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Comment by sf4lifer | Hacker News Reader

Sounds promising. But be skeptical. Large companies will rarely risk trying something new with 5000 people. $5000 * $50 * 12 = $3M. This level of spend (on anything) will require c-level executive approval. Typically for a large enterprise anything over $250K / year needs to be negotiated with a procurement officer who will create an RFP process with your competitors to ensure the corp gets the best deal. These are professional software price negotiators, they know all the tricks.

You should ask your customer champion what the value of your solution is to them. If they can't explain to you the tangible value/ROI, they won't be able to sell it internally.

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Our understanding is that they expect to replace a few existing tools with ours, so there should be an existing budget, at least partially.

We are currently meeting with execs on the VP level, but it's still early in the relationship. They are quite aggressive on receiving at least a indicator on price.

Ok. In that case, I'd position a paid pilot for 100 users to prove out the value/ROI at some rate that's less than the cost of the existing tools. This should be within VP discretion and won't trigger a procurement process. Once the ROI is clear, then you can negotiate a larger deal. Rolling any software out for 5K people especially if it includes replacing tools is a large undertaking for a company.

You should expect it to take at least a year. There are other contracts they will have to get out of. There is data in those systems that will need to be dealt with.

If they are asking about price early in the discussions, it can be a buying signal. It indicates that someone there intends to buy and needs to know what kinds of haggling they’ll have to do internally to get it approved.

Enterprises are just a collection of people with their own personal interests. You are selling to those people, not the enterprise. Find out what the stakeholders need and address those needs one by one.

For instance, you probably have a technical buyer who may have been your first contact. Make sure you find out what they need now and what they will need in the next few years. Try to sketch out a road map that will make them exceptionally happy.

There is always a financial buyer as well - likely that person’s boss. Find out what financial objectives they are trying to meet buy replacing the other tools with yours.

At the end of the day, a deal is done when the people who need to sign off on it are all adequately satisfied. You can definitely do this and when you crack the code, it’s extremely rewarding. Good luck!

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