Attract more sales by adapting this success story to your situation.  Image theft online is the hot button for photographers. It’s the main reason they are loath to post their images on the net.  Yet that’s the most efficient way to sell images.

As of this week, through their membership in the National Press Photographers Association, for a reduced fee they can track their images online and thus secure more licensing revenue.  That’s thanks to the association’s partnership with ImageSpan, based in my village.  ImageSpan to gets introduced to their prime market of customers without paying for advertising. 

Even though the firm’s reduced pricing for members means a smaller profit margin it also generates more sales. That’s good news, in a bad economy where cash is king. Now ImageScan has enlarged its opportunity to reach its target market by forging a partnership with an even larger group of its kind of customers, The Worldwide Community of Imaging Associations. 

You, too, could generate more sales without advertising by offering a special deal

 through the associations that serve your kind of customers. To keep members in difficult financial times, associations must offer extra value – perhaps your custom offering. Two ways to find the right membership-based groups for your business are by:

1.   Asking your customers, “What’s the most important professional group to which you belong?” 

2.   Perusing the list of associations at ASAE.

This SmartPartnering method is especially apt for professional service providers, from accountants to travel agents.   In fact, as a variation of this method I forged an association/association partnership.  Accountants, through their national association, could locate a participating travel agent (who offers a special vacation packages via their association) for their much-needed, post –tax season getaway.

See more ways to profitably partner here and in my ebook, SmartPartnering – and send me your partnering success story.

Ugandan women sell health, using the Avon ladies’ approach.  Yes, door-to-door outreach looks different in villages than in American suburbs. 

But a template leverages profits faster for them, and for you.  The same woman-to-woman franchise that sold creams and make-up in the U.S. is selling preventive know-how to stop malaria, diarrhea and TB. They have over 200 health promoters/agent and hope to double the number by the end of the year says Molly Christiansen. Using a micro-finance template to franchising, LivingGoods, based here in my town of Sausalito, has built “an $8 billion business with over five million agents.”  These “mobile health entrepreneurs” get uniforms, training, promotional support and quality monitoring. Like Delancey Street, LivingGoods provides all the tools to actually change behavior as described in Influencer.

The licensed agents are not taught to shame people out of dangerous health habits.

 Telling clients what they should do doesn’t work. Instead, Albert Bandura advises, link people’s actions to their values. Influence expert, William Miller told the authors of Influencer:

• “The more you try to control others, the less control you gain.

• The instant you stop trying to impose your agenda on others, you eliminate the fight for control.

• You sidestep irrelevant battles over whose view of the world is correct.”

• Instead:

-  Ask what better outcome someone wants, listening closely

- Then offer suggestions that help her reach those outcomes, offering steady support over time.

Living Goods agents gain confidence and make more money over time as they get frequent, consistent feedback on their skill-building progress.

You, too, can adopt the Leveraging Effect

The LivingGoods template is scalable. It can be replicated elsewhere – and honed over time because those who use it experience direct benefit from improving it. Similarly, Nido Qubein’s Great Harvest Bread franchisees enjoy profits and camaraderie by sharing ways to grow their local bakeries faster. To thrive in a down economy, use your skills to craft a template – a business model that you can franchise or license to others – or coach them to implement on their own as Susan Page and Jake have done. 

Nike invites us to join a million runners around the world, “for a worldwide 10K like no other.”  And they invited celebrities to join them. There’s a small catch.  “You need a Nike+ SportBand or Nike+iPod and Sport Kit” to run with them. You can’t fault them.  They want you to buy their products of course.  But if their underlying brand is Just Do It, why require the gear?  Yes, it would be way cool to have the iPod sensor track when I start and stop and provide music. Yet why run alone?   Set a weekly time to run (or walk) with a friend or three and just enjoy the experience together – without the tech toys.

Also, Nike, to encourage even more people to check out your outdoor gear and to build goodwill, why not partner with local communities, at least in the U.S.? And encourage people to, not only get out and run, but to walk and to bike?  Nike has gear for both, after all. And you want to be more inclusive. After all, most everybody want to get out and play with others.

In my small town of Sausalito and in other U.S. communities the feds are giving grants to for public education campaigns to encourage people to get out and walk, bike or run. That seems like the Way to Go to make this already viral campaign involve more people.  Plus, by partnering on local community campaigns, Nike encourages neighbors to find someone nearby for that exercise. Somehow the government concocted title for their project (a Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program) could use some naming sizzle from Nike. Thanks, Buzz Canuck.  On my wish list is a go4awalk for the U.S. Nike, interested in underwriting it?

In this slow economy, cities are strapped for cash.  Many would be open to companies underwriting imaginative public outreach campaigns tied to their events and other activities on everything from public safety to attracting visitors.

With the advent of Google Earth and Google Maps here’s an inventive way to literally make your business – or town – more visible.   Target paints huge logos on the roofs of their stores. Customers have another way to locate the nearest one – and people like us comment on it.  Chad Upton blogged about one on a Chicago store, then Colonel Kernel found another in Everett, Massachusetts.

How’s this for more cleverness? Apparently the first stores to get decorated this way are in the flight paths to O’Hare International Airport (that Chicago store) and to La Guardia – in Rosemont.   Because more people are able to view buildings via satellite imagery, even the shape of a building can cause comment, as the U.S. Navy discovered.

Here’s an offbeat idea, a variation of earlier “roof shouts” (thanks Chris). If you are in a flight path, remind airline passengers to visit your town.  Organize the building owners on your street to paint an inviting (and very short) slogan or simply the name of your town on the roofs of several contiguous buildings.

If the Salvation Army and Amaco can paint “roofvertisements” to welcome people, why not your town or business? That’s the Me2We part of this story, btw.  On a daringly different note, John Ross claims to have painted “Human Shields” on a roof in Baghdad.

After eating at some of the most elegant and far out restaurants in Las Vegas, Kaapstad, Dubai and San Francisco it must have been a startling change of pace to dine in my kitchen in Sausalito. But, it seems, neither time zones nor giggly culinary ineptitude (mine) fazed the unflappable Dutch TV chef, Rudolph van Veen.

A few days earlier, Rudolph and three quick- moving crew members were filming diners at Yoshi Tome’s famous Sushi Ran in Sausalito. Meanwhile, out on the sidewalk cafe where I was dining their colleagues, Dutch TV star Irene Moors and Danielle Oosterwal were swooning over the small dishes that waiters kept bringing them at the table adjacent. Finally, I couldn’t help but comment on the delectable Kumamoto oysters. One thing led to another. The next day Danielle called to ask if they could film their last segment for their Taste of Travel TV series on Northern California (after visiting The French Laundry, mind you) by sharing dinner at my home, with friends in Sausalito. That’s how Stephanie Evans and Tom Morrison happened to join me. Rudolph is probably the first person to sweep up my hillside street, grandly holding, shoulder high, a specially made cake. He turned and stepped through my gate and up the steps to greet me like an old friend when I opened the door.

While making and eating dinner my friends and I raved about the local foods and living in Northern California, (in little village just over the Golden Gate Bridge).

Tip: In an increasingly transient, time-starved and digital world what could be a more pleasurable way to cultivate friendships and discover common interests than sharing your favorite wines, local and homemade foods and conversation at a table with views of the bay? Seemed like a tasty way to tap our collective intelligence.