How can you double your profits with a joint venture? Just ask Watsco, Inc.! In July of 2009, the company completed a joint venture transaction, and by the end of the year, their 4th quarter net income doubled from the previous year. The earnings information was just released in February 2010 and has sent the company stock soaring.

How Watsco Doubled Earnings

What did Watsco do to provide such a jump in their revenue? The company capitalized upon the demand for more efficient air conditioning and heating in the U.S.

Watsco is a Florida-based company that specializes in the distribution of heating and cooling products and equipment. A joint venture was formed in 2009 with Carrier Corporation, a leading manufacturer of air conditioners and furnaces. The JV was intended to increase the market position and add new product lines.

They succeeded.

How the Joint Venture Worked

Watsco determined that there was a need and potential demand for replacement cooling and heating systems, especially in the Sunbelt region of the U.S. Thanks to U.S. government tax incentives for installing more energy-efficient appliances, homeowners started demanding these products be installed before the tax incentives expired. Watsco heard the call and responded.

The joint venture allowed Watsco to expand their distribution across the country, as well as expand their market base from mainly contractors to general retail outlet stores. It also provided working capital to expand its business and develop new products to fit the needs of the market.

The End Result of the Joint Venture

The result was extraordinary. By operating from 505 stores in 34 states and serving over 50,000 contractor customers with over 4,500 employees, Watsco’s new Carrier Enterprises LLC trumped the competition.

However, the new LLC doesn’t just sell the Carrier brand appliances. Thanks to the Watsco distribution contacts, it also built a strong product line up of premium HVAC products, all of which are built with the latest energy efficient technology.

This synergistic approach to market demand was successful. By taking a keen eye to potential market demand, Watsco’s strategic alliance with the Carrier brand and outlet stores filled a niche. Just in the 3-month period from October to December 2009, the joint venture saw an 82% increase in sales of energy-efficient products. Total Q3 revenue for Watsco increased 68% to $563.6 million and ended with a net profit of $7.1 million. That is a 54% increase of net profits from the same period in 2008!

What You Can Learn from This Case Study?

What can you glean from Watsco’s success? Take heed of their strategy:

• Watch for consumer trends. Markets constantly change as do demand for particular products.

• Find the niche. Watsco saw the potential niche for energy efficient products thanks to consumer demand and government tax incentives.

• Find the right and most strategic partner. Watsco partnered with the popular Carrier brand of heating and cooling products. This helped increase Watsco’s potential distribution channels and increased exposure to other quality brands.

This is a great example of how a joint venture can result in synergistic results. Though you may not have the same profit results, a strategic joint venture can help you capture new markets and see an increase in your sales.

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.

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.

Does your joint venture have a website? If you are like most JV marketers, you do. Whether you market your product or service locally, regionally, nationally, or globally, a website is one of the most cost-effective marketing devices you can use. And one great way to leverage your online marketing efforts is to build a list of customers with whom you stay in touch.

Understanding List Building

List building is simply the efforts you use to create and grow an online customer base. Customers who agree to be put on a list provide an email address, or less often, a mailing address. This important contact can be invaluable when you want to promote special deals to return customers or offer your online customer list a first chance at a sale, etc.

Since an online customer list can be a great marketing tool for your JV, here are some great ways you can improve your list building efforts:

1. SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your JV website popular among major search engines. People are searching for your types of products and services every day, and they can find your website from a search result. A search engine might rank your website higher when you plant certain and pertinent keywords and phrases throughout your website. Use META tags to help search engines catalogue your site. Update regularly with blog posts or articles that use a reasonable density of important keywords (2% to 3% is the current targeted density). Top SEO ranking is essentially free marketing. Make sure your website can be found by search engines.

2. PPC – Another way to draw search engine traffic is by using pay per click (PPC). When you use PPC, you agree to pay a certain fee to a search engine every time an online user clicks your link. In return, the search engine puts your paid advertisement link at the top or beside search results where a search customer can easily see it.

3. Social Media – Use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to gather “fans” and “followers” of your JV business. Your social media list can also become beneficiaries of special deals that you offer.

4. Free Download – When an online user visits your site, invite and entice them to sign up on your list in return for a free download. Giving something for free is a great way to convince people to give you their contact info. Make the free download something valuable, such as a buyer’s guide, a helpful article, or even an eBook with helpful advice.

5. Newsletter – Compose and send a regular newsletter to your list. At the beginning of each newsletter, you should invite the receiver to forward it on to others who they think could benefit from your newsletter or products. This is a great way to build your list from recommendations.

JV marketing takes many forms, and one of the most used forms is online marketing. Be sure you have a good strategy to build your online contact list so you can take advantage of return customers and recommendations.

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.

Many small business owners experience great sales success when they form a joint venture, but some do not. What is the difference between a successful JV and an unsuccessful one? It could be the consumer psychology used to sell JV products and services! Read below to discover some simple tricks to help increase your JV sales.

1. Don’t Give Consumers a Choice

Consumer research has proven that too many choices can deter consumers and actually drop sales. Choices can cause the dreaded “analysis paralysis” in consumers. Rather than providing all things to all customers, a JV that markets a wide variety of similar products may do more harm to their sales because consumers would rather make no choice than make a complicated one.

Too many choices may also cause buyer’s remorse. Why? Consumers will wonder whether they should have made a different choice and possibly regret the buying decision. So why drive your customers away? Don’t give them too many choices. Rather, provide a quality product each and every time that will satisfy customers and give them reason to return or tell others about your JV business.

2. Customers Buy Happiness

Customers will spend more money when they feel good about their purchase. Even if your JV sells a product, the experience that the customer feels during the purchase can make the sale very worthwhile. What does that mean for your JV business? Focus on customer service and atmosphere.

When you greet customers and treat them as friends, they enjoy the experience more than with a sour-faced and bored clerk. Customers always appreciate good customer service, even if they do not acknowledge it in the moment.

If your JV runs out of a brick and mortar location, provide a welcoming place for your customers as well. Hire an interior designer if necessary to create an atmosphere where customers feel comfortable. A fine five-star restaurant is a good example of a place that may create a welcoming dining atmosphere. Consider all the senses, good lighting, creative décor, soft music, and pleasant aromas.

3. Focus Advertising on Your Product

Some general consensuses believe that certain elements in advertising will help sell a product, such as sex or comedy. The belief is that attaching attractive women to a product primarily bought by men will help its recall and sales.

However, researchers at the University College London found that product recall was no better when sexual or comedic elements were used in advertisements on television ads.  Therefore, focus on your JV product and its benefits and problem-solving usefulness in your ads. There is no need to spend more money on clever gimmicks that do not help sell a product.

Your JV can experience more sales if you know how to effectively advertise, display your products, and treat your customers. Try these simple yet effective psychological tricks and see how your sales climb.

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.

Social networks have become one of the hottest ways to promote and market business – and blogging is still at the top of the list. If you have formed a joint venture and are looking for new ways to attract and retain customers, then you need to get on board the social networking train. Here’s some great ways you can promote your business on the web.

What is a Blog?

In the 1990s, it was hip to have a website. Internet access grew at an astonishing pace, and any business with a website had a leg up on the competition. Now businesses with an edge are those with a blog.

Blog is short for web log. It’s simply a way to write about your JV and publish it on your website easily, quickly, and with great results. Each blog post acts as its own web page. Thus, it is searchable from major search engines. And the more frequently you update your blog with pertinent information, the better chance your blog will show up on a search result.

You and your joint venture partner can easily set up a blog with no money using free popular blogging sites such as Blogger or WordPress. You can also obtain a unique URL website address for your blog for a small fee.

How Your JV Should Blog

So how do you blog? It’s simple. Write a short article that promotes your JV business in some way. Though some blogs have long posts that are more like never-ending political overviews found in The New Yorker Magazine, people who read blogs on the Internet like to get their information in shorter doses. Try to keep your blog posts to about 300 to 400 words, and that will make it much easier for a follower or potential customer to read.

The content of your blog is the most important thing. You want to post articles and short quips that tell a reader about your business. How can they benefit? How does your JV product make their life easier? What’s in it for them? Tell them all the great news and don’t hold back.

You could write short case studies of how a specific customer benefited from your JV product. Include testimonials from customers as well. If potential customers are going to try your product, they like to know that others just like them endorse it.

A blog can also have short features about you and your JV partner, and other employees of the JV if you have them. What are your interests? What makes you enthusiastic about your JV business? Give customers a reason to know you are human and are just like them.

Blogging can be fun and a great way to promote your JV business. And since setting up a blog is so easy, why not try it? Get on the “blogosphere” today and find your niche in promoting your JV business on the Internet.

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.