We've been discussing questions about continuing to provide valuable and vital services to clients during these unusual and demanding times. Today, we wrap up this series with the final question posed a week ago:

6.) How can I partner with others to make what I do more valuable to my clients?

You may have noticed throughout this post, I’ve been saying - “I have a recommendation for that”. 

There are things that I either do not know a lot about, that I’m just not passionate about, or that I can’t offer in a cost-effective way that would bring value to my customers. For these things, I look to find a strategic partner that I can refer my customers out to. 

In other circumstances, there might be a printed item that my clients need access to that I can get for them and save them the stress of using multiple items. We call this ‘print brokering’ in our industry. I have been developing relationships with “trade-only printers” all over the world to help get my clients access to high quality products that I do not have the capacity to do in-house. We have always offered these solutions, but we have been further researching what is available to us and establishing new relationships when needed, and learning more about the offerings that we have available to us so we can better offer those solutions to our clients.

In your industry, there are probably similar partnerships you could be making. Typically, you would make these kinds of relationships by doing face-to-face networking. Right now this may not be an option, but there are virtual networking opportunities to fill in that gap.

Ask yourself, what are add-on products that you can offer to your clients to give them more value? If you are in the health and wellness sphere, perhaps there is a line of essential oils you can offer? If you are in the gifting world, is there a local artisan you can partner with to add value to both of you? If you are a restaurant, is there another business that is delivering goods to local households that could include a flyer to tell people about your take-out offerings? If you are shipping your products out over the country, is there another local product you could offer to ship to your clients? Can you partner with a local business to give your clients a free sample of another local business? 

Look for people, businesses and products that you know, like and trust, and figure out how you can utilize a strategic partnership to offer value to your customers and maybe even revenue to your bottom line.

I hope this series has helped to answer just a few of the many questions you're sure to have as we continue down this uncharted path. This may be only the beginning of the questions you have, but I hope some of my thoughts on the topic have been insightful and useful to you. Though we are apart and may be apart for some time, we are a community of strong individuals and we will come together at the end of it. As always, stay safe, stay strong and stay well.