Exclusivity

Because of a conversation yesterday, I knew what I would blog about and then I read Seth Godin's blog from Friday about the Glass House in Denver. While this post is not about permission marketing, it does talk about exclusivity. My daughter-in-law, Lisa, has just become the member of a non-profit board, her first. She is also a scientist (more about her in another future post) and is very data driven. She immediately began to do research on what types of fund-raising seems to work best. This is what she told me she gleaned from her couple hours of research.

When an exclusive group of people are targeted for a fund-raising project, and these people know that they are the invited few AND when the invited few know that they will receive a limited edition token as a result of participating in the project, these events seem to be more successful than the run-of-the-mill, come one, come all event. Now, being the scientist, my daughter-in-law would probably caution that this is purely subjective reasoning on her part. But that's what the picture seemed to be.

Interesting!

I am currently working on two community projects. One is of the exclusive variety and one is the broad appeal variety. Guess what? The exclusive one is successful and the other one is challenging my patience. Hmmm!

What does this have to do with networking?

So many people believe that more is better -- that the more people they know, the better the chance to receive referral business. These people spend a lot of time meeting new people.

Smart networkers have found that meeting the right people, those who call on similar prospects, are relationships that need to be cultured over time. In order for these relationships to work, they have two descriptors: Long-term and mutually beneficial. Those can only happen if the relationship becomes exclusive.

And really it is all about permission marketing. If the referral partner introduces you to a client of his, then he has received permission to do so before you ever become involved.

Nice.

Any non-profits stories that either support or refute the above premise?