Selling Software To Large Businesses
training.kalzumeus.com
training.kalzumeus.com
Isn't this a line from "Shit My Dad Says"? https://twitter.com/shitmydadsays/status/4811790555
Maybe all fathers say the same thing.
More to the point, we're not afraid of BFEs because they may be "out of our league" and say no; if they said no right away we'd be fine.
We're afraid of BFEs because we fear they will absorb all of our time in endless email conversations, nitpicking, forms-filling, PDF-generating, phone calls, meetings, and eventually say no -- or even if this results in a sale it may not be worth it.
I'm not saying this is true -- I'm just trying to describe the fear. The OP clearly addresses most of those points by the way.
These are the clients who, when you ask them for written content for their website, give you a scan of their competitor's brochure with the name crossed out and replaced with that of their own business. (This actually happened to an officemate of mine today.)
FWIW, I think the fear of selling to large companies is of embarrassing ourselves in comparison to larger and more experienced operations who have an SLA template, dedicated tender writers, etc.
With the super-Enterprisey corps, you can even fail horribly to sell one branch/office/department, then turn around and strike a huge deal with some other branch/office/department of the same company.
We hired a dedicated sales person recently and his ability to close far surpasses ours... really it's just a matter of him digging in and getting to the right person (basically what this article says).
I am not saying that this is all solved - but a large chunk of the process patio11 described is explicitly "blipped over" for new services into central UK Government.
There are some rays of hope - I will let you know !
(OMG - GCloud 4 is open - if you are a UK software company then I urge you to join if you can.)
(1) https://www.gov.uk/service-manual (2) http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/about/ (3) http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/08/22/how-hard-can-it-be...
Well it's simple for now - have not waxed through the 16 docs they provide for G-Cloud (and the Agile consultancy has already finished - yes a preferred supplier list for agile development)
Also, I had a look at AR's home page, and was surprised by how much text there is. I have to assume that you've tested that and it works.
A general school of thought is that light landing pages work better for getting a simple commitment like an email address, while longer pages with lots of sales copy are better for getting e.g. credit card orders (look at how long an Amazon page is).
This seems like a hybrid model, where the main focus is getting you to do the demo, but the sales copy is there (for Google and customers). IIRC Patrick recently redesigned this page; I believe he wrote about it in a recent email.
I totally am totally used to think like a human (ref : Twenty times as much, you ask? No, transitioning from "pocket lint" to pennies. Stop thinking like a human.)
That said, do you think of your large corporation customers reading this article? I'd be afraid that they would think like human and may feel ripped off, even though they made the right choice when comparing with the other options.
Seriously, not only does that work, there are companies which will send the quote back and ask you to requote them with a maintenance contract if you don't do it the first time.
(And yep, 20% is indeed quite standard at many places.)
And if it's separate, in what sense does enterprise purchasing use "maintenance"? Software updates?
AR quotes maintenance purely as "We promise this product will be under active development for the duration of your maintenance contract. We might decide to do that independently of this contract, but if you want a legally enforceable promise which you can quote to other stakeholders, that costs $PRICE."
90% of the time, they don't. It's a checklist item. They don't care if it ever gets used.
My last project was heavily reliant on a particular feature in a game development framework. We were more than 1 million into development when they announced they were discontinuing the feature. We had a service contract, but not a maintenance contract. They basically told us at that time that all those bugs we had filed over the last 6 months? Here's the code, fix them yourself. We pivoted as hard as we could, but it was too late and we had spent too much money. The end result is my company canceled the project and laid off my entire studio.
At which point, the purchasees will be going through some official channels to get at your service...
- Expect to be audited both security wise and financially. - The larger the organization, the longer the process. (Although smaller clients can be just as dysfunctional.) - Track everything; email, phone call, meeting, etc. It will save your ass in a dispute and may provide valuable metrics. - The customer isn't always right, but they still are the customer. - You will have to fire customers or crank prices up so the pain isn't so bad.
What exactly are "auditing capabilities"? Is it business-speak for log files?
Of course, "auditing" as I described it is not just a button to be clicked on a GUI - it requires the user to know what stuff he is auditing in first place.
i loved reading that.
Honestly, I don't know about this. This might work if you have a super-duper revolutionary product that nobody in the industry has, or you have some insane reputation(college/work whatever).
Disclaimer: I've not done buying/selling at enterprise levels - just watched a few others do it.
Good ideas, my only fear is not remembering this case when the need arrives.
"Please feel free to CC your technical team so we can make sure we're all on the same page regarding [technical requirements X, Y, and Z]."
Or something to that effect.
If the purchasing agent is feeling over-their-head technically, they might jump at the chance to involve someone who actually understands the requirements.
Disclaimer: I don't do SaaS, but I've been involved in a few enterprise sales in the capacity of "sales engineer".
That's good stuff. Worth the price of admission, by itself - and something I'll be filing away in my "bag of useful ideas and thoughts".
1) If you want to sell to enterprises, build your product for enterprises.
This means that you must be able to document systems and processes that lead to high reliability and security. Every aspect of the product must be managable by more than one person, in case someone goes on vacation or is fired (prominent enterprise services that fail this: Twitter and YouTube). You must be able to distinguish between "users", who just use the product to do their job, and "administrators", who manage the product for the enterprise. (Don't send "upgrade now" emails to users!) You must support--or be able to support--browser and OS versions that are a few steps behind what consumers are using. If it's client software, you must work on Windows. Etc.
2) Put your answers in email. Don't bother with attachments unless it's to print or sign.
I can't tell you how many emails I get from salesfolks with Word documents or PDFs attached to answer my questions. Just answer my questions, please, and do it in the body of the email so I can easily read and forward. Your product sheet might have the answer, but I don't want to dig for it. The sales process can be a competitive advantage, but only if you actually act like you're a person I'm conversing with, not a brochure-forwarding bot.
3) Don't jerk me around on pricing.
If you publish a low-dollar tier or tiers on your site, let me take one of those levels even if I'm a big enterprise. Here I disagree with Patrick--enterprises ARE cost conscious. Managers are charged with buying what they need. If it MUST be expensive, that might be ok. What's not ok is spending a penny more than necessary. If I see a 50-foozle price on your website of $500/month, and you tell me I need to pay $5,000/month for 50 foozles just because I'm enterprise--see ya. Just because big businesses are rich, it does not make them saps.
4) "No" is rarely permanent.
If I tell a telemarketer at my home not to call me back, and they call me back, I am pissed. But if I tell an enterprise salesperson I'm not interested right now, or I only want the low website-advertised price, it's ok to call me back later to see if I changed my mind. There are a lot of brains in a big enterprise, which means mindsets and needs can actually change pretty fast. That said--respect a timeline you're given. If I say don't bother calling for 6 months, then don't call me next month (5 would probably be fine though). Be attentive but not pushy.
5) Don't try to go around me
If I tell you I'm the person you should be talking to, that still means that I will need to get clearance to spend. Don't try to find the "decision maker" above me. I'm not lying to you--I am the person who is responsible for managing the sales process for the actual decision maker, because the decision maker just wants to make decisions, not read 2,000 word emails from 5 different prospects. I know the decision maker better than you do. Going around me is just going to make me tell them that you are an unreliable loose cannon, and they will believe me, not you.
6) I have assymmetric expectations about communications; unfair, but that's life.
If you send me an email, it might be a week before you hear back. Feel free to politely follow up. I probably feel a little guilty about it, but sales guys are easily pushed down the priority list. But--if I send you an email, I expect an answer very fast. Meeting that expectation can be a competitive advantage. As Patrick says, a perception of responsiveness can beat a perception of size. I have often picked smaller companies over big ones because they answered every email and phone call right away.
Where can I find this?
Seriously though, Patrick, you take an isolated episode and then extrapolate it into an assertive definitive business "theory". This is the good old armchair athletics. You appear to routinely do this and I personally find it seriously off-putting.
From the cultish following that developed (in the absence of many alternatives), he picked up some consulting work and commenced further pinching and explaining of his efforts.
Then, from that consulting to more self-pinching following some success with winning enterprise clients. And again, sharing what he personally learnt.
Yes, the jump from "guys, consulting is awesome!" to "no wait, consulting has its issues, wait until I tell you about enterprise sales!" was bemusing to me, but it's a discovery anyone following along saw happen to a real-world person. Some of the writing style (NDA, etc) can be dorky/annoying, but if you remember that this is a kid in a candy shop documenting the wonders of their personal experience, maybe that will help you appreciate it.
This isn't his business theory but a series of relatable experiences enough people value to upvote any time he shares more.
I've been learning about sales over the past six months and I've found that the best teachers are people who used to be engineers (like myself) but now do sales. They understand how my brain works.
Patrick's advice in this article may not have been "new", but I found it fantastically useful.
As someone who learned Enterprise sales in the last 3 years, his advice is spot on. Why not contribute to the discussion and refute his claims? You make it sound as if you know something (i.e. something that's putting you off) that he didn't articulate.
Didn't you read the bit he talks about selling AR to a hospital?
It might be a little foolish and leaving money on the table but I just think more and more code is better than more and more marketing. Software should eat the world, and as fast as possible.
And what if it doesn't?
but I just think more and more code is better than more and more marketing
Ideally you want code AND marketing, and - better yet - you want them working in concert with each other. Marketing isn't something evil, ya know... it's the means to finding out what customers want, and then letting them know that you've built a thing that they will want, so you can sell it to them (or so they can buy it, if you like that terminology better).
Quality marketing is a lot more than just shady web-advertising tricks (pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials, link-spam, content farms, etc.), annoying TV ads, cheesy radio spots, spam emails, etc. Those are all just tactics which a given firm may choose to use or not use.