Enterprise Selling
Enterprise Selling means helping to facilitate what are usually complex transactions across a large corporation that may be multi-national.
While there are definite guidelines for some best practices around enterprise selling, there is no such things as an effective prescriptive approach that can easily be repeated. Such efforts may provide you with some level of results but not with the best results.
Enterprise selling requires a combination of sector, technical, interpersonal and sales skills that cascades across an entire team but has one central focus - The Client.
This does not mean one person, but everyone that influences the sales cycle and who has vested stake in the successful addressing of specific issues. The implication of these statements is that many organizations attempting to sell on an enterprise level may have some success, but when they try to institutionalize their approach, by default, they limit the degree of success they can have.
First, they understood that their needs to be a strong focus on what is important to the client at specific points in the sales cycle. For example, at the beginning of the sale cycle, its critical to understand the client’s issues and the implications. To gather that information may require a variety of actions but without it, it is extremely difficult to create a compelling value proposition that is differentiated.
Second, organizations make decision very differently. For example, in the services sector a hierarchical organization makes decision quite differently that a Partner-led organization. So, when selling to either of them, or of they are the sellers, very different approaches need to be taken. Anyone who thinks they are going to sell the “big deal” straightaway to a large partner-led and relatively risk averse organization is not reading the tea leaves well. There are lots of steps to getting there which may require significant proof steps in the process.
Third, there usually needs to be multiple point of contact and reinforcement which could be across many relationships and countries. All of this needs to be choreographed in such a way that there are specific objectives of the account team members that helps accomplish certain things depending upon where you are in the sales cycle. There diversity of what might be required is so vast there is no way a sales “methodology” can capture it all.
Finally, the account team must understand who the external influencers might be and if there are any competitive influences at play. We have seen many clients invest heavily in chasing a particular deal only to find out at the 11th hour they had little chance of winning because they were ineffective in determining the competitive landscape.
If you have an enterprise deal you would like to discuss for no obligation feel free to reach out and let us know using the form below. We would be happy to speak with you.
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