Collaboration and Collaborating; You Should Be.

I need to go back into my early professional career to find my collaboration roots and knowledge source.  Large companies and smart people have been collaborating and training collaboration with their peers for as far back as my past brings me – even though they may not have called it such.  Collaboration is not a technical skill, it’s a mindset and attitude that can be used to more effectively achieve objectives.

Collaboration could be:

• Sharing business tools with a non-competing business; like a lawyer and accountant.  Benefit being half the capital needs.
• Sharing office space and costs with a non-competing business; like a lawyer and accountant.  Benefit being half the recurring cash needs.
• Sharing marketing and sales expenses with a non-competing business; like a lawyer and accountant.  .  Benefit being half the exposure and risk.
• Referring businesses based on their needs and your knowledge.  This makes you social and “in the know” by giving you the ability to talk to a prospect (not yours yet) about their needs and someone else’s expertise/service.  This goes to the point that people do business with people they like.
• Sharing clients and referring clients to collaborative partners.  This being possibly the most difficult form of collaboration, but also the one with the greatest potential return.

I will expand on each of these different forms of collaboration over the next week or two as I roll out my newest/latest business venture(s) whose objectives may not be apparent by “just looking”.

read Next: Collaborating - Part One - Why Pay Twice - Getting Started

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