5 Reasons to Network with Your Competitors

[Jonny]

5 Reasons to Network with Your Competitors

All-too-often, I see small business owners getting into cut-throat relationships with their competitors, or those they conceive as their competitors, especially in online forums like Twitter. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Sure, a healthy sense of competition is good (and necessary) for all businesses. But it can also be beneficial to network and form relationships with your competitors. Here are five reasons why:

1. It makes you look good.

There is nothing more unattractive than seeing "professional" business owners battling it out publicly. Not only can this really hurt your business and your brand, but it makes you look bad and exposes your insecurities in a very unflattering light. By forming civil and positive relationships with the people you may have the most to disagree about, you look like the moral, upstanding business owner that you are. And you probably have more in common with your competitors than you've acknowledged.

2. You improve the industry.

A unified industry can do amazing things for the collective group of clients or customers. Take virtual assistance, for example. I am a firm believer that by working together we can make each other better, and building each other's businesses up instead of cutting them down will only result in better service, higher quality and more success for our individual clients.

3. You can form an alliance.

I'm not talking collusion or price fixing, but true networking relationships. There is nothing better than having an ally in the business who understands the industry and can collaborate with you in a way that benefits both parties.

4. You can grow your business.

Businesses fill up and there may be a time when a colleague (or you) can't take on any more work. You can be on the receiving end of new client work just by being a positive acquaintance to a colleague. And again, this is a boost for the industry because you're helping a colleague AND a client at the same time.

5. You just may learn something.

There should never be an end to your learning, and no matter how much experience and success you have, there is always something else to learn. Learning from someone else who is in your industry can push you beyond where you might get on your own.

What's your take on business competition? Am I the only one out there that thinks that making nice with your competitors is a good idea?

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Source - Avertua

 

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Opportunities are never lost, someone will take the ones you miss.