NYC Elevate is a networking community organized to help our members make more money through structured collaboration and referrals.
Recently, we learned that we are sitting on a gold mine here at Elevate, and a couple of weeks ago we discussed that most modern gold mining often happens near a stream, and that we need to know whether we are upstream or downstream in the deal flow.
Then we discussed that you’re downstream from the gold if some else knows about an impending transaction before you do in the deal flow.
So Brittany Greer, our office furniture broker, would be downstream of our office rental broker, Nora Campbell, because Nora is often the first to know that a company needs a new office and that leads to new office furniture.
But what if you are the upstream partner?
For example, Carol Offman, our custom jeweler, is often the first know that a couple is getting married because the first step in that process is buying the engagement ring.
So Carol might be the farthest upstream in the Wedding deal flow.
So what’s that mean? That it sucks to be Carol? Well, yes and no.
Yes, because Carol doesn’t have one consistent source of referrals upstream of her.
But no, because she has all of us at Elevate.
She just needs to figure out different methods to access the gold using the power of this group.
So she and I were chatting last week about how to solve the problem when you are farthest upstream in a particular deal flow.
And I came up with the idea that she should host a monthly seminar titled “How to not get ripped off when buying an engagement ring.”
The cost to attend is $100.
And she will give all of us gift certificates worth $100 that we can give to any of our friends or clients that might be thinking about getting engaged.
During these seminars Carol will provide an education on how to make the right decisions when buying a ring.
And in the process she will become the most trusted jeweler that the soon-to-be-engaged couple knows…and then she will probably sell a lot of rings.
Your friends will love you for giving them this $100 gift, and they will thank you for introducing them to the most trusted jeweler in New York City.
Imagine if we collectively invited 5 people per month to Carol’s new seminar. That would be 60 potential clients that we put in front of her, and that would probably result in 12 to 24 additional sales per year.
So your action item for this week is to think about when you are the farthest upstream in a particular deal flow, and then think of unique ways that we might be able to help you open doors without a direct referral, kind of like we’re doing for Carol, and then let us know how we can help you implement the strategy.
And if we all did this when we’re the upstream partner, I guarantee that we all would be getting additional sales and making more money.