Ouch! You’ve got a great product. In fact, there’s never been another product like yours in the history of the world. Your product is going to sell like GANGBUSTERS because, well, because you just know it will. Because it has to. Because you just sunk the last 6 months and several thousand dollars into building the product, but, it’s going to all be worth it as soon as these stupid, snobby, too-good-to-talk-to-you big shot marketers come down off of their high horses and promote it for you.

Whew.

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how you see it.

But you do believe you’ve got a great product that will sell well, and you know you’re doing these other marketers a FAVOR by offering them the chance to promote it for you. Because after all, they have nothing to do and nothing to promote. They’re just waiting for you to come along and give them a chance to double the millions they’ve already earned…

Yeah. Right.

I remember all too well how hard it was to get anyone to take a look at my offer, much less promote it for me when I was new. And do you know why? It’s because like almost every new marketer out there, I had it backwards.

Imagine a man knocks on the door of a woman he’s never met before. She opens the door a crack to see who it is and realizes she doesn’t know him from an axe murderer. Through the crack in the door he says to her, “Hi Baby, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you drive me in your car to an expensive restaurant where you’ve made reservations for us. I’m going to let you buy me dinner with cocktails and a bottle of wine, and afterwards I’ll let you take me to an expensive Broadway show that’s booked six months in advance. And after that, I’ll do you an even bigger favor and let you sleep with me. What do you say?”

Seriously, what do you think she’ll say to this stranger at her door? I suspect she slammed the door shut when he got to the part about the expensive restaurant and reservations.

And yet new marketers take this exact same approach all the time when asking established marketers to act as their affiliates or JV partners.

“Hi Joe Marketer, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you devote several days of your precious promotional schedule to selling my product to your list and followers. Sure, you don’t know me, you don’t know my product and you have zero reason to trust me or my product. But I still expect you to drop everything and instead of promoting something you KNOW will sell and you know your customers will love, I want you to take a huge chance on promoting a product that might not sell at all, that might be awful, that might alienate your customers and ruin your reputation. Because hey, that’s what you should do for a total stranger, right?”

Now imagine receiving one or even several of these requests every day. Is it any wonder that seasoned marketers stop answering their email, and new marketers have trouble getting anyone to promote for them?

Let’s go back to the guy and gal analogy. What if that guy were to come up to the woman – not at her front door, but at work – and simply introduce himself and maybe thank her for something she did at her job? Maybe he comes back in a couple of days and comments on something she wrote or asks a relevant question. He starts following her on social media and engaging her there.

A little bit of interaction here, a little bit there…

Then maybe he does something nice for her – shares one of her links, tells his Facebook Fans about her business – or he simply buys one of her products. She’s starting to take notice of him. He’s not scary and in fact he seems like a nice guy. What’s this? He’s got a website. She checks it out. Hmmm… this might be someone worth getting to know better.

The following month or maybe the following year, what happens? She’s promoting his product. Or maybe she’s not, but maybe she introduced him to a friend of hers that’s an even better fit for a joint venture.

You already know the point I’m getting to here – don’t pounce on strangers and expect them to do you a huge favor when they don’t even know you. And yes, promoting your product is indeed a huge favor.

The 3 Secrets to Landing Big JV Partners:

1. Build the relationship before asking for the favor, whatever that favor might be. (You already knew that, right?)

2. Build your own audience through social media, list building and so forth. Then when your product is ready to launch, launch it to your list first. Take note of the clickthrough rates, conversion rates and refund rates. Now you’ve got something to tell potential affiliates and JV partners other than, “I think this will sell well.”

3. Realize that not everyone is going to promote your product, no matter how good you are at building relationships first. Maybe they only promote their own products. Maybe they just don’t think your product is a good fit for their list. Maybe they’re having a bad day/week/life. Don’t worry about it. If you build enough relationships with others, you’ll find that some promote, some don’t and it’s all good.