I remember the day I started my first graduate job in the financial industry in London. It was a pretty good place to be in, or as one person on the initial training would say: ‘You should be proud you are here today.’ Those words did make me feel a bit special for a few moments. Then back to work…

Outside of work I had started to think about entrepreneurship and was already going through a list of books related to the topic. I was also inspired by my father’s work with small companies, as he has been an entrepreneur and a small business owner for the past 25 years.

I love speaking with him about his companies and during one of those conversations we discussed the challenges he was facing with one of his ventures. It was related to the difficulties of finding suppliers and buyers.

He had spent hours searching on Google, going through online directories and contacting companies on them, as well as a serious budget on SEO & digital marketing, but the results were not coming. The only deals he had made with this venture were established through a personal connection from his network.

We were thinking that there has to be a better way. How amazing would it be to just go on one place, search for the type of product/service that you want, and you’re able to contact the right people in that company straightaway?

This is where the idea of Enterprise League was born!

Our vision is to bring all small and medium sized companies who want to grow and expand their business into one platform. The sole goal is to facilitate their search for the right business partners and speed it up from weeks and months, to simply minutes. We want to make these benefits available to all companies, which is why the platform is completely free.

So what does Enterprise League actually solve?

      Lower the barrier of entry to a market
There are thousands of companies operating extremely well in their market (this can be a specific location or a product), but they are afraid to expand to a different market because of the insecurities it brings.

Finding the right partners when entering the market in a new country can be incredibly challenging, and despite how good your products or services are, you will struggle if you fail to make the right partnerships.

      Find new suppliers
Most established companies already have partnerships with their suppliers. But things in business change and in order to grow you need to add new products or scale on the current ones. The current supplier might not always be able to meet these demands. On another hand, some companies would definitely benefit from decreasing their costs, so finding a cheaper supplier would be a viable option for them.

      Get new leads & Diversify your client base
There are a lot of ways to generate leads for companies who sell directly to end users. But the situation is slightly different between companies as it is impossible to target a company working in a specific sector with most types of ads. Ideally companies would search for the products & services they need, and can let the other firms know what they’re looking for.

Also, many businesses get the majority of their revenue from a small number of  clients, which creates a risky dependency. Generating more clients is an important step to diversify the revenue streams.

      Share Knowledge & Collaborate with other companies
A company in the UK could be going through exactly the same problems that a company in Australia in the same sector overcame just a few weeks ago. If the two companies aren’t competitors, they can both have amazing benefits from sharing experience and knowledge!

How does it actually work?

      Create a profile of your company
First things first; you will need to setup your company’s profile to be as detailed as possible. Think of it as a mini website dedicated just for your B2B partners. Location/s, what you offer, what you’re looking for.
All these information need to be as detailed as possible in order for our search engine to give the relevant information to the firms who will be looking to find you. You also want to avoid being contacted by irrelevant companies, make sure to be as clear as possible about it in your profile.

      Search for companies who match your criteria

All the information entered in the company profile is relevant for searching. If a company is looking for specific information, our search engine will look through all companies relevant to the query, and return them as the result. You want your company to appear first out of 100 results who match the same way? Be more active, and the algorithm will reward you. The most active companies are given priority in the results display.

      Publish what you offer
You don’t have time to browse through all the companies who might be interested in what you offer? Don’t worry! You can simply post a special post we call – Tender, mention what you’re offering or what you need, and let other companies contact you. Tenders are designed to stand out from the usual posts and help companies make business deals faster than ever!

      Contact companies & speak directly with the decision maker
If you’ve decided you want to go ahead and contact one of the companies you’re interested in discussing business with, just send them a connection request and mention how you envision your business partnership. If they’re interested, they will accept and you can start speaking directly with the decision makers!

      Arrange the terms & close the deal
After getting to know the other company, and discuss the terms of the potential deal it’s time to make a call. Ask for all the information important to you in order to make a well-informed decision.

Finally, I want to mention something that I’ve been told I don’t emphasize enough. Enterprise League is completely free, and always will be. 

I’d be really happy to hear your thoughts about Enterprise League, as well as any constructive feedback or ideas you might have thought of while reading this article. If you like the concept and you believe it can be useful please do share it with your network.

You can register your interest on enterpriseleague.com or contact me directly – atanas@enterpriseleague.com

Thanks for taking the time to read and wish you a wonderful day!