Collaborating with your competitors can be a good idea. If you have built up a list of people who receive your email newsletter (or even your daily tips;) most of them will never buy what you’re selling. For loads of reason’s they may love getting your material, but most of them will never buy from you. How about approaching a competitor and suggesting that you cross-promote their product to your list?
Now hear me out. I hear your wails of protestation (or is that laughter). But wait a minute. Let’s suppose you have people subscribed to your list and in amongst valuable information you have proposed various of your products/services to them and they have not yet bought from you. There are probably two main reasons why. They don’t want what you’re selling or they don’t want to buy it from you.
Let’s now imagine that you had a meeting with your competitor and said to them “look, I have built up a list of people who are interested in what you and I sell but they do not want to buy my products. Could we do a deal whereby I promote your product to them and if they buy, I get a commission?”
Assuming this discussion worked out well, you could then recommend your competitor’s products to your subscribers and if one of your subscribers did take a look at your competitor’s product and buy it what would this do to you? Firstly it would give you some income which wasn’t there before. Secondly it might raise your status in the eyes of your subscriber. After all, you just acted in some capacity as a trusted advisor (assuming your recommendation turned out well for your subscriber).
Your relationship with your competitor could develop to the point where they recommend your products to their list! Where could that lead? I’m interested in your thoughts. Is this a step too far or actually a good mindset to occupy? What other ways could you collaborate with your competitors?