Why you should consider using collaborative business practices
As much as other businesses may traditionally be seen as competition, working alongside them can also help.
Today we are taking a deeper look at the collaborative business approach. Working in tandem with businesses that compliment your own products and services as well as serving a benefit to themselves.
This is an approach that could help your business strategy overall and boost the profile of your business, increase traffic and drive sales.
Benefits of collaborative business
So what are some of the advantages of business collaboration?
Well here are some of the reasons you may want to consider adopting the approach.
Shared resources - pooling your resources together with another business means that you not only have more assets but more resources that can help your respective businesses scale considerably. And can even broaden your product range.
This collaboration can also help you streamline your own business processes. Which ultimately, in turn, can save your business time. Which then allows you to dedicate this new capacity towards other functions and areas within your business.
Finally, the collaboration between the businesses can inspire innovation. Seeing an alternative perspective on an area of your business or industry can help you to learn how to better improve your own processes.
How to start collaborating
So how can your business collaborate with others?
Well, thanks to the advancements in technology, there are many ways to collaborate. Firstly, there is internal collaboration. This can be through things such as instant message, conferencing, and online workspaces where ideas can be shared.
Then you have external business collaboration. One example is called creating an 'alliance'. As the name suggests, this is where a group of businesses come together for a limited period of time.
This is usually in order for them to reach a common goal or to gain a competitive advantage against another larger competitor.
There is also 'community' collaboration. This is where businesses work together within their own communities for the common good. Usually not driven by financial incentives.
Ideas to start collaborating with other businesses
Networking events - as a business owner why not get yourself networking? It is a great way to get to meet other business owners, and potential clients and how form relationships that could later develop into collaborations.
Cross promoting - you could also cross-promote each other's products. Therefore pushing more traffic towards each other's websites. This, of course, is only if you don't have a conflict with their products and is very good if your products compliment one another.
All in all, business collaboration is becoming more and more prevalent. This in part is due to the advances in technology. It is also due, in part, to the benefits that it provides.
Most industries are now more saturated than ever and so more businesses than ever are looking at how to gain that competitive edge.
If you want to know more about how your business can exploit more opportunities and strategies to gain an advantage against your competition and grow sales, let's have a chat.
I've helped businesses up and down the country grow their sales and their businesses.