Welcome back!

In this session we will explore the 5 Dimensions of Prosperity Networking and how to multiply your profitable business relationships. Let's expand your thinking and your objectives beyond just looking directly for new customers and sales opportunities. We will explore how to sell THROUGH others instead of just TO others, how to explore their circles of influence and how they may best fit into yours, how to find ALL the different relationships your business needs to survive and thrive, and how to make your networking a SYSTEM.

ENJOY!

 THE VARIETY of PROSPERITY RELATIONSHIPS

In order to continue to grow your business beyond your own genius, talent, toil and time, or to even maximize and maintain your successful self-employment, there are a number of relationships that need to be developed for your business not only to just survive, but to thrive. Remember, you are limited to what you can accomplish by yourself. But there is no limit to what you can accomplish when you can fully engage enough of the right people in your vision, and work to make it their own.  

We explored earlier how the quality of your personal life is determined by the quality of your personal relationships and that the quality of your business relationships determine the quality of your business. But there is one relationship factor to assure the quality of your business that is not necessary to assure the quality of your personal life. It is quite possible for you to have a fulfilling personal life with one or two or five relationships that are very fulfilling. But in business there is a certain quantity of relationships that is required in order for your business to survive, and a certain number of business relationships at a certain average dollar value per relationship to reach any profit growth objective you have set beyond that, and a certain number of various relationships that need to be set in place and maintained for it to become independent of you. 

As a business owner or a self-employed professional, you need to determine what that number is.  It’s really very simple. Let’s start with CUSTOMERS AND CLIENTS.

·       What was your total sales revenues in the last 12 months?

·       What was your total number of clients or customers that you served in the last 12 months?

·       Divide the total sales by the number of customers or clients you served and you will get the average revenue per client.  

·       Now set your goal for total sales revenue that you want to achieve in the next 12 months.

·       Next, simply divide that number by the dollar volume per customer you had last year. This will give you the number of clients you’ll need at current revenue per client numbers to reach your goal.

·       Or, divide your total sales revenue goal for the next twelve months by the number of clients you served during the last twelve months and you will know the increased dollar volume per customer/client that you will need to reach your new 12-month revenue goal. 

So, to reach your goal, you will either need to increase your capacity to serve more clients/customers or you will need to increase your sales volume per client. Or a combination of both. By expanding both the number of clients and the dollar volume per client you get a compounding effect. To see how this could really work in your favor:

·       Take the number of total clients you indicated you needed to reach your new income goal for the next 12 months if you maintained your revenue per client ate for the last 12 months.

·       Multiply it by the sales revenue per client you indicated you needed to reach your new sales revenue goal for the next 12 months if you maintained the total number of clients you had the last 12 months. 

Can you see the power of multiple compounding factor?  For example, if I made $1 million dollars in sales the last 12 months, and I served a total of 1000 clients, I would have averaged $1000 per client. If my new goal is $1.2 million dollars, I would need to serve 1200 clients in the coming year. Or I would need to increase my revenue per client to $1200. Or if I did both, my total sales revenue increase over the next 12 months would more than double to $1.44 million. The compounding effect would be $240,000. So, by increasing each factor by only 20%, I increase my total revenue by 44%.  

So, there is a certain number of client relationships that you need for your business to grow. But as you grow the number of clients, you will also need to grow the number of other relationships that are involved in your business to support your growth in client relationships. I’ve identified seven relationships, including customers/clients that are essential to the survival, let alone the long-term health and growth of your business.  So other than customers and clients,

·       Do you need more employees and contractors to support a growing customer base and increase your capacity to provide your product and service offerings?

·       Do you need more vendors as you grow to supply a growing customer base and to broaden your product and service offerings and increase your profits?

·       Do you need more referral partners to provide you on an ongoing basis with connections to any of the relationships you may need?

·       Do you need more affiliate & affinity partners to help grow your customer base, where you work with a partner who has a complementary product or service, but targets your same market, who would be willing to cross-market customer bases with you or market your products or services to theirs, or join with you in joint marketing ventures?   

·       Do you need more advisors, mentors or masterminds to provide your business with the expertise beyond your own that it needs as it grows?

·       Do you need more money as you grow your customer base? Perhaps you need partners or investors or financiers or banking partners as you grow your business.

Another relationship that we’ll consider is the relationship you have with your competitors. Do your competitors become more aware of you and perhaps you compete more and become more aware of the number of competitors that you have and in so doing may need to find a way to work within the framework of competition, or even work with and partner with your competition. If you can’t beat them, have them join you!   

The more you build the 7 Essential Relationships, the more you will be able to win against your competition. 

When you try and focus on customers and clients and bringing them on by yourself, you will be very limited in what you can accomplish. If, however, you also look to these variety of relationships to help you attract, engage, convert and retain more clients, you will greatly multiply your capacity to do so. 

One other truth should hit you. ALL of these relationships require a process to ATTRACT, ENGAGE, CONVERT and RETAIN them.  In order to create and build all these relationships, you should follow a very similar SALES process. They all entail exploring and defining mutual interest, mutual trust, mutual respect, and a value-for-value exchange, though it may not be as obvious as it is with customers and clients - your product for their money – determine what you can provide them that may provide the most value, and what they, in return, can provide you that you value.  

These are the Seven Essential Relationships your business needs to SURVIVE and THRIVE. Most business failures can be tracked to the non-existence of or major fractures in the common ground, mutual interest, mutual trust, mutual respect, or the value-for-value exchange of one or more of these relationships. 

The rest of this book will explore the nature of each of these relationships and detailed strategies and tactics to systematically attract, engage, convert and retain all the relationships your business needs to SURVIVE and THRIVE – to grow beyond yourself so that your business, leveraging the value given by all who are engaged in it, will eventually pay you because you own it, even if you no longer choose to work in it.