HOW TO ENSURE THE SUCCESS OF A STARTUP-CORPORATE RELATIONSHIP?

Accelerate your company with these tips on "How to ensure the success of a startup-corporate relationship". Analyse and discover this TIP!

To finish with the collaboration block, we review some tips that will help you to ensure success during the collaboration.

Before we continue, let us briefly agree on 2 points:

• The success of the partnership is determined by the extent to which your product/service solves the needs of the corporation. If your solution is not valid, success will not be possible.
• Making your solution work for the corporation is an indispensable but not the only condition for success. There are a number of intangibles that we need to secure.

In this Tip we give you tips to take into account intangibles that are absolutely necessary for a successful relationship:

NTERNAL SPONSORSHIP

It is necessary to identify, excite, engage and nurture your sponsors within the organisation. They are those who have trusted your solutionyou have helped during the decision making process, have influenced other members and departments of the organisation to make the collaboration happen and have even secured budget or funded the collaboration from their area's budget.

It is very important that these sponsors do not disappear during the provision of services and it is your duty to nurture that relationship and not let them "disengage" from the project as much as possible. 

Think about it, in all collaborations there will be misunderstandings between the parties, failures, and misalignments. Having your internal Sponsors close to you will help you to control and redirect these misalignments in favour of the success of the project. Sponsors really interesting are those who have a representative role, power and various functions within the organisation. They are busy people, so it is easy for them to disengage after the start-up phase of the collaboration. 

Being vigilant and nurturing the relationship is a key aspect.

RECURRENCE

During the collaboration you have to look for recurrence. Recurrence in follow-up meetings, contact points, follow-up reports, feedback on how your solution is working... etc. In short, You have to be on top of the issues from start to finish.

It is quite common for Startup 100% to be involved in the initial phases and for contacts, follow-up and affection to relax as the collaboration progresses or over the years. I recommend that you establish recurrent checkpoints and frequent contacts. It is the way to remain visible and to be in the customer's "Top of Mind". 

This intensity is important because you will be aware of any changes in the organisation that may affect your contractual relationship. In addition, you will be the first to know about new customer needs, problems and business opportunities.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR BUSINESS

The business occurs when someone pays for your services. Don't forget. It is possible that many corporations are interested in your solution, want to try it, want to contract it for a period of time, are interested in only a part of your solution... etc.

It is good be flexible to adapt to your customers' needs (corporations) but remember that your business needs income and cash flow to survive, to grow, to raise more finance or to be sold.

For this reason, be careful about how corporations will pay for your services. It's part of your business model but here the details make the difference.

You have to take care of the difference between turnover and cash flow. It is no use invoicing large sums on 90 days' payment if your cash flow does not support the operation of your business. Carefully design and negotiate the way money flows from corporations to your start-up.

Payment phasing, maintenance fees, start-up fees, project/materials/infrastructure provisions, recurring revenues, additive revenues, conditions of application of trade discounts, phasing of return of volume discounts...etc. 

These are just a few examples of revenue management that you should take into account in order to take care of your business and especially your cash flow.

This will allow you to continue to offer more value to the corporation and to continue to explore new opportunities:

GIVES MORE THAN AGREED

This is an extra tip that almost always makes a difference and will bring you closer to success in every collaboration:

• "Always give more than agreed". Do it the way you want, more service, more features, more product, more attention, more care, more love, more time. It exceeds the expectations created in the corporation!!!.
• When you do this you exceed your contractual obligations and put yourself in a position of "owing" to the corporation. If the collaboration goes well, in addition this attitude of giving more will be taken into account when renewing or extending contracts. When problems arise, This attitude is highly valued in order to minimise the impact or take stock of the good and bad of the collaboration.
• It is important that you take this and incorporate it into the way you do business. This way it won't even be an extra effort when you do it and it will be an automatic attitude and part of your startup's DNA.

CONCLUSION

Control the intangibles to ensure the success of your activity. As well as your product/service providing real value, these are the kind of details that make the difference in today's market.