How to Develop a WIN/WIN/WIN Strategic Partnership
Ever wondered how to wow your potential customers, the customers of a friend in business, or a business acquaintance? One of the most under-used, yet, extremely effective methods of getting your message out there in a positive way is through creating a “Host Beneficiary” relationship or Host Ben for short.
The first thing our coaching clients tell us when we mention Host Bens is “host what?” Not surprisingly, I get very excited in introducing this strategy as it always creates a huge amount of value when applied effectively and consistently,
The way it works is quite clever. The main purpose of the strategy is to introduce yourself and your product/service to the database and network of another business. Now, for all you hoarders of databases, don’t despair, nobody gets to use your database in a malicious way, and in fact, it doesn’t even have to be used directly by the business suggesting the Host Ben relationship. The control of the data always remains with the owner of the database.
The effective functioning of the strategy depends on first of all offering something of value to the business that can add to their existing value proposition. For example, one of my partnerships is with a creative industry incubator who has around 150 or so businesses operating at their two sites. They already provide a range of support services for those business, so what value could I add? I run monthly workshops that help business owners learn specific strategies to overcome common business challenges. So by providing access to my workshops for that community, I am able to connect with those business owners who attend and provide further support to those who need it. Equally, the incubator director is able to provide an additional service to his community and the business owners themselves gain tremendous value – hence it’s a WIN/WIN/WIN arrangement!
What is more fascinating is that you can even reverse the relationship and have what is called a ‘Reverse Host Beneficiary‘ whereby you offer another business’ products or services to your customers and network. An example of this is a Marketing Company I’ve partnered with. One of the workshops I run is around Digital Marketing, and I don’t provide marketing services myself so what better way to create a WIN/ WIN/WIN arrangement than by offering a complimentary marketing audit to all those who request it at my workshops, and then connect them with my marketing partner who can help support those businesses that need help with their marketing. I win, he wins, they win.
The most important thing to remember is that you must target Host Ben partners whose target market (ie. customer profile) matches yours, otherwise, you will be connecting to an audience who you may not be able to help and who your partners may not be able to help and so everyone loses!
Host Bens, like all relationships, require nurturing – it takes time to build that trust and understanding and it take some effort to keep that relationship alive. Start with something small and grow it from there. And watch the value follow through for you, your Host Ben partner and for all the customers involved.
To your success!
Jugal
