Knowing Who to Collaborate With – 2 Simple Ways

Knowing who to collaborate with in your wellbeing business isn’t always easy. This can be problematic whether you’re new to collaboration or not.

Yet, knowing which type of business to best collaborate with can make a big difference to your lovely business. Plus, positively impact the folk out there waiting patiently to become aware of your wellness support.

About collaboration benefits. Are you aware how fabulous collaboration is for wellbeing businesses? Especially on how quickly it can help you reach more people with your wellness support than you would do so on your own. If you’re not, check out our previous post Collaborating with Other Wellbeing Businesses: 5 Reasons It’s Good for Business.

Right then back to it, ‘knowing who to collaborate with’!

With so many different collaboration opportunities you can create or take part in. Including wellness events, blogging, wellness summits or podcasting, to name but a few. It can be easy to overlook the obvious question – ‘who best to collaborate with?’

To help with this we’ve put together two simple ways for you to quickly identify the most suitable wellbeing businesses for you to collaborate with. They’re super simple and easy to act on straight away. So, no excuses!

1. Ask Your Current Customer Who to Collaborate With

Okay, so maybe not literally! But you can ask them what other wellness professionals they currently see. The shining benefit from this is you get an up close and personal viewpoint, plus contact list, of who you mutually share your ideal customer with. This is gold dust!

“How?” – we hear you say!

Well, customers tend to have a lot in common with regards to their lifestyle and values. Their replies offer you access to a mutual customer pool between you and other fellow wellness professionals. This customer pool houses other potential customers much like your current customers to reach out to; just by asking your customers that one simple question.

So, if you’re a Nutritionist and your current customer gives you a list of other wellness professionals they see. Such as a Massage Therapist, Fitness Instructor and Physiotherapist for example. It helpfully signposts you to other similar customers who may also wish to use your services/products, given the chance. And vice versa for the other wellbeing professionals.

Obtaining this helpful information can be gathered in many ways including by survey, social media post and by taking a full history on client information forms.

2. Identify Your Customer’s Health and Wellness challenges or Needs

Another great way to discover who to collaborate with in business is to identify your customer’s other health and wellness needs. This simple task will help you quickly discover a complementary link between you and other wellness professionals you could collaborate with.

For example, if my Osteopath practitioner at the time had enquired into my current health challenges and needs, they’d have discovered I wished to improve my life in a few areas. These included my fitness, running technique, work stress, losing weight, my relationship and getting my kids into a good bedtime routine.

Again, this works on the principle that your current customers will reflect the lives of other similar potential customers.

Just by talking to her other customers my Osteopath practitioner would be able to pick up similarities between us all. For instance, if her other customers also say they want to improve their fitness and work stress this would highlight a link between us.

My Osteopath would then be able to work out which health professionals could best meet these needs and then make efforts to connect and collaborate with them. This might be a Personal Trainer, Running Club, Stress Coach, Counsellor, Massage Therapist and so on.

To be fair, you probably don’t even need to ask your customers their current challenges and needs. They’re probably unknowingly sharing it with you each time you meet. Such as that they have a skin complaint, want to lose weight, have a bad knee, or are currently experiencing menopausal symptoms or sleep problems. Whatever way you chose to obtain the information, once you have, you’ll have identified who best to collaborate with.

Once You Know Who to Collaborate With

Once you’ve identified who best to collaborate with in business, it’s on to the best bit! Reaching out to others to collaborate with! Whether it’s local or global business folk you’re looking to collaborate with, be sure to make friends with google and contact them! Either that or find them via a direct-message or post on social media (pages or groups). Our Wellbeing Business Network Facebook group is but one place to start.

Collaboration doesn’t have to be anything major or time consuming. It could be as simple as agreeing to help grow each other’s customer base. Advertising each other’s business leaflets and referring customers to each other is one easy way. Sharing helpful information or free resources to each other’s email lists or social media pages, is another.

Have you got a blog or podcast? Why not ask identified wellbeing professionals, to collaborate with, to share some helpful expertise on topics your own customers want help with? Not only will you be offering added value to your customers. But you’ll also reach new potential customers through the business you collaborate with sharing your blog or podcast with their audience!

Want more collaboration ideas? We’ll be sharing more about this soon!

OVER TO YOU

Are you clearer on which wellbeing business folk would complement your business when it comes to collaboration? We hope so! Plus, we hope you’re raring to contact them too. If you need more support regarding identifying who best to collaborate with and how – check out our FREE Build Your Client Referral Network – In Just 4 Days Toolkit. It houses helpful short videos and tools to walk you through the process with ease.  

Before we go, if you’re interested in our collaborative mission and would like to be kept up to date about collaborative opportunities, you can subscribe to our wellbeing business email list HERE.