If you’ve decided that you want to create an outsourcing agreement with your competition, you can approach this from a few different angles. These agreements can be formal or informal.
You can informally start recommending your competition to your clients on a case-by-case basis just because you want to, or you can reach out to the competition and set up a formal legal agreement to share overflow through outsourcing, affiliate agreements, and subcontracting.
Outsourcing To / From Your Competition
If you outsource to someone else, you send the work off and expect to receive a completed project. For example, let’s say you’re a website designer, but you don’t really know how to build the type of website that your current client wants, but you know that a competitor can.
Per your agreement, you’d simply outsource the portion of the work you don’t know how to do or don’t have the resources to do. You would bill your client, and your competition would bill you for the work. Your client may not even know who is doing the work for you and may assume it’s all done by your company in-house.
Affiliate Agreements
Another way to work with your competitors dealing with the overflow work that you cannot do for any reason at all –lack of time, lack of resources, personal preference – whatever the reason, you can choose a trigger that delivers an affiliate offer to your customer or list member allowing you to send the customer to someone else but still earn income if they buy from your competition.
Subcontracting To / From Your Competition
You can also choose to work with each other on a sub-contracting basis. This work is generally for busywork overflow when you don’t want to hire an employee, but you want a little more control over the deliverable. If you have a lot of extra free time among your employees, you can offer these types of services to your competition, or you can likely buy these types of services from some of your competitors too.
Whatever type of agreement you make with your competition regarding your overflow or their overflow, it’s best to ensure that you have a deal with them that is mutually beneficial. To find the right companies to work with, you need to do your due diligence and study the competition. Understand what it is that they do best and who they want to do it for. Develop your idea for sharing overflow with them before you approach them with the contract ready to fill in with the agreed-upon information, so all they have to do is agree to your terms and sign. Make their “yes” easy to say.
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