One way to take collaboration to the next level is to find JV partners. You’ll find JV partners by meeting colleagues and competition. A JV partner is a joint venture partnership that can last for a few months to years. It all depends on the goals of the project.
* Start an Industry Organization – If there isn’t an industry organization yet for your career path, then start one. If there is one, get involved in it so that you can become one of the officers. When you’re in charge of the organization, you can guide everyone to work together for some common goals, which are to boost profit in your industry and ultimately your business.
* Develop a Facebook Group – If you don’t want to go as far as creating an organization, start a Facebook Group only for your niche or industry. Get to know the people within the group that you started, and you’ll soon find people that will make good joint venture partners to work with.
* Build More Relationships – As you meet your competition focus on building strong and trusting relationships with them. Don’t ask them for anything until you’ve built a good rapport with them. You really want to know as much as you can about them so that they end up coming to you for the JV deal unless you already have a partnership opportunity in mind.
* Bundle Your Products or Services – Once you have identified potential JVs, think of how you can bundle products or services to work together to promote what you both offer. Once you’ve worked out the details, then contact them. You want to make it easy for them to participate, almost a “no-brainer”. If it’s too much work, they probably will say no.
* Share Resources – When you put together a joint venture, you’re just sharing resources; you’re not merging your companies together. So, look at the resources you can offer and what they can offer too. You want to work with someone who has complementary resources to yours so that you both have something to offer.
* Learn from Your Competition – When you enter JV with a competitor, take the opportunity to learn from them. The more you can learn that works well and take with you to your company, the better. Remember, they’re going to be doing the exact same thing with you. You are still competitors.
* Create Additional Value – When you collaborate with your competition, you can create more value for your mutual customers. Think of the show “Shark Tank”. Although each shark is a competitor, they work together sometimes. That’s because they each bring their own individual strengths to each project. Together they create additional value for the business owner asking for venture money.
* Keep Proprietary Information to Yourself – Ensure that everyone on your team knows what information is important to keep away from your competition, including joint venture partners. It’s important that everyone is on the same page regarding that, so that nothing happens to ruin the JV partnership.
Your competition is a great source of new ideas, energy, resources, and customers. You may as well join them and work together for the greater good of your audience.
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