Allies for community business: One strategy for your growth can be Find Allies. Because when you start for the first time, you usually don’t have all the resources to do it: financial, human, and physical.
It will make the entrepreneur feel alone or at a disadvantage in his initial process. In that case, a good strategy remains to find allies for your business.
Building a team will not be accessible unless the idea has started in a group of several entrepreneurs. Much less if the investment to start the project is low.
So, what you will have to use as a resource will be The Negotiation. It is an excellent strategy to make yourself known and boost your brand. To do this, you must look for allies and choose them according to your needs and objectives.
Table of Contents
What is An Ally?
An ally is anyone who supports, strengthens, or stands up for another person or group of people.
Everyone has had the experience of needing an ally. When we were kids, did an adult ever blame us for something we didn’t do? Have we ever had something so wrong that we needed a lot of help from others to solve our situation? Have we ever been singled out for being different? Whatever the story of our lives, there have probably been dozens of times when we could have needed a person or group to help us when we were in trouble or unfairly slandered, singled out, or left to our own devices.
This section will focus on how to be allied with people from culturally different and oppressed groups. Why? Because people from beset or oppressed groups are thoroughly treat by society in unfair, hostile, violent, or other forms of discrimination. The people singled out need the support of those who are not single out in the same way.
Whybe Allies?
There are very few reasons. First, it is for your benefit to be an ally. Ultimately, all our problems are a link to someone else. To live in the kind of community, we hope for, to build fundamental unity, and achieve our goals of building strong communities. We must understand that we are all affected when any person or group is not getting a fair deal or cannot live a decent everyday life. Second, being an ally is simply doing the right thing. If we need to live in communities that have high moral standards, we have to start charting the path of what is right.
How to Find Partners for your Business?
Identify Your Needs
First, organize your business strategy. This way, you will be clear about what you need. Define your corporate objectives to focus on them. For example, if you are looking for a partner in development, you can hire a software development team. So in your meetings, you will not talk about topics that are not relevant.
To build the strategy, it will be essential to diagnose your business’s current situation. Ask yourself what the most significant strengths and weaknesses of your business are. This way, you will have identified what you can offer to find allies (stability) and what you would need from them (weaknesses).
The Target Group
Consider who your target group or audience is for your brand. Who will be your customers? Identify and study their needs, tastes, preferences, and habits. What they often see, hear, places they visit, and how they think and act. See who else might be interested in the same audience.
Find Allies and Classify Them in A Database
Create a database of your customers. Likewise, all the people and companies may have a direct or indirect relationship with your brand. From this list will come your future allies, and classify them as providers, media, support entities, and mentors. Also, if this is your case, expand the list with consultants, distributors, promoters, etc.
Find out among your customers where they would like to find your products. What other complementary products would they be interested in? Start building information that optimizes the search for your allies. Your customer will give you the best answers.
Public Relations
Find them! You already know what you need, what you have to offer, and what your customers need. Ask yourself where your allies might be and go after them. Attend events, call them, and tell them that you have an exciting proposal for their business. Write them on social networks or invite them to a coffee. Reach them, there are many alternatives.
The only thing you will need is attitude and determination to stand before them. It is vital to present your proposal to it and define how you could work together.
Schedule the Meeting, Review Objectives, Work Plan, and Priorities
To find influential allies, it will be vital to communicate the needs of both parties at the first meeting. Define in which aspects each one is stronger. Also, as their objectives, the results they hope to obtain, the degree of interest, and the priority. The latter is because not all companies go at the same pace or have the same degree of interest.
What you want in a month, the other company may wish to it in a year. If they plan to work together, one will begin to insist and the other to move away if the times are unclear.
How to Become Effective Allies?
Here are some steps we can consider taking. First, they are only listed and later elaborated on in greater detail.
- Establish friendships with people who fit into groups generally not at the center of the prevailing culture.
- Learn about the cultures and stories of others.
- Examine our own biases.
- Not tolerate any group being treat unfairly.
- Promote the leadership of people in clusters that do not traditionally hold leadership positions.
- Support different groups on issues that affect them most directly.
- Support groups to gain power in their societies.
- Help pull isolated groups out of marginality
- Work to change the problems that affect the system, which may be the root causes of inequality and oppression.
- Get Help: Empower other people to be allies.
- Form alliances between groups.
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Establish Friendships With People Who Belong to the Community
Establishing a friendship should not be a sensational occurrence to be published in newspapers. Still, it is probably one of the most important things we can do as community activists and allies. We all need to see that we matter – friendship is one of the most powerful communication tools. One of the most damaging portions of oppression is that it makes victims believe other human beings don’t care about them. Friendship is the antidote to that message.
Also, friendship is the basis for every other step to the existence of an ally. For example, taking a friendship with someone in a distinct cultural group can help us see firsthand the problems that people face daily. Breaking down barriers and mistrust among groups usually happens between two people, and not in acts of legislation or policy making.
Learn about the Cultures and Histories of Others
If we want to be helpful to people in a cultural group, we have to know something about that group – its history, religious beliefs, its strengths, or how it has been oppressing. For example, if we want to be allied with the elderly, we might ask them what it is like to grow old. How does society treat the elderly? Are they taken into account? Are they considerate at celebrations? How come they have to fight to get medical care?
Examine our Own Biases
To be influential allies with people who are different from us, we have to confront our own biases. Otherwise, we may inadvertently act in ways that are not as useful as we would like. We must be aware of how we can unintentionally be racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic, etc.
All we have misconceptions and stereotypes about people. Especially when we are young, little by little, we acquire this wrong information from television, from what we hear people talk about, from observing the expressions on our parent’s faces, and from the culture in general. We also witness people mistreated because they are people of color or poor. All these experiences are confusing to our children; they are bad experiences that make us feel bad about ourselves and distance us from those who are attack and those who engage in prejudicial behavior. These experiences, like any harmful experience, get trapped inside us, but they don’t go away. They become the basis for the misunderstandings and fears on which our prejudices rest.
Conclusion
Once they agree that they have the same purpose, they can complement each other. If there is a “feeling” and It has the same priority, making a contract or a document is best. There will be in writing the commitment of both parties to carry out the agreed business. And after this, a fundamental tool will be the work plan. Where responsibilities and dates are assigned for the fulfillment of the goals of both parties. It is accompanied by regular meetings that are held responsibly.
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