 Well, hi everyone. Thank you very much for being here. This is my first time speaking in Bulgaria, and also my second time at the WorldCamp, so I'm very excited to be here with all of you. I do see some familiar faces here, but for those of you who I don't know, my name is Katarina, I work at the big Sly Brown family. Sly Brown is a web hosting company. We don't sell socks, as many people think. We are in the market with 15 years now, and it's an independent company. I started four years ago at a customer care position in our office in Madrid because at the moment I was living there, and later on I moved back to Bulgaria and started working in our affiliate partnerships team in Sofia, where our headquarters office is, because what I've done best and what I still do best, hopefully, it's to connect with people and establish meaningful relationships. So this is basically my job right now. Every day I look for new opportunities, I find new partners, and I also help with the optimization of already established ones. And this has been a very long and exciting journey for me, because Sly Brown is a place where you learn, you grow, but also most of all you challenge yourself every single day. So the topic of my presentation is how to win partnerships in business. And the first question you need to ask yourself will be to why does my business need a partnership and does my business need one? And there is a simple answer, which is yes, because a successful partnership will help your business grow and will help your business expand in a way that usually cannot do on its own. You know that once you create a business, it's because you want to earn some revenue, and everybody wants to earn more revenue, and this is what you do with partnerships. And recently I was in Italy with some of my colleagues, and when you're in Italy, pasta is often the answer to everything, which brought me thinking about something, about an example for this presentation. So just imagine that you're an artisan and you sell all types of pasta. You sell fusilli, macaroni, tagate, grini, all the pasta that you can imagine, you love it, you do it with your heart, and everybody loves it because it's crafted, it's homemade, it's just fantastic. And people come to your specific shop just because of it. But what happens when your clients come to you, and they ask you, okay, I found pasta I love, do you have tomato sauce? And then you know that there's something is missing, and then you have an opportunity to create more revenue by adding a product that you don't have the expertise to produce. And this is when you know that you have to find somebody for that. But what it actually takes to find someone, I will share in the next slides. So I have a simple recipe which consists of two ingredients. And the first one will be to find a mutual business benefit. You need to find something that is truly good for both sides, because this is how you can create a win-win situation. So you sell your pasta, but Paolo sells tomato sauce. And Paolo, just like you, shares your values, and he loves to do things homemade. He crafts his own tomato sauce. But at the moment when you offer to Paolo to sell his sauce in your shop, this is an obvious benefit for him, because he just like you would like his sauce to be reached by more people. And the second ingredient of my recipe would be to add a spoonful of human and personal touch, because Paolo not only shares your visions about business and how to do it, but he also loves football games, and you have seen him to go to the same stadiums as you. And you wonder why this is valuable information? Well, it is because this is something small that is very human and very dear to both of you, and also gives you ground to start a conversation further along with him and share your business ideas with him. And yes, the slide says simple recipe, but actually these ingredients take a lot of effort and business and human understanding. And in the comments slides I will share with you my personal partnership process and my beliefs on what are the ways to increase your success chances on each of the steps of the process. So I identify six steps which are to define the partner, define the profile of the partner, to research them, approach them, convince them, deliver to the partner and then maintain their relationship. So the first step would be to define who will be a possible partner. And this is somebody who has to have, who can help you achieve your goal, but also have a need of his own that your organization can fulfill. And for example, on a daily basis now I work with a lot of web agencies and designers who happen to have clients who are constantly looking for quality hosting recommendations. And this creates a perfect opportunity for us, which is why we approach them with our affiliate program, because then we have a different situation. First, these agencies, they get commissions for referring their customers to us. Second, we have access to their client space. And the third actually win here is that the clients are finally happy and satisfied because they were looking for quality hosting. And last but not least, you need to remember that... Sorry if I got nervous here. It needs to be someone that... You need to remember the human part here because it needs to be someone that you're feeling comfortable working with. The next step will be to research the business and the people. This is important because the more you know about the business of that organization that you like, the profile that you found in your life, the more you know about them, the more you know about the history of the business, their values, and also what kind of clients they have, will increase your chances of closing a deal with them. And when it comes to the people, you need to find the right person to contact. You cannot just shoot for the HR or someone that has nothing to do with your business goal. You need to find the correct person to contact so to be able to establish a real conversation and further relationship. For example, inside around years ago when content delivery technology became popular, we started looking for partnerships and we really liked Cloudflare. And we started researching that company and then we identified the head of their business development and luckily for us it turned out that this woman was also from Bulgaria. And as you know, it's around this Bulgarian company so the good thing and truly valuable thing about this piece of information that we found is that this actually gives the grounds for that human connection and establishing a conversation with this person and starting the whole process. So the next step would be to approach that person. Once you have identified who is the right one, you can do it in many ways. The most professional way would be to do it by email but unfortunately not everyone raised their emails, not everyone replies to them on time. Things get delayed and this also happens with social media like LinkedIn and Twitter which is why events like the WorldCamps are fantastic because you can meet people directly. You can bond much faster, you connect easier, someone can introduce you to someone else and the best part about the WorldCamps and similar events is that you can research them initially and you can research who will be there and you can approach them directly but also these people can introduce you to someone else and even if you don't have a base or a ground for a mutual project at the moment that does not mean that in the future they won't remember you or won't consider you about some other project or won't refer you to someone else. And there is another secret about these events and this is the fact that a lot of the people, a lot of the attendees that come here or attend other WorldCamps go alone and believe me all these people will be thrilled to have someone that is genuinely interested in what they do and what's their job or just to meet some new people. So don't miss the opportunity to talk to people or to talk to everyone that you think will be interesting because people will also love to talk about themselves and you never know what can happen. The fourth step after you've done all the job till here will be to convince them. So once you've found the right contact and you have approached them you need to be very specific in what you want from them you need to tell them exactly what you want and what they can expect don't tell these people what you think they might want to hear it doesn't work like that because people don't have time for novels especially when it comes to email or internet communication this will show that you value their time when you are specific and concise also you need to show when you convince someone you need to show that you have a good understanding of what they do because this shows seriousness, respect and also it shows to that person that you're talking to that they're important for you and they'll appreciate it and sometimes we receive requests which basically say, hey, we love side ground let's do something together and you're like, okay but you're telling me that it's nice that you appreciate our company and what we do but tell me exactly what you want because right now I see that you don't have a plan and it's not really good because I really don't know what to expect from you either and then there's the other example with agencies for example that come to us and say, hey, we have a lot of clients, we're growing super fast our clients need support, I hear yours excellent and this is when I know that this person comes with an idea and knows what he's looking for and I also know what I can offer to them and the last bit from this part is also really important to stay flexible and to be open for new ideas because during communication ideas may change and the entire concept of a partnership can change and you shouldn't close your doors if the initial project doesn't work out because better solutions can come up so now that we have a deal there are two more steps which are the final steps and are probably the most important ones and one of them will be to deliver what is promised to keep your promise from the agreement and to make things happen because if you remember Paolo, your friend that you go to for both games with, who sells pasta who sells tomato sauce you promise to him that you're going to order a table you're going to put it in your fine shop in the middle of it so you can give him premium exposure but you forgot to order that table and you postpone it with a week and Paolo is a bit irritated now and what happens when the next week you don't find the time to order a table you postpone it with another week and Paolo gets not only frustrated but very disappointed and he has all the rights to be disappointed so because you're not only showing him that you don't keep your promise and you don't deliver what you agreed for Paolo already produced that extra homemade exquisite sauce for you the one that you wanted so badly and this sauce will go to waste and this is the moment when all of your initial effort all of the effort you put in the initial steps goes absolutely to waste because this is the moment when you lose trust in this person and this is very important and you should remember this because when you keep your promises and when you deliver what you agreed in first place this is when you tell this person I am committed or you tell your partner I am committed to this business I want to work together with you and an image is born and what happens then one day in the future Paolo will have a friend that sells Pesto and he will tell them about you and then when you repeat the entire process and you keep your promises to this new person your business will expand even more and the last and final step from my personal approach and process will be to maintain the relationship with these people this is essential because many people make the mistake to think that once a partnership is established that's it, in the end it will evolve alone and this is really wrong because you shouldn't let it grow stagnant you shouldn't let it grow cold you need to continue communicating with Paolo and your other partners to make sure that he stays with you you need to make sure that he is updated on any organization or development changes that your business may experience you need to also think of a clearly business point of view just to improve that partnership it doesn't have to always stay as it was agreed in first place you can make promotions, you can change things you can add more products you can choose things of way to make things better for you for him and for your plans after all, that's why your business will be growing and to summarize on what it takes to win business partners I can only speak from experience but during the last years I've worked with many people from different countries and I learned one thing and this is that no matter what industry you're in there are two essential things to build a meaningful synergy among entrepreneurs and to have a win-win situation and also for both parties to trust each other and you are the one that lays the foundation since the beginning thank you so you said that finding a partner is really important after all but finding a partner, you said that you need to connect with a person in the company after all so how do you target people like in a company do you have a specific approach to go to a company and say I would like to try with that person like how do you target the person in the company to talk to you well it really depends what your business is about but for example now what I do is I look for agencies I look for agencies or web designers or bloggers and I research them in internet because it's an online world the one we're working in and that's why when I mentioned that it's important to define a partner you have to really have a clear idea of who will be a good fit because as mentioned with the agencies you have plenty of agencies, they're great but for example if they work with ASP.NET even if the agency is fantastic it's of no use for me or for our clients because we don't work with the same services thank you thank you for the awesome presentation thank you hi, I have questions for you as well say I am Paula and I make the best, the best I make the best and I team up with Giuseppe who provides the tomato sauce but then I decided that I also want to team up with Alberto who has the best burger jam and my clients are super happy so I go down that slippery slope and I team up with someone else who offers mozzarella we have someone else who offers basil pesto at the end of the day I have so many partnerships to handle that I don't really have the time to make the pasta my question is this is about a use case for a smaller business do you have any tips for handling that for sort of like streamlining the nurturing of these partnerships? yeah, I mean of course if you first start a business with Paul with the tomato sauce and then with Giuseppe and then find Motio with the Parmesan and mozzarella it will be much easier for you because you are going to have more partners you are going to sell more products more clients will come to you and you have a lot more revenue than initially planned so you can also hire more people when you don't need to be on your own I mean and it's good and this is good it's good to delegate things to other people to trust other people to handle what they do best thank you so anybody else? vision, vision I see you, just a moment so you said when you are targeting someone at a company don't target the HR do you have any recommendations or maybe I didn't understand it was just an example because for example that you need to find first you need to have a clear business goal for your own business it doesn't mean that if you contact the technical support HR or someone else from that particular company won't be valuable or won't be actually the right person but normally if you do small businesses or larger businesses they have their different types of departments so if you want to do something which is strictly technical you can already go maybe for actually you can go for the HR because this person could also refer you to someone else or to forward your communication and introduce you to that the right person for you which is strictly related to what you actually want to achieve because if you are I don't know what do you do or what do you have in mind right now for a business or who to contact but if you do something strictly technical it's always better to contact maybe the head of business development on that department or if you are researching something related to human resources then go for the HR so basically you will develop what you want to do exactly you just need to have your first to clear your ideas and then define your business goals and then define who is actually good for your company and then you can find the right person in their business okay thanks so is it offensive if we negotiate too much with your partner for example if things started good but my partners started putting some over conditions on me it's not offensive at all you should draw the line when it doesn't work if it's offensive for you if it's too much hassle for you if things get really difficult and you don't have the value in it or you see that it consumes too much energy for you you should be able to tell enough let's just keep making the good tone and stop the communication here I don't think it's offensive I've had to do with clients like that or partners like that at some point you just have to draw a line whether and if things are becoming difficult from the beginning or at some point and both sides can overcome them it's just better to go separate ways so we should never over negotiate well it really depends what you're looking for if you give me an example like a real life situation maybe I can give you more accurate advice because at some moments even when things get difficult that doesn't mean that you cannot overcome them it depends on how you see things because sometimes you can think that's it I'm done I can't do more I'm tired and then you keep going because you know what's your end goal and you know what you want to achieve so you don't stop here and you don't stop over negotiating or changing the terms it really really depends on each situation if you have an example that you want to discuss we can do it after if you prefer anybody else hi would it be a conflicted interest let's say let's say I launch a hosting company so you promote your company would it be a conflicted interest both it can be at some point but on the other hand it could also not be and I'll tell you why I think so and this is because depends on what you will offer like services because there are many hosting companies out there and each company offers their own type of vision of the services of their values of their passions not everyone just to give a more clear example you have cheap hosting services you have average type of prices then you have extremely extremely expensive hosting solutions and this is perfect because not everyone looks for A type B or type C there will be people that will look for your types of services and you can refer the other people that come to you and say hey I'm happy with your service but I also need this for a separate project and then you say okay go to Stamina this is the good thing about the variety of the market and that there are so many companies out there because there are services for everyone there are solutions for everyone and not everyone not everybody wants the same things then I don't know if I can answer your question yeah there okay they have one more question okay bring it hi thank you very much for your presentation I would like to ask for some statistics from Sidron how many times have you turned down by your offer to other big companies for partnership and how many times have you turned down other companies for partnership oh well I am not sure this is information that we should be revealing just because it's it's a statistic interesting statistic it happens it has happened and I'm sure you happen in the future sometimes but this is not something that I don't think that you should focus a lot on that unless it happens all the time that you get denied like when someone accepts your offer perfect if if you are denied your proposals all the time then you should start thinking of different strategy and you should start thinking of different ways to communicate things maybe and maybe to look for different type of partners to make the proposals too and just another question according to you what is the biggest mistakes people make when asking a partnership from side problem I mentioned it in one of the slides one of the things that a lot of people do is to not know what they come from and they don't have an idea what they want from us and they just say hey let's do something together I know you're a big company let's do something together and you're like what do you want to do we need to know what you exactly want from us do you want support do you want to refer your clients to us do you want to to place your for example if you have a team shop if you want to place it in our market place stuff like that this is maybe one of the biggest mistakes that people do now this is why it's also important to do your research to do your homework to have a good understanding of what that company that you're looking for has to offer as well and what kind of clients they have or what is their business values, their history it's just anything that can reveal information which will be valuable for you when you make that proposal it's it's it's this is probably one of the biggest mistakes that people do not something else the other other big mistake that I can think of maybe will be the way of communicating things because when you when you use super fancy words especially when you need to communicate when you use like a course that nobody uses and nobody understands anymore it's like it's over done it's like it's too much and people don't have time to read that because at the end you read a whole lot of sentence or email and you don't even know where's the focus so it's important to be precise to just say what exactly you want and what you can offer and what people should expect just be clear on it and answer your question okay we are out of time really sorry thank you so much