We receive many investment requests from Technology Startups, Impact investing to even ICO’s. Some have great businesses to share; others underestimate the fundraising trap.

We will talk with Balz Roth, a professional Business Angel, investor and board member for SMEs and technology startups. Various successful exits of technology startups to companies like Intel (Lemoptix), Monolithic Power Systems (Sensima) and Everyware (Safe Swiss Cloud). Balz is also a Venture Partner at Go Beyond, an international business Angel Network.

When: May 29th 6:00pm CET

This webinar will provide hands-on, practical insights and tools towards a successful Fundraising:

• Do I really need 3rd party money to achieve my goals?
• Which Investors are most likely to be a good fit for my Business and development stage?
• Key steps towards a great first Investor meeting and the first Term Sheet
• Critical ways how to take the relationship further and get through Closing

He will draw from his broad investment and Entrepreneurship experience to provide exciting insights and practical examples. You will have the opportunity of a live chat to ask relevant questions.

Register

How to get traction with large organisation as a startup

As per the 2017 European Scale-up report, contrary to Silicon Valley, where 2 out of 3 startups are consumer oriented, 60% of European scale-ups are B2B focused. Initiating, building and maintaining productive relationships with large customers are challenges for many startups.

Adapting to a different operating framework

To become successful at driving sales in a Business-to-Business environment, it is critical for any Entrepreneur to first accommodate to a very specific operating framework.

Large customers are primarily assessing new innovation against Return on Investment, validating how it will help them increase profitable sales. In the background, the Entrepreneur will have to establish deeper relationships with a small number of companies. A further focus will be to cater for a Person-to-Person selling across multiple stakeholders. And above all, to be patient, acknowledging slower decision process of large organizations.

Executing the Key account sales process steps

In the established context, it will be important to manage the related end-to-end process:

• Robust pre-sales approach
• Well prepared sales interface
• Thorough post-sales follow-up

To prepare for the sale, it will be critical for the Entrepreneur to get-out and understand the industry structure and its dynamics, so also to articulate a solid, simple Value Proposition. Beyond the market focus, it will also require to research customer organization and identify the true decision makers, their readiness to pay and seek early adopters.

During the sales process, it is very critical to listen to customers, so as to deliver what they need. To build credibility, the Entrepreneur will need to apply full human resources bandwidth to gain management trust, similarly to Venture Capital discussions. During this critical phase, the focus should remain on key contract items: scope, liability, IP ownership and termination terms. The Entrepreneur should always be weary what its organization signs and seek legal advice whenever appropriate.

The management of the post-sales process is a fundamental building block to success. The Entrepreneur will have to expand its discussion and reach to other functions within the customer organization. It should be useful to consider implementing a Key Account penetration plan but also some simple but effective web-based sales pipeline management tools. Finally, the Entrepreneur should ensure not to be blindsided by the urgency to get the order on the table and prepare for the next sales opportunity.

About the Author

Roberto Magnifico, Chief Commercial Officer, with the Startup ActLight SA.

He draws from his broad key account sales and senior management experience to provide exciting insights and practical examples. You will have the opportunity of a live chat to ask relevant questions.

Access Now the relevant presentation or listen to the audio podcast for this Webinar.

Contrary to Silicon Valley, where 2 out of 3 startups are consumer oriented, 60% of European scaleups are  B2B focused.

Initiating, building and maintaining productive relationships with large customers is a challenge for many startups: focus on Return on Investment, IP protection, importance of relationship building and scattered decision making authority are substantial differences from traditional consumer markets.

This free webinar will provide hands-on, practical insights and tools how to drive Key Account sales:

• How to evaluate and get access to relevant prospects?
• Key steps towards a great first customer meeting and the first purchase order
• Critical ways how to take the relationship further and get more purchase orders

Roberto Magnifico, Chief Commercial Officer, with the Startup ActLight SA will draw from his broad key account sales and senior management experience to provide exciting insights and practical examples. You will have the opportunity of a live chat to ask relevant questions.

Register below for this Webinar on April 10th 2018 6:00pm to 6:45pm CET!

Register now

We enjoy working with diverse Entrepreneurs and Ventures, also on supporting them on their path to Market Launch.

Before moving too quickly towards Product & solution development, we recommend each Entrepreneur to focus:

“Make sure
you are building
the right it,
before you build it right!”

They are a lot of excitement around Minimum Viable Product, Product-Market-Fit and other Prototypes.

We find the use of “Pretotype” a great way to focus on what matters – the customer and market adoption.

” Pretotypes make it possible to collect valuable usage and market data to make a go/no-go decision on a new idea at a fraction of the cost of prototypes: hours or days instead of weeks or months, and pennies instead of dollars.”

Download and read along in this short, practical and useful guide called Pretotype It

Pre-Register now