Well the only successful strategy is to have a pitch that solves some sort of pain point that they are already having.
One of the hardest things to do is pitch something where the potential partner doesn't see a problem. And by 'a problem' here I mean 'is causing pain at the moment.'
You can tell a company until you are blue in the face that you will get them more leads, cut their operational costs, or streamline the experience the customers have when they deal with them. But unless the company 'doesn't have enough leads', 'has a problem with current operational costs', or 'has customers complaining about their interaction', all you will get is a thank you for sharing and nary a call back.
The fact is that the larger a business is, the more averse to changing they are. The reasoning is pretty simple, most larger businesses both don't know all of the variables that are going into their costs and customer experience, and they know they don't know all of the variables. Thus, if the system they are using is working for them (for their definition of working, not yours) then they won't change it. All they see is downside (change makes things worse), and little upside.
The only successful strategy that I have seen work with these folks is to find a way they can somehow canary your product with their own real data but without changing anything they currently have. That may take some extraordinary steps on your part to set up a completely parallel chain, but the payoff is that you can tell your future partner/customer, using their own data, how your change will help them and not hurt their existing system.
One of the hardest things to do is pitch something where the potential partner doesn't see a problem. And by 'a problem' here I mean 'is causing pain at the moment.'
You can tell a company until you are blue in the face that you will get them more leads, cut their operational costs, or streamline the experience the customers have when they deal with them. But unless the company 'doesn't have enough leads', 'has a problem with current operational costs', or 'has customers complaining about their interaction', all you will get is a thank you for sharing and nary a call back.
The fact is that the larger a business is, the more averse to changing they are. The reasoning is pretty simple, most larger businesses both don't know all of the variables that are going into their costs and customer experience, and they know they don't know all of the variables. Thus, if the system they are using is working for them (for their definition of working, not yours) then they won't change it. All they see is downside (change makes things worse), and little upside.
The only successful strategy that I have seen work with these folks is to find a way they can somehow canary your product with their own real data but without changing anything they currently have. That may take some extraordinary steps on your part to set up a completely parallel chain, but the payoff is that you can tell your future partner/customer, using their own data, how your change will help them and not hurt their existing system.