by Jay Abraham


Let me start with this message: Find out who has already done your work for you. What I mean is that some other business--or some other professional practice--has already spent a ton of time, effort and advertising dollars to attract customers, clients or patients that can now be yours for little more than the asking.

And, I'm not talking about rudely snatching someone else's patrons away from them. Not at all. I'm talking about gaining access to new customers or clients with the express permission and warm cooperation of the business that acquired those customers in the first place!

In marketing jargon, this process is know as setting up a "Host/Beneficiary Relationship." Company A (the Host) agrees to let Company B (the Beneficiary) deliver a sales message to people who are Company A's customers.

If you are the Beneficiary in this It-Takes-Two-two-Tango arrangement, it will bring you more customers and more cash right away. Believe me, I have done it myself more than 200 times. And it will also help you if you are the Host in the process, because your customers, clients or patients will respect you for helping them learn of a new value in the marketplace.

The really neat part is that it's no strain to create powerfully profitable Host/Beneficiary relationships. This is all you have to do:

Step One: Ask yourself, "Who already has a strong relationship with people to whom I might be able to sell a non-competitive but kindred product or service?"

Step Two: Once you've got names on paper, visit those noncompeting businesses and ask their owners to introduce your product or service to their audience. And, when you go to see them, take along plenty of information on what you sell, and some testimonials to its high quality. (You may not need to make a strong pitch, but it's best to be prepared.)

As an incentive, offer the prospective "Hosts" reverse access to your customers - or, simply offer them some percentage of any sales that you make as a result of their help. Point out to your Host that at the very minimum their customers will thank them for introducing you to them and helping them gain information about your beneficial product or service.

Here Are Three Examples of This Rapid Business-Building Tool in Action

1. A landscaping firm persuaded a real estate firm to introduce its shrub and tree-planting service to recent home-buying clients. The landscaper reaped orders galore as a result! Sales rose 40%.

2. A swimming pool distributor persuaded a house-painting company to introduce its "Early Season Above-Ground Pool Installation Discount" to people who had recently had their houses painted. Again, there was a strong response.

3. An attorney who handles heavy-duty tax cases wrote a letter to his clients and, in the "PS," told them they might want to look over a checklist of tax-filing hints given him by a new tax-preparation service. The tax preparer got all kinds of new business as a result of that link-up.

The introduction itself doesn't have to be as big a personal commitment. In fact, the introduction could be a relatively passive gesture - like that attorney's PS, or someone simply letting you insert your brochure in their mailing as "ride along" advertising.

Any small business or practice can and should use a Host/Beneficiary approach several times a year because it rarely fails to generate new business. One of my clients has compared it to "finding money in the street."

But, perhaps you are still just a little bit unsure of whether or not the Host/Beneficiary technique will work for you. If so, let's run through the steps one more time.

First, figure out who already sells to and enjoys the strong goodwill of people in your target audience. (The list could be almost endless.)

If you're in landscaping, look at who deals with your intended prospect one, two or three transactions before they are ready to buy from you. Once you identify who those generic companies are, e.g., contractors, real estate agencies, painters, movers, then move to more specific identification. Turn to either the Yellow Pages, or turn to a business directory and locate every builder or every contractor or every real estate company or every moving company in whatever geographic or industry segment to which you currently are marketing. And then contact them. When you do, you might tell them this:

(A) I am a highly-respected landscaper in our community.
(B) I would like very much to forge a strategic alliance with you.
(C) The reason I'd like to do it is that I realize that you have spent an enormous amount of time, effort, emotion, energy and expense building good will with your customers.
(D) Those customers--when they're done transacting business with you-- may have nothing else to bring you in the way of new business for many, many years. But there is a way, an ethical, valuable, worthwhile way, you could reclaim the time, effort and expense that you invested in that relationship and do your customer or client an incredible service.

See how that prepares them to listen? Okay, if you are a landscaper, then do this:

Tell the Host, and ultimately the end customer, that the difference between great landscape and just average landscape is not only the difference between potentially tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars of difference in the long-term value of a property. And, if it's a rental or an income-generating property, landscaping alone could make a difference in the rental building being filled, and commanding a premium in rents, or having a high vacancy rate and renting for a pittance.

Give Your Host a Real Gift-Special Treatment
Whatever your business or profession, offer the "Host" (and the Host's customers) whatever is appropriate. In the case of the landscape example, it might be a $20,000 landscape job for $10,000, or any other landscape job for 50% off its normal rate with a bonus of $500 worth of decorative stonework absolutely free, or something like that. (The key is to offer preferential advantage to customers. Something they wouldn't get on their own in the outside market if they stumbled into an office and bought landscaping on their own.)

Special treatment is critical to the whole dynamic of a Host/Beneficiary relationship. Why? Because it's critically important that the customer or client or patient feel that the Host, the recommender, the endorser of the product or server, has gone to the mat and negotiated a below-market price or an above-market benefit or bonus or guarantee that gives them extra value. It's important that anybody you get to endorse you distinguishes their customers as being special, important and unique.

You've got to show somebody that by teaming with you they have an opportunity to bring a great benefit, a great advantage, a great result to their customers or clients that they've never thought about. You've got to do that with sincerity.

A Host/Beneficiary Works With Anyone But Rivals
If the company or the professional you approach has an ongoing selling relationship with their customer or client, then you tack in a Host/Beneficiary setup should be a little different.

You should then focus on the fact that you are not going to take a dime away from the Host. Show the Host that there's no conflict whatsoever, that there's only a complementing connection between what they do and who they do it for and what you will do.

And make your offer economically appealing enough to get the Host excited. Show them that because you expect the advertising/marketing costs to be lower and the response rate and the average sale to be higher, you feel very comfortable offering to share what may seem a very generous buy to you a very justifiable amount of all new purchases resulting from their endorsement with them. Then tell the Host what the arrangement would be, and that there are options, obviously. It can be a share of the profit. It can be so much per customer. It can be so much per prospect or lead or inquiry. It could be a fixed fee for doing it or any combination thereof.

Once you've told them what the financial consideration to them is, denominate it into terms the Host can get enthusiastic about. What does this mean? It means using what experts call "future pacing." Project ahead and show your prospective Host what the money you give them or pay them or the stream of income it generates for them could be worth, could buy, could control or could produce.

For example, if you were a moving company, and I was talking about sharing 12 percent of my landscape fees with you, I would say: "Let me tell you what I think that means, Mr. Moving company. Worst case, if my projections are correct (that's a key phrase to use--"if my projections are correct") I expect to be giving you a check for $187,000 six months from now!"

That alone--that lump-sum figure--gets people excited. But then I recommend you take the process to a higher level of leverage. Show them what they can buy with that money and with subsequent money. For example, you might say, "And if it works out, and if I'm right, you can expect a check similar to that every six months forever!" Then you say, "What could you do, Mr. Mover, with a $187,000 check twice a year for life?" And you don't ask them to think; you tell them! "Well, I suppose you could basically pay off all the debt your moving company has. Or you could run ads every month in every newspaper in town. Or you could hire five new salespeople. Or you could buy yourself a million-dollar home. Or you could expand your facilities. Or you could..."

It's important that you instill in the mind of the prospective Host or endorser the fact that he or she is going to get most of the benefit from the proposition. Tell them this is a wonderful way for them to perform a market test to see how much leverage they really have with heir customers because if you're right, they can do this for a lot of other people, and you'll even assist them if it works out! If it doesn't, the loss will be yours because you'll be the one who will have funded the program, you're the one who has extended all the effort! They will be the one who will benefit either way. And then you give them indemnification. You give them a written warrant that you will only do great work--that if there is any problem, you'll make it right.

That's powerful, don't you think? Please start putting this Host/Beneficiary technique to use this month. Done right and done often enough, it will give you a major business-building breakthrough.


This resource is (c) Jay Abraham, a renowned marketing expert and is taken from the "Jay Abraham's Business Breakthroughs" newsletter.