We’ve managed to get time with some amazing (potential) future partners after reaching out in a very simple way: Through Linkedin. And we believe the answer to why it worked is actually rather simple as well.
We have a new series of office furniture in our pipeline, and we are currently looking for partners interested in licensing them.
During the partner search we’ve mapped all the amazing players all around the world we would love to work with, but after prioritizing the list it’s easy to get depressed: How do we get in touch with those people on the top and get them to spend time with us?
It turned out Linkedin was a pretty powerful tool in this endeavour.
Some said it wouldn’t work
When talking to some of the industry people we already knew, they didn’t really approve of the plan to reach out to the industry’s top dogs through Linkedin: several actually thought it to be impossible to get in touch with the biggest names in both Europe and the US this way.
However, through a combination of groundwork, patience and sheer stubbornness we succeeded in getting in touch as well as setting up meetings with some of the people we initially only dreamed about getting to listen to us. This doesn’t mean any deals are closed yet – but it’s a crucial first step.
Doing the homework
Some of the top people actually agreed with their Danish peers on the unlikeliness of the Linkedin method: They are bombarded with licensing offers every day, and they only respond to very few of them.
We do have a modest track record of developing successful products in the office category, which surely helped convince the potential partner, that we might be able to do it again.
However, we believe the biggest explanation to why we succeeded is the fact that we did our homework in a very systematic and humble way – and knew why we wanted to talk with each specific person we reached out to.
At the end of the day, we’re just very excited that it actually worked!
