your JV manufactures and sells a product, be sure that the materials are of the best quality, and the process is efficient so that your consumer will value what he buys.

Innovation

Innovation plays a big part in consumer psychology. Does your JV meet a specific niche?  Did you and your joint venture partner develop an innovative way to present a product or service? Consumers value a product or service that doesn’t fit an old mold. New technology, innovative design, and additional services – all these elements can be innovative to your JV business. Consumers will value innovation in your product so don’t neglect it when you and your JV partner start your venture.

You and your JV partner need a strategic consumer strategy when you form your joint venture business. Be sure to consider how your customers will approach and value your product or service from the outset.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

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