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Best practices for selling software to large companies. 

  1. Outreach: 
    1. Stories: Every sales transaction between two companies is a story. When the Wall Street Journal sales rep gets an insertion order from the SFDC CMO for the right, bottom corner of the Wall Street Journal, there is a story about the SFDC and Wall Street Journal partnership. When the CIO from Disney signs an ordering document to move its cloud infrastructure over to Amazon Web Services, there is a story between Disney and Amazon that has to be told. Sales has to tell that story well. Whatever company I am selling, I have to do my research and tell the story of our two companies working together. That is more important than the product spec. 
    2. Broad Outreach: Enterprises are simply big companies. The role of sales is to get exposure to every division the software will make an impact. Typically, that includes business users, IT users, vendor management, and procurement. While it is possible to get software deals across the line just selling to one division, its important to get exposure in other divisions and fully understand the account.
    3. Communication: My customers need to know that my job is to sell every… single… day… Nobody at a company can keep me from calling on other divisions of the company. Its my job. If that tone is set from the beginning, there will be a healthier long-term relationship. `
  2. First Meeting
    1. The first meeting for my software has to be set up with the right expectations. I typically ask three questions via email that will get to the heart of what my client is trying to do before we meet. This helps the customer better understand what we’re trying to do, and me to get the right information about the customer. 
    2. Hypothesis-based selling: The stronger the hypothesis, the stronger the discovery. 
    3. Every meeting is either a functional meeting or an executive meeting or sometimes both. 
      • Functional meeting: Focus is demos and functions. 
      • Executive meeting: Is only about vision and benefits. There should be no discussion of functions and features.
      • For both, there has to be an executive vision. 
  3. Enterprise Playbook Checklist
    • Solution Evaluation
    • Discovery Sessions
    • Demo
    • Executive Alignment and Introduction
    • Implementation Partner Introduction and Selection
    • Migration and Integration requirements
    • Initial Pricing
    • ROI Review
    • Commercial agreement from business
    • Cloud Services Agreement
    • Review of terms and conditions from ordering document
    • Confirmation of final signer
    • Confirmation of purchase order issue including address
    • Timing alignment for purchase order and signature
  4. Pricing Strategy. 
    1. Don’t let business users act as procurement. 
    2. Customer give first number
    3. There is always more budget. 
    4. Keep high budget and add more products or services rather than lowering the price.
  5. Procurement
    1. Pound of flesh. 
    2. Contract Length, price, termination clauses, services like technical support/consulting, price holds, access to new products, payment terms (quarterly, annually, net30), 
  6. Getting set up as a vendor
    1. Process is very long. The deal is never done until there is a signature. Always hold more back that you can give later. 
    2. Whatever term you gave before, expect to give more to the last procurement person.