I have been speaking about using partners to help you break into the B@B ecosystem of the customer, faster.

But why should the partner want to do business with you. What’s in it for her? for any partnership that’s a key question that you need to be aware of and have a worthwhile answer.

When the partner is willing to take you into their customer base, they have a risk that if you mess up, then they will end up losing the customer forever. Another fear is that you may end up taking over their customer and pushing you out of that account.

Since most companies have fewer customers than they can handle they are always scared of losing a customer. Even if someone did have enough customers, they wouldn’t want to lose any.

So its imperative that you need to assuage all these fears that the customer may have by first “giving” from your side. It could be in terms of either getting customers or getting leads to give to the partner. That will help build trust. Once the trust comes then things become easier.

So while I do mention that entering an ecosystem is always better when you have a partner, building trust with the partner also takes time. If the partner is a large MNC company then the layers of people you have to manage is immense. The inertia of dealing with MNCs can leave you frustrated.

While you identify who else already sells to your customer, avoid very large companies for that role.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!