Make the most of your Ignite meetings

Before their corporate meetings, startups can attend free sales coaching to face their meetings in the best possible way. The Ignite Sweden team also follow the progress of each meeting closely, in order to make sure discussions lead to paid collaborations.

One of our coaches is Christian Malmsten, who follow the Ignite startups before, during and after their matchmaking meetings.

– I help startups prepare for their meetings. I attend the matchmakings and listen to their conversation during their meetings in order to provide feedback. After a matchmaking, I help startups to get their second meeting with a potential corporate customer. I can also give them support during the negotiation, he told us when we met him during our Switch Arena matchmaking some weeks ago.

Christian is an experienced coach and salesman who has worked in sales for 26 years and helped over 300 startups during the last 12 years.

– My main goal is to support startups for their first buying customers and collaborations. That’s why I think Ignite Sweden is an incredible program, he admits.

These are his best tips for a successful meeting with a corporate:

• Keep your pitch short. Describe which problem you solve and in which way.
• Make sure you know your short and long term goals
• Let them know what your goal for this meeting is (a collaboration, a Proof of Concept, a technical validation, etc)
• Ask what they are currently working on and what their needs and challenges are. By doing that, you will get to know which problems are crucial for them to solve.
• Search for a solution to those problems you can work together on.
• Finish the meeting by asking how much they are interested in your startup and what you are developing, and suggest a time and date for a second meeting if the answer is positive.
• Follow up always! Don’t think that because they haven’t been in touch with you for days, it means that they aren’t interested in your solution anymore. Contact them again and ask for a status. If they don’t answer your emails, call!