I was talking with a business associate of mine the other day and that conversation led to some great insights.
I’ve long had the idea that IT companies would be likely to want to work with me and outsource their website hosting business to me. Generally, they hate providing the service and only do it to appease their clients.
I think what’s held me back from wanting to just go out and talk to a bunch of them is that I always felt like it wouldn’t be a two-way relationship. So often (especially in the BNI world), you go into a meeting thinking, “how can we refer business to each other?”
And in my case, I only have so many potential leads for IT companies, and all of those are going to go to the IT company I already have a strong relationship with.
But there are ways to help others besides just providing them referrals.
In this case, we can engage in a mutually-beneficial arrangement. If they don’t like hosting and are providing a bad service doing it, we can solve those problems. We can take all of those headaches away.
Obviously it’s good for us since it’s new business, but it’s also good for them because it solves a problem they’ve been having.
So I want to have at least a short-term plan for reaching out to these IT companies.
The obvious first-step is to ask if anybody knows the owners of IT companies, which I did this morning in BNI. And it worked! I got a referral and now have a meeting lined up for Friday with an IT company.
But what if I got more specific? I could start looking into all of the companies in the Twin Cities, and start asking people if they are connected with specific ones.
I could even target ones that have a mutual connection on Linkedin and then ask those people specifically for a connection!
I could also potentially start cold-calling down the road, but understandably, I’m not thrilled about that idea.
But I should have connections to plenty of these businesses, so for the time being, I should really explore those.