Collaboration is great.

They say we all need to collaborate more with each other, with clients and with other professionals.

The reward is often more and better ideas, increased productivity, and the opportunity for sharing information and boosting engagement.

But, in reality, who wants another email, another meeting, another thing to add to an ever growing task list? I’ll be honest – not me.

There is something really insidious about the way our time is taken up without us knowing where it has gone, and the equal and opposite pressure of having to prove our worth through billable time and work winning. It’s exhausting.‍

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Collaboration done the right way

Collaboration IS good and it can make our lives better and more interesting but only when done in an effective way.

The professional referrals market is lucrative, largely untapped, and can often result in generating "ideal" clients.

... but do you have a strategy for professional connections? or is it on that long “to do” list which you never get to the end of and where the client work takes priority?

If you do have a professional connections strategy, is it largely around identifying accountants and financial professionals to take to lunch or to invite to a seminar or webinar or a mailing list?

And, if you have space, a follow up email or two thereafter? What is the ROI of your marketing endeavours? Do they really work? And most importantly – do they put the client at the heart of what you are doing?

What would it look like if you did?

It might look like a place where you can identify at a glance the sorts of professionals you want to align yourself with, which have the expertise your client needs and where you have the necessary due diligence at your fingertips.

It might be a place where you know when your client would benefit from advice both from you and from another professional and a place where you and that other professional can share information about that client for the client’s benefit.

That is a what we are building at RQ.