Selling a product to corporate clients as a tech startup can be challenging. You get questions about your ability to support, and even whether you will still exist next month. Our advice is not to pretend you are an established player, but to position yourself positively as a startup.

Demonstrate your startup commitment: Show the corporate that you are nimble, innovative and agile. Highlight your passion, dedication, and willingness to go the extra mile. Emphasize your team truly cares about solving their problems.

Build Trust: Commit to build a long-term partnership. Be transparent and collaborative every step of the way, involve the client in shaping future features but don’t forget to sell what you currently have. Provide regular updates on progress.

Build Credibility: Highlight the backgrounds of your founders, key team members and (advisory) board members. Partner with established companies or industry leaders for integrations or go-to-market.

Show the strength of your product: Emphasize your value proposition and competitive advantages. Offer a paying pilot but make sure you define clear success metrics for the pilot. Call this a Proof of Value rather than a Proof of Concept: the implication being that you do not need to prove your product works, you show a customer it brings value to them.

Know your customer: Make sure you know the corporate’s business and challenges. Articulate clearly how your product will save them money, increase efficiency, or drive revenue, by presenting data or case studies showing ROI. Use real data for this as much as possible. Offer contract terms that cater to their business models.

Provide Strong Security and Compliance Assurance: Ensure your product meets the corporate’s standards for security and compliance and communicate this clearly. Invest in this early on. Don’t forget to define your availably and support service levels.

Understand the procurement process: Corporate sales cycles can be long so make sure you know who participates in the decision process and cater to the specific concerns of each person in the decision chain. Follow up regularly without being pushy and keep them engaged. End every interaction with a clear call to action.  But do not forget that at the end of this process, the price can be re-negotiated, so do not give your best offer too soon.

Address the "Risk" Perception Head-On: Corporates perceive startups as risky, address these concerns directly and proactively by sharing your funding status, revenue growth, backing from reputable investors. If your product is used in business-critical situations, customers may demand more legal risk mitigation measures in case your startup fails.

In summary, do not hide you are a startup, but show the customer the benefits of doing business with you and the commitments you are willing to make. Invest time in understanding your potential customer, including connecting with all people in the decision process. Be patient, but at the same time, you will need to gauge if the corporate is just sniffing or has a real intent to collaborate with you.

Jan Vorstermans

General Partner

Angelwise

e-mail: jan@angelwise.be