How often have you heard that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole?

Well that certainly applies when developing and growing your professional services practice.

Very often I meet business leaders who much prefer to drive forward their strategy on their  own rather than being open to the power of collaboration, joint ventures and strategic alliances.

But just how could collaborating with someone who is offering seemingly similar solutions to your practice or business help you attract more clients?

Let’s take look at an example from an organisation focused on providing support and resources to women entrepreneurs looking to build an online business The Corner 4 Women and what 5 learnings we can take from a current programme they are running.

‘The Corner 4 Women’ are developing a paid membership community which will be launching this year, but how do they reach and connect with potential members?

Learning 1 - they first needed to build a list of potential clients, accessing their contact details so that they can connect with them over time so that when they are ready to launch their membership site they have a list of potential members who already know and trust their expertise and so will be more prepared to consider joining their paid membership community.

Learning 2 - just as with networking offline where the key is building relationships before inviting someone to invest in your product or services, we must build relationships online.  In the case of ‘The Corner 4 Women’, they are building their relationship with their community and giving to their network - remember the saying:

It’s not what your network has done for you, it’s what you have done for your network.

‘The Corner 4 Women’ organsied a number of special events where they have made available gifts in the form of information products -  that their community can access at no cost.

Learning 3 - rather than deploying a scarcity mentality, ‘The Corner 4 Women’ have been open to collaborate with others so that the value of the gifts they are able to offer to their community is far greater than they might have been able to ake available themselves.  Can you imagine how long it would take and the resources required to create the list of gifts you can see they have made available here?

Learning 4 - they have looked for opportunites to tie in their membership and list building drives to special events, for example their first birthday as a community or Valentines day.  This strategy also enables ‘The Corner 4 Women’ to write press releases about their events that tie in with key dates in the calendar and raise media attention for their organisation.

Learning 5 - they have developed a strategy of providing events for their community time and again, not just once.  It’s easy to plan one marketing event or campaign, but to develop a marketing plan over time and being consistent in delivery will build your brand faster - ‘The Corner 4 Women’ have a marketing strategy that ties into their business strategy that goes beyond one off events.

‘The Corner 4 Women’ may not be the same business you are in, but what can you learn from the actions they are taking to attract more clients and build their brand.

Yes there are a number of things I would recommend to them in terms of enhancing the image of their brand online, but you have to admit they have a strategy that they are implementing consistently.

So in summary how could you take learnings and adopt, adapt and apply them to your professional services practice:

• how can you build your list of potential clients?
• what information products could you make available at no cost that would express your expertise and be something that a potential client would happliy provide their contact details to receive, and allowing you to market to them over time?
• who could you collaborate and joint venture with who want to reach the same target audience to increase the value you can deliver to potential clients?
• what events could you create that would also attract media attention?
• how can you develop an integrated marketing plan so that you are contantly in the mind of your prospects which then will enable you to attract more clients?

Do review this case study and consider how you could make this work for your business and who knows there may even be some of the gifts available at The Corner 4 Women that you might find of value.

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