Get the sales team on your side: How BotSupply and Oracle approach new customers

A partnership with the Copenhagen-based scale-up BotSupply has become a proof of collaboration for Oracle. It all comes down to the strength of the shared customer meeting. Here, BotSupply’s Asser Smidt singles out what makes the co-lab work.

Don’t underestimate the power of buy-in from the sales guys
It is often mentioned that sustainable startup co-labs require buy-in from top management. While the BotSupply + Oracle case does not go against this truth, it demonstrates how beneficial it can be to connect with the sales level of a large organization. BotSupply founder Asser Smidt not only spent time developing the relation with Lars Vestergaard, Oracle’s Head of Market Connect, when they started working together in 2017. He also reached out to people working with sales across Oracle’s global organization. His wave of personal LinkedIn invites had some authority, since BotSupply had enlisted in Oracle’s accelerator program. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

“Oracle’s sales force understand our conversational bots, because it extends what they are already offering their customers. My best advice to scale-ups exploring industry partners is that you look for these connections between your individual suites of products,” says Asser Smidt.

These days he has 40–50 Oracle team members engaged in selling BotSupply’s products, a significant ramp up of the young company’s manpower (they are a core staff of 18).

Brand recognition and an internal reckoning
Within the past few months BotSupply has expanded into Norway and Finland. Markets made accessible because of Oracle’s sales push and the reputation of the brand. Aside from making it easier for BotSupply to get the first customer meeting, Oracle has also made BotSupply’s DNA more visible.

“We are a design-driven company, whereas Oracle has a strong track record of protecting and handling data. For many new customers it is comforting that we use their cloud infrastructure. Our partnership has been timed with our attention to the data safety aspect of bots, and it has replaced the need for us to build an infrastructure of our own,” says Asser Smidt.

His ongoing challenge? Balancing BotSupply’s design focus with a product wrapping and a pricing structure that fits Oracle’s sales funnel.

“We have proven that we can land customers together. Now we need to continue to develop the process on new markets.”

This blog was based on a live conversation at Pier47 with BotSupply and Oracle.