Developing a Competitive Advantage: Networking, Affiliations, Alliances, Collaborations and Partnerships

As we continue to operate businesses in a time of uncertainty and unprecedented deceit in the White House from the 45th inhabitant, there is no better time to grow your network, affiliations, alliances, collaborations, and partnerships to solidify and expand your position economically and politically.

I would submit that by default, and an inadequate plan, we have come to suffer our current economic and political malaise after President Obama and Gods saving grace. This circumstance begs and commands that we solidify our position and scale up.

Becoming scalable means that we grow business to a point of being connected and qualifying for greater resources, credit, grants, contracts, certifications, affiliations and more. We’re in a period of time when we can take advantage of the circumstances, or allow our- selves to be taken advantage of. Scalability is characteristic of a system, model, or function that describes its capability to cope and perform under an increased or expanding workload.

A system that scales well will be able to maintain or even increase its level of performance or efficiency when tested by larger operational demands. In the corporate market, a scalable company is one that can maintain and improve profit margins while sales volume increases without being hampered by its structure or available resources. Scalability has been a missing ingredient in many small and minority businesses.

This is indicative of the network and relationships that we have not built or have not utilized. We are in a time when we must increase our network, to increase our net worth! “Business is based on relationships, if we don’t have relationships, we don’t have a business. “ George Fraser – Networking Guru.

Networking affords us the opportunity to meet people, seek to be of service, by building a relationship based on credibility, trust, likability, and performance. We are able to do this at events like the Greater Summit Business Conference and Expo and the Power Networking Conference.

These event opportunities allow us to create affiliations. Affiliated is defined as a person or organization officially attached to a larger body. This is the very reason why many entrepreneurs become franchisees and align with larger organizations that have a much larger perceived footprint and market presence.

Alliances are relationships based on an affinity in interest, nature, or qualities, creating a state of be- ing joined or associated and they are formed for mutual benefit between countries and organizations. Some examples would be trade associations and unions as well as buying groups. All members benefit from the network of affiliation, and alliances, as they collaborate. Collaboration defined, the action of working with someone to produce or create something.

An example of a collaboration that resulted in an acquisition would be Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods to capture data and solidify a future position in the food marketplace that is unequaled. This acquisition/merger/partnership/ is a superb example of scaling-up and market positioning, for market dominance of the future.

The question that I pose to Small Business and the Minority business community would be: if three or four regional or national competitors aligned, affiliated, and collaborated to scale one combined business entity with an agreed-upon plan, what would the likely result be? We hope that it would be a successfully scaled business that has the economies of scale and utilized little or no additional resources because the infrastructure and platforms already existed when combined.

This concept is not foreign to our community and has been demonstrated in years past when minority businesses were more prominent in communities across the country around the turn-of-the-century. We will endeavor to provide our findings of history in an article to come in the near future.

Opportunities to network and create affiliations and alliances exist on a local, regional, and national scale. It is our belief that we need to actively seek and plan for developing these relationships into mutually beneficial collaborations and partnerships. Many abiding influences in our area: Ilene Shapiro – Summit County Executive, Cleveland Mayor – Frank G. Jackson, and Ohio State Governor-John R. Kasich have issued initiatives and efforts to assist minority and small businesses to gain momentum in scaling up.

Finding and working with like-minded people that share our past and desire for the future can provide a sense of great hope, education, affiliation, and potential alliances. It is the hope of our community that we can turn these alliances into partnerships which yield a platform to scale up regionally, nationally, and globally.

What is your plan to scale up, network, align, and create partnerships in the coming days ahead? All the best for your success, until next time. The Business Doctor, LLC. Specializes in Marketing, Management, and Motivation for Small and Medium- size businesses. We offer Consulting, Coaching, Business Boot Camps, Executive Retreats and provide Speakers for weekly and keynote events. In addition, we provide support services which include printing, graphic design, legal services, accounting, telemarketing, etc.

We are your one-stop shop for most of your business needs. Contact us at 330. 836. 2937 or 330. 283.0158 for your free branding or coaching session on executing your plan to scale-up.