Are You Giving An Inspired Performance in Your Joint Venture?

We all want to perform better. Our jobs, our personal life, our marriages – all this and more require our full attention and focus in order to be successful.

With so many areas of our life pulling at our focus, how can we maintain a consistent and outstanding effort with a joint venture? Doesn’t your JV require your full effort as well? However, sometimes we lose sight and forget why we formed a JV in the first place: to make money and be more successful in business.

Evaluate Your Feelings

You can improve your JV efforts. If you have felt any of the following in regard to your JV, then you are not realizing your full potential, or are unaware of the full potential you can give to making your JV a success:

• Over stressed

• Health challenges

• Feeling of futility

• Imbalanced

• Isolated

Here are three simple things you can do to leveraging your highest effort and give an inspired performance in your JV.

Create a Compelling Vision

What was the reason you formed your joint venture? To make more money? To gain additional business contacts? To tap into an underdeveloped market segment? You need to go back and look at your JV documents and business plan. What is the purpose? If you just review your vision, you can get back to the place that made it exciting.

Don’t have a vision written down? Now’s the time to do so or improve on what you already have. A vision needs to be compelling. “Make more money” is not a compelling vision. “Earn six figures in the next fiscal year with a global marketing effort” is more like it. Make sure your JV vision is compelling enough that it gets you excited every day.

Tackle Challenging Situations

One thing that can really get you down is dealing with tough situations. However, haven’t you felt great and gained a sense of accomplishment when you last tackled and overcame a challenge?

Don’t let tough situations get the best of you. You can feel inspired when you succeed. Approach challenging situations with a goal to tackle one small thing at a time. Break it down into smaller steps. Then check off one step at a time and soon you realize the overwhelming situation is manageable. And always remember to give yourself a pat on the back with a small reward when you complete a challenge.

Tap into Your Creative Abilities

Nothing gives a more inspired performance than when you are creative and productive.  Practice brainstorming more often. Lay out multiple scenarios and solutions to a problem. Give yourself permission to come up with seemingly crazy ideas. That is where you find yourself thinking outside the proverbial box – when you allow yourself to think of innovative and creative solutions outside the norm.

Sometimes you just need to breathe life back into your JV performance. Don’t let yourself get a stale attitude toward your joint venture. Remember what you’re working for. Get that sense of accomplishment. And allow yourself to be creative. You and your JV partner will be thankful for it.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Give Your Joint Venture Customers A Reason To Buy

Have you formed a joint venture and experienced less-than-stellar sales compared to your expectations? Usually two or more entrepreneurs or business owners partner up to form a JV with the full intention of making more profit. However, the problem may be in the marketing of your JV product or service. Simply putting a product on the market doesn’t necessarily convince a potential buyer to make a purchase. That’s why you need to use marketing psychology to give your potential customers a reason to choose your product.

Triggering Psychology for Sales

Picture this situation: I recently was at the grocery store standing before an aisle full of different brands of green beans. There must have been 10 or more options, all with different price and packaging. As I stood there scratching my head trying to determine which can would have the best tasting green beans, I found one brand with a simple marketing line: “Picked fresh from local farmers and canned the same day for freshness”.  I remember picking greens beans fresh from my grandma’s garden when I was a kid and enjoying a tasty meal that same evening. I chose that brand because I wanted the same kind of freshness, despite the fact it cost 20% more than the basic generic brand.

This example illustrates why your JV product must differentiate itself from the competition. Consumers are indecisive. Help guide their choice by giving them a reason to buy your JV product. It doesn’t even have to be a proverbial grocery list of reasons. But simply highlighting a few simple benefits can help solidify a consumer’s decision.

Reasons Your Customers Buy

Here is a small list that is by no means complete regarding why your customers buy.

• Price – Some people will always base a decision on price. However, that doesn’t mean your product has to be the cheapest. You could promote that your product costs less than the leading competitor. Or you could charge a premium, but give a good reason why your JV product is worth it.

• Quality – Consumers like quality. Be sure that your product is manufactured or produced using quality and durable materials. Or if you offer a service, make it the best quality service and be sure to explain why it’s better than the other company.

• Innovation – Something new always attracts customers. Highlight how your JV product is innovative and can solve their problems better than standard products seen on the market today.

• Warranty/Guaranty – People also like to know that you will stand behind what you sell. Offering a warranty on a product or guarantying satisfaction can provide them with the impetus needed to buy your product.

Make sure your JV product or service stands out from the crowd. If you want to see your profits expand, then take the time to provide the reasons why customers should buy your product.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Follow Wal-Mart’s Joint Venture Example

If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur who wants to find a way to increase sales and enter new business arenas, a joint venture is a great way to break into new horizons. An entrepreneur with savvy business acumen can research, find, and negotiate a JV deal with another business that can help achieve new business goals. And a few lessons from the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, may be helpful in finding creative JVs that will help expand your business.

How Wal-Mart Entered India with a JV

In 2009, Wal-Mart started doing business in India for the first time. However, the Indian Wal-Mart is not the typical Wal-Mart retail superstores you see in most every small, medium, and large city in America. Rather, the retail giant formed a joint venture in 2006 with Bharti Enterprises, Inc., one of India’s leading business groups.

For the last three years, they have found a way to do business in India that complies with the strict government foreign-business investment restrictions and does not compete with domestic retailers. Rather than be an everyday retail store, the new Indian Wal-Mart is a wholesale business catering to the specific needs of vegetable vendors, hospitals, restaurants, and hotels, operating under the name BestPrice Modern Wholesale.

Wal-Mart is a world leader in consumer marketing and product logistics. Even you can take lessons from Wal-Mart’s India presence. Here’s how:

Find The Right JV Partner

First, Wal-Mart had to find a retail leader in India with a good reputation. Through their combined efforts, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises were able to form a working business entity.

Your efforts to find the best JV partner with a high reputation for quality and service are vital. If your goal is to enter new markets and larger market segments, a JV with another reputable business can aid your efforts to succeed quickly and more efficiently.

Jostle Your Paradigm

Wal-Mart is known worldwide for its large retail stores with low prices on popular consumer products. However, that paradigm would not work in India due to strict government non-competing laws on foreign businesses. Therefore, a new wholesale business paradigm was designed to help Wal-Mart play into the non-retail sector of India’s business economy.

Your JV entity and structure may need to change the way it normally does business. If you’re a retailer, you may need to work wholesale only. If you provide consumer services, you may need to change to a business-to-business format for your JV to succeed. Stay open to business paradigm changes.

Beat Competition Through Stealth

Of course, India is familiar with the Wal-Mart name, and it has a large controversy as a foreign business trying to steal customers from local retailers. Thus, along with changing to wholesale business, they changed their name to BestPrice Modern Wholesale.

If you are looking to beat competition, you and your JV partner can work under a new business name and entity that can succeed at penetrating a higher market share. Of course, this requires market research and marketing strategies so make sure to carefully evaluate this decision.

Your next JV may be the right formula to thrust your business into new heights. With the right JV partner and strategies, you can find ways to make your business work in new areas that were previously impenetrable.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Accounting for Your Joint Venture

You have spent much of your precious time researching potential joint venture partners, making proposals, and finally making a JV agreement that excites both you and your new JV partner. However, once your new business process begins, you and your partner need to agree to an accurate bookkeeping process that one or both of you will need to attend.

Accounting for joint ventures is just the same as for any other business. Revenues and expenses must be accounted for, and statements must be prepared to help in making future business decisions for the JV. The only difference is the process. However, it’s important to provide each partner with a complete reporting of all JV related accounting transactions.

Separate Joint Accounting System

The business model you choose for your JV may predetermine your accounting process. If you and your JV partner have agreed to form a separate entity such as a corporation, LLC, or Limited Partnership, you will need to create a separate bookkeeping system for that entity. This is important not only for profit sharing purposes, but for government reporting for tax purposes as well.

Separate Ledger Account

In many cases, a simple joint venture is created between two business owners and the accounting system can be assimilated into one or both owners’ existing systems. For instance, if your JV is the type that simply cross promotes each others’ business, or sells a package deal of both your products, you can simply keep track of the income and expenses related to the JV in your own accounting system, and share the results with your JV partner at the end of each month.

To do this, you can create two separate temporary accrual ledger accounts called “Joint Venture With X Income” and “Joint Venture With X Expenses”. Within these ledger accounts, you can record all purchases you make on behalf of the joint venture, and record the income you receive from related sales.

At the end of each month or fiscal quarter, you can make adjusting entries to close these accounts. For instance, if you have agreed to split profits 50/50, simply make two closing entries in the “Income” account, one with half the amount going out in a cash transaction to your JV partner, and the other half going to your own sales ledger account. Expenses can be closed the same way.

What Type of Accounting System?

Most businesses use an automated accounting system via computer software. Popular software packages such as Peachtree or QuickBooks offer easy accounting processes and user-friendly ways to create new accounts and even new entities for complete and separate JV bookkeeping.

You could also use a spreadsheet application such as the popular MS Excel to keep track of expenses and revenues. A spreadsheet will allow you to easily make charts and graphs.

However, don’t forget about the age-old handwritten ledger book. If your joint venture is a simple cross-promotional type of agreement, the way to keep track of bookkeeping may be to simply make manual entries in a ledger book. This method has worked for thousands of years and you can make it work for you too.

Accounting is important for the financial reporting of a JV business. Keep in mind accounting methods when you form your joint venture entity, and make sure you have a way to keep each JV partner fully informed of all financial transactions.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Why a Joint Venture Can Jump Start Your Online Business

In today’s current economic climate, many new entrepreneurs are foregoing the pavement pounding in lieu of starting an online business. Starting and running a website that offers helpful services to others can lead to steady income and even great riches. But unfortunately, most new online businesses fail. Why? They didn’t attract and keep the amounts of traffic needed to grow and sustain growth. However, if you are currently running a new online business, you may wish to consider online joint ventures to spur your growth.

An online business has a practically unlimited amount of potential customers. Anyone around the world with a computer and a modem can access your website. For some successful online businesses, they have tapped into a good portion of that market and have millions of customers and/or subscribers. But did they do it alone? Not likely.

The only way to access so many Internet users is to get the word out about your online business. And online joint ventures can do just that. Here are some of the ways that have made prominent online businesses successful:

• Affiliate Program – Find other online businesses that are successful and drive a lot of traffic. Talk with the website owner about joining together with an affiliate program. As an affiliate, they agree to market your website and product with a special link. Any time that a visitor clicks that link and buys your online product, service, or subscription, then the affiliate receives a portion of that sale. Usually about 50% is the norm for affiliate profit sharing. But with potentially hundreds of affiliates, that could translate into thousands of new customers for you.

• Database Sharing – Your website depends upon getting information to customers and potential customers. However, you do not have the numbers of subscribers you need to grow and build a huge online empire. Try a joint venture with other website owners who have large databases of customers. Perhaps for promoting their website or marketing their product, you can ask for access to their databases to help build your customer contact list.

• Reputation Building – The little guy always struggles to get noticed and respected. But if you are worthy enough, try forming a joint venture with another online website that has the popularity and reputation for delivering quality. Simply by being associated with a reputable website, you automatically gain respect and an endorsement as well.

• Co-Authoring – Is another website owner popular for providing helpful and useful information? Try to form a joint venture where you can both co-author an online brochure or guide for your customers. He gets exposure for his website and you get a great endorsement from someone who is known to deliver quality.

Online businesses have proven that they can thrive in a weak economy. It’s important, however, that an online entrepreneur not try to go it alone. Seek the proper joint ventures and watch your traffic and sales grow.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

Next Page »