Bigger deals, longer contracts, and higher payouts are hallmarks of enterprise sales, all of which make securing these buyers a common goal for brands in any industry. However, not just anyone can break into enterprise sales. It takes time, preparation, and the right strategy to succeed in this space.
For brands looking to take the next step into the enterprise realm, it’s imperative to know how this sector differs from other customer types and the strategies they’ll need to succeed. Read on to find out how your brand can close these deals so you can build an effective enterprise sales process with your team.
What Is Enterprise Sales?
Enterprise sales is the practice of selling to large organizations. Also known as complex sales, these deals tend to involve more work for sales teams to close. These organizations typically operate on a global scale with over $10 million in annual revenue and over 250 employees.
For brands looking to expand their customer base into higher value deals, enterprise sales is the next step.
Enterprise Sales vs. SMB and Mid-Market Sales
The differences in selling to enterprise vs. SMB go beyond the size of the company and the significant financial return of these deals. Your team must take a different approach when selling to enterprise organizations compared to SMB or mid-market customers.
- Longer sales cycles: Enterprise deals are much larger decisions for your buyer than deals with SMB or mid-market customers. This means enterprise deals are more complex, have more red tape, and take longer to close than those with smaller businesses.
- Higher risk: While SMB or mid-market deals may be easily recovered, the time and resources required to secure an enterprise-level client may not be recouped easily if a deal falls through.
- Different pain points: The needs of an enterprise client are different from a small business customer. Your team may need to prove your product’s ability to work at a higher scale and address more complex issues.
- More stakeholders: A small business may have one or even a handful of stakeholders. Meanwhile, enterprise sales often involve addressing the needs of a committee or a buyer group full of executives with unique individual needs and perspectives.
Although breaking into enterprise sales is a challenge, the benefits for those who succeed typically outweigh the risks. Communicating these benefits can help motivate your team and put your goals into perspective.
Benefits of Enterprise Sales
Though risky, transitioning to enterprise sales has significant benefits that can shape an organization’s future and may even be essential to its long-term success.
Some of the top benefits of enterprise sales include:
- Higher revenue
- Increased brand awareness and credibility
- Leverageable connections
- Long-term relationships
To secure these benefits for your brand, you’ll need to learn how to optimize your chances while avoiding common missteps.
4 Tips for Breaking Into Enterprise Sales
Once you’ve identified the differences and benefits of enterprise sales, you can begin to prepare your team for the challenge ahead. Keep these tips in mind before you tackle enterprise sales so you don’t make any common or costly mistakes.
Target the Right Buyers
Just because a company is enterprise-level does not mean they are the right fit for your brand. Enterprise deals take a long time and may create long-term partnerships, so you want to be sure the buyers you’re approaching match your ideal customer profile.
Take the time to develop educated customer personas that best align with your product to direct your team and create a clear path to success. Finding the right enterprise customers can lead to higher revenue per deal and long-term customer loyalty, as they will better see the true value of your product.
Establish a Clear Strategy
Before you begin your enterprise sales process, your team needs to align on how they are going to approach each interaction. From establishing common goals and expectations to dialing in on an exact methodology, your team must be on the same page to secure enterprise partnerships.
We recommend a buyer enablement strategy or a customer-focused strategy. This strategy focuses on making buying as easy as possible for customers. It can work especially well for enterprise sales, where buyers need lots of guidance to progress through the complex buying process and personalized content that addresses their specific pain points.
Prioritize Research
Information is power in enterprise sales. Taking the extra time to perform in-depth discovery can set you up for success later, especially with the increased complexity and number of stakeholders involved in enterprise sales. Consider new methods to extract the best, most accurate information possible about your buyers’ pain points and needs.
Tools like interactive video demos can automatically collect data while buyers interact with your demos on their own time, and analytics solutions like Consensus Demolytics can synthesize this information into actionable insights for your team.
Use the Right Tools
As your team starts to enter the world of enterprise sales, the work associated with each sale will increase dramatically. This makes using the right tools essential and increases the value of solutions like demo automation that reduce the burden of low-value work on your salespeople.
Using automated solutions, or even AI, to free up your team’s time allows them to better prioritize high-value tasks that move the needle on your enterprise deals.
Educate Your Team on Enterprise Sales
If you’re ready to make the move to enterprise sales, it’s important to educate yourself and your team on what’s necessary to succeed in this new space. Use helpful tips and tricks from industry experts available through our blog, webinars, and podcast to build your strategy and make your move into enterprise sales.
