Economy Medicine: Strategic Alliances
Yes, you do need
to love your spouse!
When you think your business is buckling under from economic strains and from government’s abject failure to provide meaningful job creation incentives for small business, there are still steps you can take now to get your business back on top. Yes, steps you can take, not HOPE. HOPE is not the answer. ACTION is the answer.
What does it take? You need simply to get your head up out of the sand and turn around. Look at the other businesses around you…in the same building, on the same block, in the same town. in the same county, in the same state, in a neighboring state, or even in another country. Find businesses that are compatible with yours, whose services or products are complementary to yours.
Accountants and bookkeeping services, computer hardware and software services, animal and produce farming, office supplies and office furniture, painters and sculptures, publications and Internet marketers, ad agencies and photographers, furniture and bedding companies, candy stores and dentists (just kidding there; wanted to make sure you’re still reading BECAUSE striking up strategic alliances with other businesses offers opportunities you don’t have now by yourself!)
With another complementary business, you may be able to share marketing costs (even utilities if you’re in the same building), public relations impact (with joint news releases and co-sponsored events), customer service (by offering an extended array of products or services), databases (shared email addresses for promotional emails, for example), even staff (centralized reception or sales reps that may be too costly for one business to carry alone. And so it goes, on and on.
The point is that the opportunities are only limited by your thinking and your attitude. If you think it’s better to go down with your ship than to step back to a co-captain position with part of your business, help yourself. The thing that’s important to remember is that strategic alliances are strategic alliances because they are not formal legal entities. They are simply ways of working together that have mutual benefits.
Oh, and yes, you do need to love your spouse, but you need not love a strategic partner. You need only to have two businesses that recognize there’s strength in numbers that just does not exist for either business functioning independently. What have you got to lose by talking and trying? You might even come up with a situation that lifts both businesses off the map! You never know ’til you try. Nothing happens ’til you act!
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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116
Open Minds Open Doors
Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.
Since the time you wrote “Doctor Shopping”, a lot of water has gone over the dam about being an informed consumer of medical arts. That is, how to pay for the services. not the doctors ability.
Kindly offer a part of your blog in service to us all, on a method for one to uncover the correct medigap plan. After AB, what are the best values.
Thank you.
Thank you, Robert for your comment and for taking the time and trouble to visit and respond. Just for clarification–I will say that: A) I never pretended to have all the answers to start with on the subject of being an informed healthcare consumer, but offered instead what I believed to be true at the time based on 20+ years (now 30+ years) of working with doctors and hospitals and the National Committee for Quality Health Care, among other related experiences, B) Certainly we have seen tumultuous changes occur since I wrote DOCTOR SHOPPING in terms of society, hi-tech advances, healthcare compensation plans, and life in general…not all for the better. C) I am not an expert or specialist in the areas you are questioning, namely ability to pay for healthcare services, and appropriate medigap plans. My guess is you probably know more than me about this. Certainly Google search windows will provide more answers than both of us put together. In fact, to underscore my earlier point, there was no Google around when I wrote that book. I’m sorry I cannot help with your dilemma, which I can appreciate must be frustrating to say the least. If you ARE able to find the answers, please consider forwarding them to me and I will be happy to share your information here for others. Thank you again for your comments. Please do return to visit again. Regards – Hal