Question
How does a startup handle enterprise sales?
Answer
1. It's slow: the sales cycle can be 12-18 months even if the amounts are not in the millions. Make sure you have cash reserves to stay in the game.
2. It's a shifting situation. Re-orgs and new assignments can scuttle months of work cultivating a champion. Hedge by going broad, not deep, cultivate influence at multiple locations through both direct relationships and tools like talks, webinars, white papers.
3. It's competitive. You will be up against more than your actual competition. You'll face local home brewers and get impacted by unrelated internal competitions for power. The sale you're trying to make will become a pawn.
4. Don't think that offering a freemium version and getting a couple of individual adopters changes the game significantly. http://www.informationweek.com/t...
5. Read Geoff Moore's Dealing with Darwin, focusing on the 'Complex Systems' side, not the 'Volume' side.
6. I have become skeptical of lean startup ideas as a panacea, but the parts that work, work better for enterprise than consumer. Read/adopt selectively from Blank's book. One really valuable point is that experienced and expensive enterprise sales types are a waste of time until you figure out a sales roadmap. People with the skills to do that are often not the obviously successful ones. They tend to be special forces, not regular army.
7. Learn to navigate arbitrariness: review processes may kick in for POs above a given amount, requiring higher levels of approval. Stay under until you're ready.
8. Learn the company intimately and play it like a chess game. If the Texas office is known for being more risk-taking than the larger New York office, open with your Texas pawn. If they need a problem fixed urgently, and you can do so easily even if it is unrelated to what you're selling, fix it for free or real cheap. You won learn these things until you buy a few drinks for insiders and learn some gossip. So get an NDAed conversation going as early as possible.
2. It's a shifting situation. Re-orgs and new assignments can scuttle months of work cultivating a champion. Hedge by going broad, not deep, cultivate influence at multiple locations through both direct relationships and tools like talks, webinars, white papers.
3. It's competitive. You will be up against more than your actual competition. You'll face local home brewers and get impacted by unrelated internal competitions for power. The sale you're trying to make will become a pawn.
4. Don't think that offering a freemium version and getting a couple of individual adopters changes the game significantly. http://www.informationweek.com/t...
5. Read Geoff Moore's Dealing with Darwin, focusing on the 'Complex Systems' side, not the 'Volume' side.
6. I have become skeptical of lean startup ideas as a panacea, but the parts that work, work better for enterprise than consumer. Read/adopt selectively from Blank's book. One really valuable point is that experienced and expensive enterprise sales types are a waste of time until you figure out a sales roadmap. People with the skills to do that are often not the obviously successful ones. They tend to be special forces, not regular army.
7. Learn to navigate arbitrariness: review processes may kick in for POs above a given amount, requiring higher levels of approval. Stay under until you're ready.
8. Learn the company intimately and play it like a chess game. If the Texas office is known for being more risk-taking than the larger New York office, open with your Texas pawn. If they need a problem fixed urgently, and you can do so easily even if it is unrelated to what you're selling, fix it for free or real cheap. You won learn these things until you buy a few drinks for insiders and learn some gossip. So get an NDAed conversation going as early as possible.