How do you win business with the enterprise organizations, serve them effectively, and expand the relationship over time?
These business objectives sound simple enough, but they present unique opportunities and unique challenges. To begin with, enterprise sales cycles are longer and more complex than other sales cycles. Buyer networks within these companies are far more complicated, presenting a much wider array of organizational functions in the organization’s decision tree than networks at smaller companies.
Enterprise clients demand deep preparation and a thorough understanding of their business. While research is critical, just doing the right research is nowhere near enough. You must position your solutions and offerings properly, based on a deep understanding of a client’s business, market, culture, and customer base. Having a clear picture of those key elements allows you to align your product/service to the needs of the client organization and all of its relevant stakeholders.
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The kind of alignment that wins enterprise clients has it's roots in business value. It’s not about features or benefits. It’s about clearly proving compelling value uniquely connected to specific client needs through a strong business case.
A strong collaboration between your sales and delivery organizations – all the “back office” groups who touch the client – is fundamental to winning enterprise business. The buyers in this space are sophisticated, and the opportunities are demanding. If professionalism and sound teaming are not immediately evident in the way you present yourselves and your offering to the client, you will not have a chance.
As if all that weren’t daunting enough, competitively pursuing enterprise accounts – to say nothing of winning, growing, and keeping them. – represents a significant investment of the selling company’s human, financial, management, and logistical resources. In order to justify those investments, multiple parts of the selling organization must work together. All of the pieces of the puzzle must come together. The business value of the proposed solutions you identify, develop, and implement must be unassailable. The support you provide to the client, both before and after the deal is won, must be seamless because your competition is likely to be sophisticated, strategically focused, and relentless. This selling process, in short, demands the best from each and every member of the selling organization who takes part in its execution.
To learn more about selling the Sandler Enterprise Selling, contact one of our coaches at 770-475-2799.
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