
Ask HN: Tips/secrets for partnering with large businesses? - massarog
I know from past experience and from talking with a lot of people that it can be hard to get a response from larger businesses, and even harder to get around their customer service departments and speaking with a higher up.<p>Many startups have services that need participation from larger vendors in order for them to succeed (for example ShopKick). While working on a previous project a large majority of my emails and phone calls to larger companies that we wanted to partner with were ignored. So HN, what are some tips/secrets to getting a response when looking to partner with a company, and who should you be contacting at that company (the CEO's, the marketing department, etc).<p>Edit: It would also be great for any business owners who use HN to weigh in on this as well and let us know what works for you and what types of things you ignore when being contacted about partnerships and biz development.
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ChuckMcM
Well the only successful strategy is to have a pitch that solves some sort of
pain point that they are already having.

One of the hardest things to do is pitch something where the potential partner
doesn't see a problem. And by 'a problem' here I mean 'is causing pain at the
moment.'

You can tell a company until you are blue in the face that you will get them
more leads, cut their operational costs, or streamline the experience the
customers have when they deal with them. But unless the company 'doesn't have
enough leads', 'has a problem with current operational costs', or 'has
customers complaining about their interaction', all you will get is a thank
you for sharing and nary a call back.

The fact is that the larger a business is, the more averse to changing they
are. The reasoning is pretty simple, most larger businesses both don't know
all of the variables that are going into their costs and customer experience,
and they _know_ they don't know all of the variables. Thus, if the system they
are using is working for them (for their definition of working, not yours)
then they won't change it. All they see is downside (change makes things
worse), and little upside.

The only successful strategy that I have seen work with these folks is to find
a way they can somehow canary your product with their own real data but
without changing anything they currently have. That may take some
extraordinary steps on your part to set up a completely parallel chain, but
the payoff is that you can tell your future partner/customer, using their own
data, how your change will help them and not hurt their existing system.

------
johngalt
Start your pitch to the producers not the management. If you're pitching a
hospital talk to the doctors/nurses. Bankers for a bank, and associates for a
law firm. Don't ask for management or the person in charge. I've dealt with a
lot of organizations at a high level. Trying to jump in line and go straight
for the CEO will get you lost in the noise. The bosses are already bombarded
with requests promising everything.

You need at least one good producer to back you. These people are a lot easier
to reach. They aren't usually sold too, and generally are closer to the pain
points ("pain points" flow downhill). Once you have someone on the inside to
vouch for the idea, then start moving up the chain.

~~~
SpiralLab
_Take this advice_! The people that are actually suffering from the problems
your business solves are (usually) not managers, CEO, or anyone at the top. It
is the people in the middle or bottom. They are usually also so happy to have
something that solves their problems, that they will act as an internal
champion for you during the sales process.

It's cliche, but Art of the Start <http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-
start/> explains this tactic very well.

~~~
trussi
Internal champions are an absolute must-have!

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nrkn
I feel I have to contribute a sob story from my younger days, which is
peripherally related, but may have some relevance. This was back when
applications were largely desktop based.

1.) See gap in market where the existing software is limited in functionality
and difficult to use

2.) Develop software where everyone who uses it thinks it's amazing, easy to
use, intuitive etc.

3.) Discover that although everyone loves it, it's really hard to market
against the entrenched incumbents

4.) We got a salesperson in who after seeing the product agreed to being paid
on an if-and-when the product succeeds basis

5.) Started looking for synergies and partnerships to help market it. Our
salesperson had a lot of industry contacts and he used them to find out who
the best people were to talk to at various organisations. He also managed to
get introductions to some people. Other companies he found out who to approach
just by doing some basic research, calling the company and asking around etc.

6.) Found an appropriate partner with huge customer base who was interested in
providing it to their users

7.) They show interest, get NDA, legal agreement etc. drawn up, start
negotiating

8.) Spend months demoing product, negotiating, graduating into meetings with
increasingly senior staff etc.

9.) The main person we were dealing with is replaced with someone else, things
go very quiet for a while

10.) After much deliberating be told that they've decided that the product
wouldn't provide sufficient benefit for their users so they've decided not to
go ahead

11.) Watch them launch a grossly inferior clone of your product a year later
and win sweeping accolades

12.) Lawyer tells you initial legal agreement isn't worth paper it's written
on

Then we considered open sourcing the product, but it turned out to be a
nightmare because we'd used so many 3rd party components that it would've
require huge amounts of work to get to a point where we could do so and we'd
poured too much time and effort into it already.

As you can see, plenty of mistakes were made. I learnt a _lot_ in the process
though. I don't regret a moment of it.

~~~
yayadarsh
if you don't mind, what exactly did your service do?

~~~
nrkn
User friendly accounting automation for the personal/SME space, localized for
our country. Pulled down transactions from banks, credit card and other
sources and did as much work as possible for you, generated a lot of the
necessary paperwork for tax and other compliance things etc. It did a lot of
stuff around data analysis and memorization so that the user didn't have to do
much work.

------
geofflewis
At Topguest, we’ve signed many deals with big companies such as Hilton
Worldwide, IHG, Virgin America, Wyndham, and others despite being in business
under a year and not having prior experience in our industry. First, before
you even start trying to get a meeting, these 2 things must both be true:

• You have a strong hypothesis of what Company X’s specific pain point is,
informed by research

• If your hypothesis is right, there is a >50% chance that your product can
actually solve their pain point

If both of the above are not true, do not proceed. You will waste your time
and theirs.

If both are true, you’re in luck. The sequence I propose assumes that you are
starting from scratch, just like we were. No flashy connections at the target
Company, no warm intro, no impressive track record. This sequence will not
result in a meeting every time, but in my experience it has had about a 75%
success rate:

1\. All emails to the prospective partner should be sent by someone with a
very impressive sounding title, ideally the CEO. This is annoying, since
generally titles are cheesy and can be really problematic at startups. But
unfortunately titles are important for business development. If nothing else,
the email coming from the CEO could make BigCo Manager Y think “Oh well, even
though this will likely be waste of 30 minutes, I will get to meet the CEO of
Cool Startup Z which could possibly help me somehow in the future”.

2\. Avoid agencies. Do not try to get to Company X through their advertising
agency, social media consultant, hairdresser, or other service provider. Your
goal is to get a meeting with a decision maker as fast as possible. Going
through an Agency will both put your starting point far away from a decision
maker, and at minimum will 2X your timeline.

3\. Develop an unhealthy addiction to LinkedIn. Utilize the Advanced Search
function to find people at Company X that can serve as entry points for your
quest. Here are the characteristics you are looking for:

i. Have one type of common thread with you that you can use as an anchor. Same
college, used to work at same company, played same sport in college, were at
same conference X years ago, etc. Use Google to augment their LinkedIn profile
to help identify a common thread. Note, LinkedIn connections in common does
not = common thread. Generally I never use weak LinkedIn connections to get an
intro because a. odds are that your in-common connection does not have
influence with your prospect, so you’ll just get jerked around, and b. I
personally have far more respect for ambitious people that smartly reach out
to me directly vs. having intermediaries I don’t know well facilitate
introductions.

ii. Are likely in a “Decision Making” role. Guess what? Very few jobs at big
companies are actually “Decision Making” roles! It is hard to tell who can
make decisions and who can’t, and even titles can be very misleading. But
generally, Vice President of X, or Sr. Director of Y have at least some
decision making power.

iii. Work in the department who would most likely be purchasing (or testing)
your product. Use your sleuthing powers to figure out what the right
department is. If you have researched your market this should not be that
hard. iv. Their online footprint indicates they are ambitious. Beyond
LinkedIn, check Twitter, Quora, blogs, news articles, Facebook, etc. and make
a judgment call on whether the person appears to be ambitious or not.
Ambitious people become champions of new ideas and introduce them to
organizations. Un-ambitious people do not.

4\. Obtain the email address of anyone you’ve identified at Company X who
meets at least 2 of the 4 criteria above. We will call these people your
“prospects.” Do not message prospects over LinkedIn, that’s amateur. If you
can’t find the email address of a prospect, find the email address for someone
else at the company and insert your prospect’s name into that format. Works
every time.

5\. Email only the best person based on the Criteria from #3 above. Crafting
this email is an art, and you must get it just right. There are many great
blog posts on how to cold email people, I suggest reading them. For the
purposes of this sequence, here is what I suggest:

i. The subject line must contain the single most impressive thing about your
Company to Random person X. Not the most impressive thing to you or your team
who know about all the goodies under the hood, but the must impressive thing
to a random person from the street. If you have backing from ‘top tier’
investors or a star advisor that your prospect will have heard of, use in your
subject line

ii. The first sentence of the email must establish your credibility. E.g. “I
am the CEO of Startup Q, recently featured in The Wall Street Journal [link].
We are building X for Y”

iii. The next sentences must exploit your common thread, or subtly hint as to
how you could help this person get ahead; preferably both. Here is an example:
“I am also a graduate of Georgia Tech (Sci ‘08!), and am reaching out to you
since our Product is delivering 200% ROI for Vaguely Competitive Company Z.”

iv. The next sentences must illustrate that you get what is important to the
Company and have an idea of how you could help. Here is an example: “I’m
impressed by your efforts to grow Brand Z’s Facebook fan base. I read about
Initiative X in AdAge and it seems like you’re at the cutting edge. That’s why
I believe a simple tool that lets Company X sell products to Facebook Fans
could be useful and interesting for you.

v. Close the deal with a specific request for an “introductory conversation”
and suggest a few dates.

6\. If this person gets back to you within 5 business days, awesome. Prepare a
brief presentation, and try your hardest to have the meeting in person. Real
connections between people are developed in person not over the phone. And the
hardest part of selling is a developing a real connection with the prospect.

7\. Most likely, your first email attempt will not elicit a response after 5
business days. Do not despair! Rather: i. Move on to the other prospects you
identified from LinkedIn, using the same email format as above. Email each of
these people separately, at the same time. ii. Forward your initial email back
to the initial prospect attaching a new and interesting relevant news article,
a statement to the effect of “I know how busy you are”, and a new request to
meet with your updated availability

8\. If you have one person willing to meet with you by now, awesome. Proceed
with step 6.

9\. Most likely, you’ll still have no response. So follow up with each of the
additional prospects you emailed in Step 7 with a similar follow up note.

10\. If still no luck about 15 business days from when you started, email your
initial “best” prospect and “second best” prospect together in the same email.
Say something to the effect of “touched base with each of you and wanted to
follow up. Do either of you have availability to connect? We have made
progress X, Y, Z since my initial note and I’d love to update you.” Emailing
both the people puts a competitive dynamic at play where neither person wants
to look like a slacker to the other person, therefore making at least one of
them more likely to write you back.

This sequence should help you get your initial meeting. But the real work
starts after… From initial meeting to “sale” could take months… or years.
Unfortunately my post is way too long as is, so will save the rest of my
business development advice for another time ☺ Hope this helps a bit!

\--Geoff

~~~
massarog
Great information Geoff thanks so much for posting this. Out of curiosity, is
this the approach that you took to secure each of the partnerships that you
have with the large companies? What was your success/fail rate like before you
finally had some biters?

~~~
geofflewis
When we first started, I used this approach to contact execs at about 7 of the
largest loyalty programs in the world. Of those 7, 4 are now Topguest clients.
The lead times from initial contact to live integration have ranged from 3-8
months (patience and structural ability for the company to deal with long lead
times is really key with enterprise sales)

------
nosh
Few tips:

This is based on experience working with large tech companies - not sure how
similar this will be for your targets

\- Be ready not to hear back (looks like you already are)

\- Use linkedin. It will help you understand the org structure and who is
between the people on the management page (CEO, etc) and who picks up the
phone when you call their 1-800 number. The people you want to be talking to
at first are probably somewhere in the middle. With a lot of companies you can
start to guess what their pattern for email addresses is. If not InMail works
occasionally

\- If you are reaching out to someone cold or semi-cold, try to connect what
your company is doing with some hot button issue or topic in the industry (as
they are likely already thinking of ways to work on this). Offer up something
that would be interesting to them (e.g. info on how companies similar to them
are approaching the problem - ideally something that they couldn't find out by
surfing the web). This is often a way to start up a conversation and
understand if there really are opportunities to work with the company

\- If you are working with their customers, partners, competitors (even
peripherally) - leverage that. In the end you are going to have to show them
how your product is going to drive more revenue, gain more market share, cut
costs for them (or whatever your value prop is)

\- Make it easy for them to say yes i.e. be flexible. don't ask for them to
drive 2 hrs to see you. offer up some some possible times for a call, etc

\- Sometimes it helps to start lower down on the chain. It will give you a lay
of the land and maybe some introductions to the right people. Leverage your
connections (friends, investors, etc) - its worth talking to anyone in the
company rather than not talking to anyone.

\- Conferences can be a good place to try and corner people :)

\- If you really have no way of getting to someone in the company - customer
service reps will likely be a dead end. Sales people will be slightly more
help, but mileage will vary. If the company has some sort of partner program
try and join it. At the least it will get you connected to someone in the
company

\- Its a process. You will likely talk to 10 people before you get to the
right one

\- Timelines are always longer than you expect. Nothing is done until its
done.

Good luck!

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lifefundr
I am very interested in seeing where this discussion goes. I don't have much
to add per-se BUT I do, however, remember seeing this some time ago:
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to-
get-g...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to-get-george-
bush-or-the-ceo-of-google-on-the-phone/)

Perhaps you will find it a bit helpful.

~~~
massarog
I actually read this post earlier today when searching for tips/ideas. I'm
interested in stories of people from HN and what they did to get a response
too, so I look forward to where this discussion goes. Thanks for posting the
link!

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qeorge
By a mile, the best way to get my attention is to send me business. I've got
nearly infinite patience for people who have already "shown me the money".

If you're really a good biz dev partner this shouldn't be hard.

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rnugent
Find a product manager in the business to champion you. There are many
regional meet ups for product management professionals such as this -
<http://www.svpma.org/>

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pitdesi
One thing that has worked for us is following them around. I mean literally.
Find out what conferences the CEO is speaking at and approach them after they
get off the stage. Sounds scary-stalkerish but it works. Even if you just get
their card and make a quick connection. I've done this before for FeeFighters
and gotten many meetings/partnerships out of it.

The other thing is LinkedIn. A warm introduction counts for a lot. Build your
network, you never know who might help.

~~~
massarog
I like your outside the box thinking on this instead of sticking with the
typical email/phone call.

