Expand Your Reach: Today’s focus: Cake business owner.

In this episode of Expand Your Reach i will be accessing a typical cake business and dishing you a step by step system to maximize some of the potential revenue residents in your business and be sure you are not leaving anything on the table.

• Your leverage points: which business(es) compliment your business that if you reach a strategic relationship with them you can have access to their client base and open a new avalanche of clients

1.    Event planner/decorator: you can meet with an event planner and ask her if she can introduce your cakes to people who request for her service (since most of her ideal clients are people celebrating weddings or birthdays). Give her a taste of your cupcake and tell her you will give her a modest commission on every client she refers to you and you will also refer her to your clients who need her service. Imagine you form a strategic relationship with 10 event planners (worst case scenario, one will refer you in a month

2.    Photographer: you can use event planning strategy for this as well

3.    Schools: Most modern private schools (primary or secondary) have your potential clients who can afford your cake among the students’ parents. Meet with the school management and introduce your product (give them a cupcake) tell them you would like to introduce your cakes in one of their PTA meetings to the parents too. Tell the parents you have beautiful and delicious birthday cakes, ready to be delivered on their children’s birthday in the school. After the PTA meeting, share your card, collect their contact and send them a reminder sms. Imagine you have a strategic relationship with 5 schools, at least, one student will make cake in a week

4.    Companies: GTBank started this initiative for its customers and the experience was amazing, you can form a strategic alliance with a top business who relates with is customer one-on-one. Using the 80/20 rule, propose to them that when  their most loyal paying client is celebrating his/her birthday, they can have a system to compensate them by presenting a birthday cake and create a good customer experience for him/her which will generate tons of word of mouth. Imagine you meet with 20 companies, 18 turn you down and two accept that two might have one customer celebrating birthday every week.

5.    Small chops owner, Fast food restaurant, resort, Massage or spa etc. These are businesses whose products complement your product and can be used simultaneously with yours. Form a strategic relationship with them, when someone come to buy their product they can introduce your cakes to them, you can even ask if you can display your cake in their store (you never can tell, they might help you sell one cake in a week) you are leveraging on their space and staff (pay them a commission on every cake sold)

The interesting part is that, these ideas do not disrupt the existing system you have in place in running your cake business, they can be utilized simultaneously. You are expanding your reach with no cost or risk.

If you don’t have a pipeline of opportunities, you might not maximize the full potentials resident in your business

And if you will like to dive deeper on this, or you want to know how to craft a persuasive proposal to meet with this business and form a strategic alliance with them (Human being are naturally selfish, you must be able to present to them in clear statement what they stand to benefit in the relationship before you can win them to yourself) drop your comment in the comment box below and let’s get started.