On our own, we might be able to find the job and get the process started with a client, but more than likely, we are going to need help finishing it from some of our professional colleagues and strategic partners. Creating a strategic alliance with remodelers, occupational or physical therapists, interior designers, kitchen and bath designers, durable medical equipment consultants, equipment specialists, architects or building designers, assistive technology professionals, and others advisors – anything that we are not trained or licensed to provide on our own – is an effective way to maximize market reach, extend solution delivery, and create effectiveness. In fact, it’s the best way to sell, design, and deliver our aging in place services and solutions.
Strategic partners or alliances are temporary bonds that we form with other professionals and the trades for a particular project or type of service that we want to offer. We create them between ourselves and two or more other independent providers or companies – for a single job or on a more continuous basis. This way each one complements the services and expertise of the others, and the client is the beneficiary. With aging in place services, these bonds can be more long-term as long as all of the participants are happy with the other’s performance and abilities.
We can add and combine as many collaborators and strategic partners as necessary for a project, and the number of individual participants can adjust up or down by the specific project – depending on where it is, what it entails, the size and scope of the job, and what needs to be provided by various team members to make it a successful venture. Generally, having more than one provider in any given role is a good idea to accommodate people being busy or distances that are too far away for convenient travel.
The important part of assembling a team is always to be looking for individuals or companies that we can partner with – just once for something unusual or special, or on an on-going basis as part of what we offer with our business model – to broaden what we provide the marketplace and make our services more valuable and complete.
The strategic partnerships or alliances exist on a project-by-project basis and do not bind or align the companies to each other except through the terms of the working agreement they create for specific projects and the mutual satisfaction of collaborating to achieve great results – ones that can only be derived from a collective effort. Otherwise, everyone is free to pursue business on their own or with other strategic partners. Nevertheless, this creates a very effective delivery system that serves all of the participants and especially the client base quite well.