How to simplify enterprise sales
Techniques to avoid lengthy sales cycles
Getting into enterprise sales has always been alluring for early-stage startups because of the potential to juice revenue with massive deal sizes and the social proof that comes from having Fortune 500 logos on your homepage. It’s a buzz when you get your first enterprise inbound lead and an even bigger rush when you close your first enterprise deal. It all seems so easy at first.
But as you get into it the reality looks very different. You run into legions of stakeholders who aren’t aligned so nobody wants to step up and make the buying decision. You run into incumbent vendors who have customized the heck out of their product and locked your prospects into long term contracts. You run into legal departments who don’t understand what you’re selling, procurement departments seeking their pound of flesh and security teams with questions that never end. It all becomes a huge distraction and drains your resources.
Here are 6 techniques to simplify your enterprise sales:
Find the early adopter groups
Be super-specific about what problem you solve
Don’t try to replace legacy systems
Fly under the approval radar
Simplify your paperwork
Cap your sales cycle