Most young companies dream of getting their first heavyweight customer — a huge player, central to their industry, like Google Inc., or better yet, a General Electric.
Snaring such a customer can change an entrepreneur’s fortunes overnight. Of course. But how do you gain the attention and trust of a large and important company? It’s certainly tough — but there are some strategies to help out.
First of all, make sure you are in a niche that large companies don’t consider core to their business, advises Steve Waldis, who is the CEO and founder of Synchronoss Technologies.
According to Steve: “We developed a solution focused on the order management process that is a critical and often very complex process but not core to our customers’ business. Our customers can now focus on marketing and building out world class networks, and we can focus on connecting the two.
Chris Cabrera, the founder and CEO of Xactly Corporation (which develops sales software), also knows how to snag big-time customers.
He says that big companies often see working with small companies as a risk. They wonder, will your company be around tomorrow? Can you scale your solution?
To deal with the pushback, a small firm may want to try using new technologies, such as on-demand software. With this, a customer does not have to pay large up-front fees. Instead, there is a monthly or quarterly subscription payment.
Read more.
Photo by MSDesigns.
No comments yet.