To boost your brand you have to make alliances

Generally, alliances are essential for a company's business model, and for others they can play a major role in acquiring customers. However, entrepreneurs are at a difficult point when it comes to finding potential business alliances. The founder of a startup commonly lacks the credibility and experience to negotiate an alliance with established organizations.

For those who are looking to ensure a critical partnership, I share five tips:

1. Show your product in action

A pitch can be a good way to show a concept, but startups can overcome the credibility gap by demonstrating their idea in action. Show your product, let people experiment with it and take a tour of your service. It requires more work, time and effort, but ensures that your vision is clear to potential allies and teaches that you are fully engaged.

2. Be strategic when looking for allies

Sometimes startups see the senior partner as the only one worth pursuing. This is a common mistake, since smaller and lesser known companies can be the best first allies. These offer credibility for future alliances and help you fix problems of your product in a less risky environment.

When identifying potential alliances, be strategic in your way of thinking. Recognize who could be hungrier for an alliance or more willing to innovate.

3. Recognize the fear of losing
The fear of losing is a real phenomenon that drives a good part of social behavior. Regardless of what many people say, this fear also exists in business.

Put yourself in the shoes of a person in charge of the development of the business in a large company. Being the first to ally with a startup has many advantages if it succeeds; Generally, these people want to be involved from the root. But having said that, large corporations are risking allying with young companies (there are risks to the brand, financial, etc.). But if there are other allies, the risk is shared, which could encourage the corporate to join.

Take advantage of this phenomenon of fear and strengthen your current alliances to build new ones. Your first alliances will be difficult to achieve, but little by little it will become easier.

4. Use your network to 'warm up' presentations

No matter what your startup or what partner you try to achieve, the probability is that the person receives hundreds of mails a day. Although this does not mean that emails do not work, it does mean that they can be lost in the inbox.

When possible, look for presentations from your friends or colleagues. If you have a potential partner in mind, start by checking LinkedIn, student bases, and other areas where you might find someone to do the presentation. If they have a connection in common, send the person an explanation email that you can forward to the potential partner, so that your pitch is exactly as you wish.


5. Believe in yourself

Have confidence in yourself and in your product. When you look for partners and allies you must be a champion and the greatest evangelist of your business. Keep in mind that if you do not show that you believe in your product, nobody will believe in it.