The Weapon of Joint Ventures
By Douglas Purcell
Dr Phil is the master of joint ventures, and he should write a course on one. He is better than me and all of the other gurus combined with this art.
You know who Dr. Philip McGraw is right? He’s that psychologist who got famous after he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Before then, have you ever heard of him? I didn’t, so how exactly did Dr. Phil tap into Oprah’s list? Her list is extremely large, but her lists of subscribers are known as viewers, and she has them all over the globe.
Well, it all started back in 1996 when Oprah was in some trouble with a lawsuit for defaming the cattle industry, because of her show on mad cow disease. She hired Dr. Phil to help her get ready for the Amarillo Texas beef trial.
She was really impressed on what he did and she gave him the glory for winning the case. Soon after that he started appearing on her show more often and he won the approval of Oprah so he also won the approval of her viewers/subscribers, and bam he shot up big. He now has his own television show, but here’s the catch, it’s under Harpo productions which is owned by Oprah (It’s her name spelled backwards), so she is receiving benefits of his work as well.
So what notes can we take from Dr. Phil when landing a super big joint venture? Well, you have to help the individual your about to confront, and you have to help them in a huge way.
You know as the saying goes, “the best way to get what you want is to help someone get what they want.” This is so true, you help people out and they will naturally return a favor, it’s one of the laws of the universe.
I won a good friend recently by simply giving him some advice, I wasn’t looking to get anything out of it, I just wanted to help him out. The advice that I gave him worked and it also helped him save a customer which is priceless.
He gave me one of his products for free and said that if I needed him for anything just ask. That’s the kind of relationships that you need to strike with people, a good book for this is “how to win and influence people.”
Learning marketing is great, but you also need to know how to work with people to strike deals, because that’s all business my friend. Here is how I win friends with all of my customers.
1. Provide a service that you back up what you say in your salesletter. People hate being scammed and duped, would you? Your name and reputation is far more valuable then a quick buck.
2. Provide excellent customer service. When a customer emails me and have a question about one of the methods in my product, I ALWAYS respond to them, and I do it within a reasonable time. It’s not cool that after a customer purchase something to simply leave them in the cold, because they will not purchase from you again.
3. Make a friend instead of a sale. I rather have 10 friends in my list then 10,000 people who purchase from me. Forming relationships is something that many marketers neglect. A friend will be with you forever, a sale, especially if you neglect them will be gone if you ignore them.