If you are planning to collaborate with an established company, you need to be prepared. Below, we will provide you and your start-up with necessary information and helpful templates to get ready.
Get prepared
Conduct market research
Set up internal structures
Define your targets
Gain visibility
Reality check
Conduct market research
If you are preparing for collaboration with an established company, it is very important to know your business environment and certain characteristics. Consider the following three aspects of your market research in order to be as prepared as possible.
Understand how exactly your solution can add value to your target group and how you can best convey this value.
Don’t forget to do your desk research!
A sales pitch shouldn’t be the first time you speak to an established company!
We highly recommend repeating these steps frequently in order to keep yourself up to date!
Set up internal structures
During the preparation phase, you should make sure to have the resources and structures in place to successfully and efficiently work with corporates. Among others thing, consider the following aspects:
Make sure you have enough experienced or trained resources in your sales team.
Think about service levels and customer support.
Make sure that your sales and product teams are aligned on what you can and can’t offer; otherwise you might end up in a situation where you can’t deliver on what you’ve promised, which will show you in a bad light.Do not underestimate the administrative effort that is involved in working with corporates, who often require you to adhere to certain standards, such as quality assurance.
Define your targets
Another important step during the preparation process is to define potential collaboration partners.
We recommend the following four-step procedure:
1. Compile a longlist of potential partners
2. Cluster them (e.g. according to their position on the value chain or industry)
3. Think about the advantages you can bring to each cluster.
4. Rank the companies on the longlist according to their attractiveness to your start-up.
Think outside the box and gather not only the big and known names, but also smaller, more specialised companies. Both come with certain advantages.
Big companies
While bigger names have the obvious advantage of being a great reference if you can win them as partners, they are usually approached by many start-ups, so competition can be tough there. Furthermore, large corporates tend to have rather slow and bureaucratic processes and generally require a lot of documentation, aggravating cultural differences that can lead to challenges in the collaboration. However, they frequently have dedicated start-up programs, which can give you a clear entry way into the organisation and they also often offer additional goodies like dedicated training.
Smaller, specialiced companies
Smaller companies, on the other hand, are often leaders in their field and can thus offer a lot of technological expertise and a big network. Since they are smaller and usually more agile, the cultural differences aren’t as big and processes usually run a lot faster. However, these companies are frequently quite new to the “start-up-game” and might not be as open to collaborating with a young company. They also quite rarely have dedicated touchpoints for start-ups, so you might have to contact a couple of people to find the right person to talk to.
Gain Visibility
One pitfall of start-ups is that young companies are often rather unknown. Start-ups need public attention for their innovation, so they can better position themselves on the market and become more attractive to their customers and potential partners. But as a new and unknown player this is not so easy!
Appearances at trade fairs, publications in scientific journals and participation in innovation and start-up competitions can help to increase your visibility. Lighthouse projects can also present your own product in an emotionally interesting and attractive way, thereby benefitting your company’s success, even if they do not lead directly to sales!
Reality check
To gather every bit of relevant information is a time-intensive task and can be an organisational headache. Therefore, we have created a canvas template to give you some support with this challenge. The canvas helps you not only to keep track of important aspects, but also provides you with a realistic indication of what the collaboration will look like.
The canvas can be separated into internal and external aspects. Each of these aspects contains different elements, as shown below.
External Aspects
Collaboration partner
Goal of the collaboration
Added value for the collaboration partner
Added value for you
Internal Aspects
Non-negotiable aspects
Non-shareable information
Internal Structures
Internal resources
If you are ready for the reality check – please feel free to download the template:
Best Practice Example from Corporate Start-up Accelator SAP.iO Foundry Munich
Templates
Please feel free to download the following templates and use them to keep on track during the complex phase of preparation.
Get ready to collaborate Canvas
Fill in as much information as possible before approaching a collaboration partner.
USP Mapping
This unique selling proposition example by Digitalya helps you to formulate all aspects that distinguish you from your competitors.
Have a look back at step 1
