Beginners Guide to Business Collaboration

In business, it can often feel like you’re going it alone. You might have employees, partners and stakeholders, but it’s not uncommon to feel like all the pressure is on your shoulders. To take some of that weight off, moving into a more collaborative way of working could be the reliever you’re looking for.

Plugging a gap in your team with an external worker, sharing ideas with another business owner or using your customers to their own and your advantage are just some of the ways you can take the pressure off yourself and come up with some quality ideas along the way.

Freelance

A nifty way of collaborating with professionals who have a different skillset to you is through hiring freelancers. The self-employed are often absolute experts in a specific field, and if you can tap into that, then you’re on your way to effective collaboration.

For example, if you have a blog, but you’re not a writing whiz, a freelance writer will fill that void perfectly. A slightly different approach could be to use blogger outreach services to produce content for you instead, introducing your brand to a new audience and in turn, encouraging more collaboration yet.

Sharing ideas

Sure, to create your business, you’ve had a bucket full of great ideas, but you can’t have all of them. Much like how freelancers can provide an ability you might not have, sharing ideas with others will encourage an environment of shared learning and progression, to everybody’s benefit.

It happens with professional sport often, with managers and coaches exchanging experiences with those in other sports to build themselves a more rounded and well-researched view of their field.

Collaborative products

This collaborative way of thinking and sharing can lead to collaborative products. Introducing this into your business, if possible, is an innovative way to expand your brand and increase profits.

One example is beer brewing, which has a rich culture of collaboration between breweries but also with food companies and other local businesses. Working together to create something brand new breeds experimentation, some failures and lots of success. Not bringing this to your business means you miss out on the rewards, but you also don’t experience the inventive, exciting process that goes with it.

Customer feedback

Collaborating with other businesses is one thing but collaborating with your own customers can be just as exciting. Providing expert customer service is just the beginning if you can work with your audience to create new products, improve your existing ones or just find out how you’ve been getting on.

It’s an area of business collaboration that some don’t take seriously and suffer from it. Customer feedback can be the lifeblood of hospitality businesses such as bars and hotels, as top reviews put you ahead of all of your competition in an instant.

Take a restaurant, for example. Not only can you work with your customers to improve your appearance online, but why not also allow them to help you be creative. If you sell sandwiches and there is a customer who always comes in to buy that sandwich, why not name it after them? It will promote loyalty and interaction, and more customers will want to be given the same honour, and so return to your restaurant regularly. That’s collaboration.

If you’re not in a business that would use review websites such as Yelp or Trip Advisor, feedback is still vitally important to find out where and how you can improve.

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