Joining Forces For Good: Working With Likeminded Businesses

Better Business
No items found.
November 7, 2023
·  1 min read
Joining Forces For Good: Working With Likeminded Businesses
Joining Forces For Good: Working With Likeminded Businesses
This is some text inside of a div block.
Share
Listen on
Apple
Spotify
Goggle

This month we’re focusing on the power of community and collaboration; Leveraging the ways we can better connect, to join forces for good and create something greater than the sum of its parts. X+why bring together businesses with a common mission: to make the world a better place. We explore how working with likeminded businesses can help you grow and go further.

This month we’re focusing on the power of community and collaboration: leveraging the ways we can better connect, to join forces for good and create something greater than the sum of its parts. X+why bring together businesses with a common mission - to make the world a better place. We explore how working with likeminded businesses can help you grow and go further.

{{divider}}


The impact of successfully collaborating allows us to be more like bees - creating a hive mind in our overall organisational strategy and structure. In order to adapt to the speed at which technology is accelerating, businesses have a lot to learn from biology when it comes to participating in the wider ecosystem.

{{divider}}

It shows that in an increasingly automated world, there are still many intangible benefits to uniting flesh and blood. The idea of partnering with likeminded individuals and businesses to create greater synergy is nothing new, and can add great value to revenue and profitability. However it also does more than just boost the bottom line.

{{divider}}


Wider Access To Customers

{{divider}}

A major goal for most businesses is to grow their customer base, and to focus on quality over quantity so that they’ll find convertible leads. By partnering with another company with a similar set of products or services, you can immediately access a pool of warm customers who are already likely to be interested in what you are delivering.

{{divider}}

This also allows you to reach new markets and sectors. While a partner will be working in a similar or associated field to you, it is more than likely that their customers will be in slightly different markets and sectors to you. Clearly expanding into new markets and sectors where you already have a warm base of clients is far easier than starting from scratch with limited credibility or trust in those markets.

{{divider}}


Delivering Greater Value

{{divider}}

Whilst accessing a new customer base is attractive to any business looking to grow, it is equally important (if not more in some cases) to retain your existing customer base. Where many smaller businesses are able to compete with large conglomerates - is in a more personalised service that focuses on ‘better’ not just ‘bigger’.

{{divider}}

By associating yourself with partners who offer similar products to you can build better relationships, and reduce the risk of other unknown companies approaching your customers and introducing organisations that compete with your products and services.

{{divider}}

Collaboration goes further than just a partnership basis, it can also be helpful to join a network. The B Corporation network is the gold standard when it comes to working with businesses that are walking the walk, and not just talking the talk. Through a rigorous application and assessment process, B Corps adhere to strict criteria that focus on delivering the triple bottom line - benefitting all of people, planet and profit.  

{{divider}}


Build Brand Awareness And Trust

{{divider}}

Brand awareness and recognition is hugely important to all businesses, regardless of size. Even if you are extremely small, customers like to have the confidence that they know and recognise who they are dealing with. Partnering with likeminded businesses immediately creates warm leads and introductions that provide customers with some element of peace of mind - in that your business is vetted and values-aligned.

{{divider}}

X+Why have partnered with members WSI Digital Advisors to build their brand awareness and trust, especially as they are active locally - having come to our Chiswick Works space via the Chiswick Business Network. Adding additional products and services to your portfolio through partnerships can also increase access to a greater base of industry experts and advisers, which will help to build brand knowledge and trust. There is no greater teacher than life, and you’ll also have the added wisdom and experiences of your likeminded partners to successfully build upon.

{{divider}}


Localised Relationships

{{divider}}

While direct presence in a particular location or geography is arguably becoming less and less important due to the ability to operate remotely, some customers still take comfort from dealing with local businesses. Choosing to work with partners in different geographic locations will help to open up those locations to your business, by allowing your chosen partners to represent you at a local level.

{{divider}}


Pooling Resources

{{divider}}

We are moving towards a more sustainable circular and shared economy, which focuses more and more on creation over consumption. Companies, specifically the smaller ones, often find it difficult to recruit or afford the roles and resources necessary to grow a business. By creating the right strategic partnerships, this can be overcome by sharing resources, particularly where those resources are of a technical nature and may expose the business to new and innovative solutions.

{{divider}}

Collaborating with partners and sharing ideas and resources can also introduce innovation in terms of new ways to approach business processes and overcoming specific internal issues or problems without the need for additional investment.

{{divider}}


Enjoying The Process

{{divider}}

Building a business is a process, not an event. Given the huge amount of ever-changing factors in the wider environment, the outcome is often more out of our hands than we like to admit, however this can be very freeing in that it reverts the attention back to the process. Working with other likeminded businesses can make the process far more fun, enjoyable and creative - meaning that a ‘win’ has been achieved, whatever the outcome. When people and businesses that are aligned are given the space and autonomy to synergise together, ideas flow more freely and take on a new form, being with like-minded people helps you to see possibilities you have never thought about and shows you things that you can not perceive yourself.

{{divider}}



If you’re looking to grow a business of any size, collaborating with likeminded others is a way to ensure that strategic partnerships go beyond the bottom line - aligning mission, vision and values in a way that allows you to positively impact the speed and ease with which you can achieve your goals and objectives. During a time of rapid change and progress - ‘if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go further, go together’.

{{divider}}



Other stories from around x+why

View more articles
No items found.

    Keeping up with x+why

    Sign-up below to stay-up-date with the latest news, events, and offers from x+why.