Teylor and Steinbeis – working together for success
The Swiss company Teylor has set itself the mission of bringing lending to small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) into the digital era by automating lending processes. To support this mission, Steinbeis became one of Teylor’s first investors. Looking back at the partnership, Teylor says, “Our success comes down to modern technology – and our collaboration with Steinbeis.”
“Steinbeis was one of Teylor’s first investors. It’s been a strategic partnership between us from the very beginning,” explains Patrick Stäuble, the founder and CEO of Teylor. The experts at Steinbeis encouraged the startup to test a number of different ways to market its products and provided access to a large pool of specialists at the Steinbeis Network.
Conquering a competitive market
One of the challenges of a digital financing platform is building and scaling up a sales organization. Many SMEs develop close relationships with their house banks, sometimes over the course of decades, making it difficult for newcomers to conquer market share. Additionally, some SME decision makers still have reservations regarding digital platforms, especially when it comes to financing issues. “As a result, success revolved around our ability to crack the SME sales code,” recounts Stäuble. Steinbeis expert Uwe Haug decided to put the company in touch with Winfried Küppers, Steinbeis Entrepreneur at the Steinbeis Consulting Center for Sales Analytics. Having recognized the potential of Teylor’s technology, Haug and his colleagues started identifying its customer groups and the key benefits of its offering:
- Quick and unbureaucratic loan applications, completely online
- No waiting time: Quotes are provided immediately
- A wide range of financing options, from unsecured corporate loans to real estate financing, machine financing, factoring, and more
- A broad network of financing partners
- Additional flexibility by financing through the Teylor Debt Fund
The findings of the Steinbeis Enterprise from Hilzingen resulted in the development of a variety of sales strategies, which were then tested in Steinbeis’ sales laboratory. Within months, Teylor was provided with information on which cold-calling strategies work best, which email texts are well received by which target group, how to use cold calls to quickly acquire new customers, and how to scale up using social media. “All of this proved successful in the long run,” says Stäuble. Jens Freiter, Steinbeis entrepreneur at the Steinbeis Consulting Center for Sales Analytics and an experienced expert for startups, is also impressed by the success of the company: “Selling loans to SMEs is never simple, because the market is extremely competitive. It’s remarkable how quickly Teylor managed to establish itself.”
Comprehensive solutions for SME finance
Aside from supplying loans to SME customers, the Swiss fintech also offers its technology to banks as a software-as-a-service solution, thus enabling banks to digitalize and automate in-house lending processes. The Teylor product portfolio also includes specialized text recognition software that can be used, for example, by tax consultants or franchisors to automatically extract financial data. In addition, the partnership with Steinbeis not only unveiled an opportunity for the company to market its products through the Steinbeis network, it also supported the enterprise sales to banks. Steinbeis helped with establishing contacts to top decision-makers, which resulted in long-term customer relationships.
The future is looking good
It has been almost three years since Teylor launched. During this time, the team has succeeded in expanding sales in the lending business by a factor of 15, and onboarded several banks as software users. Steinbeis expert Winfried Küppers attributes the company’s success also to its founder: “Patrick Stäuble listens, he delivers, and he keeps his word. It’s why Teylor has become one of Europe’s leading fintechs in such a short time. It will also conquer the European market in the area of software development.” The firm’s initial processes and structures have further developed as the company kept growing fast, but Teylor still makes use of the foundation laid with Steinbeis. As this example confirms once again: Network partnerships work, offering added value in the long term.
Contact
Patrick Stäuble (author)
Founder and CEO
Teylor AG (CH-Zürich)