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Triangulate Growth
This is another simple one. I don’t think I’ve covered this before. I’ve talked about it many times internally. I’m calling this Triangulate Growth. Here’s the question. Why not grow through a third party? What I mean by that is let’s presuppose you’ve got a product that you’re proud of or a service that you’re proud of. You’re either selling a physical, tangible good that you ship in the mail or people walk in your storefront or maybe you’re an insurance person or mortgage broker and you have physical service where you shake hands and get signatures and do deals. One of the ways to grow quickly, this is an age-old concept, it’s just not taught much. It’s called triangulate your growth and it revolves around two fundamental questions.
Who has what I want, and who wants what I have? Click To Tweet
Number one, who has what I want? Number two, who wants what I have? Let’s talk about the physical product. Who wants what I have? Obviously, your customers or your future customers. You have a great product. Maybe sell hats that don’t cause you to sweat. You breathe right through the hat and your head doesn’t heat up. It’s an amazing hat. Let’s just pretend. Who wants that? Maybe customers like myself that sweat very easily. Why walk outside if it’s even remotely hot? I’m sweating instantly. I can’t put a hat on in the summertime. Let’s pretend there’s this amazing hat out there and I’d love to buy it. You make the hat. You have a physical product. The question is who wants what you have? I do. I’m a customer. Who has what you want?
The question is what things, partitions or platforms have an existing base of potential customers that also are interested in what you have? I’ll give you some examples. If you sell this amazing hat, something tells me things like Amazon, eBay, Etsy. These are things called quivers. If you look back at the old movie, Robin Hood, his arrows were in a quiver on his back. The quiver holds a bunch of arrows. Let’s pretend that products are arrows and Amazon is the largest business quiver in the world that has millions of products. The point is you can put your product in Amazon or Houzz. It’s a $4 billion enterprise with 1,800 employees. It’s one of the biggest, fastest growing quivers of all time. There was the original Zappos that has countless products in it. These quivers are constantly seeking out the next great product to put in front of their loyal customers.
They have great customer service, they ship fast, great delivery models, great return models. You might want to ask who has what I want and who wants what I have? Instead of you going directly to find a customer, could you go to a platform that already has customers triangulate with the platform? How about ShareASale? ShareASale is a vetting platform where they’ll look at your product. If you ship on time and have a good track record, they’ll take your product on and get it in front of a thousand affiliates and those affiliates go rep your product. The affiliates have the customer you want. What does the affiliate need? Your product. They need the next great product to rep. What if you sell insurance? Are there any quivers for insurance? Sure there are.
Have you ever heard of Lawyers.com? What was one of the most revolutionary thing for lawyers in the late ‘90s, early 2000s was this quiver where you could rent space either by zip code, by state, by a category. You’d pay a lot of money monthly, but you’d get all the leads that came into Lawyers.com. If you sell insurance, there are countless insurance directories. There’s Rotary, Chamber, EO. All of these associations, Young Presidents, YPO. They have tons of customers, meaning their loyal association. Honestly, I’ve been part of so many of them, they’re always looking for the next greatest product or service to join their group and they’re loyal. The question is, when was the last time you’ve given hard thought to triangulating your growth? I hope this helps. Take care.
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