In my experience ... especially over the last 3 years, the number of merchants and ... subsequently, launches are ever increasing. Toss in the fact that pretty much the whole world has been in a recession, and the end result has seen a glut of launches with mediocre to dismal sales results. You have more fishermen fishing from the same water hole and there's a shortage of fish ... to boot. :P

In an effort to make up the difference, merchants have been going bananas trying to get every warm body they can on board their launches by opening up the 2nd Tier and blasting it all over the place ... big mistake. Going by my previous 'fishermen' analogy, the top partners stay away from the promotion because it's too 'out there' ... too many lines in the water going after the same fish, and not worth their time. The AP loses all it's exclusivity and credibility and almost always bombs out.

The solution? Strategic Alliances.

Bring on partners one at a time that have the same goals and abilities you have to promote, and bring other facets of a true joint venture to the table ... partners that you actually grow to know and work with in an ongoing basis. Support each other when possible. The idea is not to send out a recruitment blast and support the results with broadcast followups to the whole list, and hoping that a reasonable % of them will follow through ... it's actually contacting partners that you work with on a regular basis, personally, and getting confirmation, or not, from them ... personally. Don't hope for results ... plan on getting as close to knowing what kind of support you're going to get as you can. By creating a close knit SA, you can qualify and add partners to it ongoing.

In a typical launch I've witnessed recently, over 300 potential JV partners were brought on board ... out of that, 20 or so were regular partners of the merchant and had made sales for them in past launches ... they accounted for over 70% of the total sales, minus the merchant's own sales. Long story short, if that merchant had focused on adding to the list of 20 (qualified each of the potential JV partners individually and attempted to create and nurture relationships with those that qualified) ... as opposed to padding the initial 300, they would have no doubt been much more successful.

The moral to the story is that 'quality over quantity' + 'slow and steady wins the race' could not be more accurate when applied to JV Partner recruitment.

Cheers,

Mike