If you do, you have to sell to multiple stakeholders, involve many people on your team, invest a lot of time and effort to coordinate resources effectively, and make critical decisions about if this exercise will produce profitable revenue for you company. If this sounds familiar, you are an enterprise seller.
Enterprise selling can be fun, exciting, highly rewarding and fulfilling. It also comes with some serious stress and a number of dilemmas.
#1 Where do I focus my efforts?  Which target accounts or market segments will produce results.  These can be long sales cycles and you don’t want to waste a lot of time chasing the wrong prospect. How do you decide? What tools do you use to help you make logical decisions surrounding who to target?
#2 I think I got one!  What does a good opportunity look like and how do I generate interest from the right people, quickly? What variables do you consider as you decide if this opportunity is worth pursuing?
#3 Is this prospect a good fit?  How do I quickly and efficiently qualify a prospect and their key stakeholders? You don’t want to over invest with someone who is simply interested but not truly in need or lacks the ability to invest in your solution.
#4 Am I selling or offering free consulting? Enterprise Selling requires a lot of educating to help your stakeholders understand where you create value. What’s the defining line between giving them the answers and solving their problems? You need to know before they make a commitment and invest with you.
#5 How do I tell my story to the right people to keep my deal momentum? Multiple key stakeholders need to digest and buy into different parts of your solution. Finance has different success criteria than technology who will evaluate your solution differently than end users or senior executives. How do you effectively satisfy each of these audiences without overwhelming them?
#6 I won!  Now what? The best part about enterprise deals is they are typically the gift that keeps on giving. If you get your service installation to go smoothly you can cement the relationship and lay the foundation for cross-selling and upselling new solutions.
Not having the right answers to these questions can impact your results. How do you balance opportunity and risk in your world?
Need some help or contact us if you have interest in our upcoming March SES event.
 
