Had a discussion with an freshly hatched enterprise startup the other day, a self acknowledged newbie we got to discussing the process of selling into the enterprise.
Another thing I am grateful to Hewlett-Packard for is their insistence all sales reps undertake training with Strategic Sales Training with Miller Heiman who are arguably the long established experts in the methods of selling into the Enterprise.
Might be a bit old school for the many new age growth hacked, A/B split tested, recurring billing payment gateway SAAS companies but I promise you if you are selling a product used by enterprises, no amount of growth hacking is going to help you unless you understand these concepts.
You may work out a way to bypass some of the players as Atlassian has, but to do this you need to understand the basic concepts.
So here is an outline of the key issues. If Enterprise is your thing go buy Miller Heimans books or do one of their courses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISHuR20G330
You can buy their updated books on Amazon here.
When you are selling into the enterprise it’s important to select your prospects carefully, the reality is to do this properly you can only have a handful of active sales prospects at once.
It’s important to understand that an enterprise sale is actually 3-10 separate sales processes, they just happen to be in the one company and affect different parts of the decision making process.
The biggest single objective of the key influencers in the prospect company is to keep their very highly paid jobs and maintain their power in the organisation. Anything that poses a threat to this has some work to do.
I can’t do justice to the entire process here, for that you will need to do one of their courses but here is a summary of the key points and issues of the Enterprise Sales process.
Essentially a sales rep needs to complete a separate Blue Sheet for a sales opportunity in a prospect or customer. The bluesheet (pictured above) helps you quantify the account and requires you to;
All of this explains why you need to take them on Rugby and Soccer World Cup trips and get them into the box at the Swans for at least 12 months before you close a deal.
You may think that in this day and age of online sign ups you don’t have to do this anymore.
But unless your product can be purchased on a department credit card without any approvals from the division head or the product is insignificant in the company then you will absolutely need to work through this process or work out a sales method and pricing strategy where a single manager can make a decision without the approvals.
Thanks to Miller Heiman for the fantastic training some 20 years ago (it’s stuck with me) and for the use of your Blue Sheet
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