In enterprise sales, every minute counts. With B2B buyers only spending 17% of the buying process meeting with potential vendors, your team needs the right strategy in place to maximize the value of your interactions and optimize their chances of winning the deal.
Enterprise buyers are looking for partners they can work with long-term, which adds scrutiny and raises expectations during their buying process. Navigate this challenging landscape by building a strategy that meets buyers’ needs, improves your efficiency, and empowers your team.
The Value of an Effective Enterprise Sales Strategy
Selling to enterprise clients goes beyond just establishing a basic sales process. By arming your team with an effective strategy, you can accelerate your business and tap into the following advantages:
- Improved scalability: Streamline your workflows, improve your efficiency, and empower your team as you transition into the enterprise sales space.
- Increased revenue: Close high-value deals with enterprise buyers who are willing to put a significant amount of resources behind a product they believe best suits their needs.
- Enhanced authority: Create a sense of trust within your target buyer group through an effective enterprise sales strategy. By proving your expertise and professionalism, you will improve your overall likelihood of success.
- Reduced churn rates: Impress enterprise clients with your sales strategy and they’ll be more inclined to sign long-term contracts, reducing your overall churn rate and improving your team’s performance metrics.
- Expanded buyer networks: Access the business networks of your new clients through word-of-mouth recommendations and social proof, using the results of your strategy to generate further sales.
Once you understand the value of an effective strategy, you can begin to build your own using tactics that empower your team and enhance their enterprise sales performance.
Building Your Enterprise Sales Strategy
Preparing for the intricacies of enterprise sales will boost your chances of closing deals and improve the overall ease of your sales process. Use these tactics when constructing your enterprise sales strategy.
1. Identify and Leverage Internal Enterprise Champions
While it’s important to address the needs of everyone in an enterprise buyer group, selling to enterprise clients can involve working with six to 10 different buyers at once. Finding and targeting those members who are most interested in your product can accelerate the success of your enterprise sales strategy.
By winning over these buyers, your team can create champions on the inside who will make a case on your behalf when their team compares your product to competitors’. These champions can act as allies when convincing top enterprise decision-makers who will ultimately make the final purchasing decision. Properly leveraging internal champions can help improve your chances of success, secure long-term enterprise contracts, and develop your client relationship as well.
2. Adapt to Busy Schedules
With any sales strategy, but especially in enterprise sales, time is money. Enterprise clients are often busy and must prioritize their schedules, making it difficult for your sales team to schedule one-on-one demos.
This is why investing in automated solutions like demo automation and AI is so essential when attempting to scale your business into enterprise sales. Demo automation solutions like Consensus allow enterprise clients to view engaging sales content at any time, without the need for a sales representative — offering flexibility and buyer enablement to potential buyers.
Clients can use these tools to reach conclusions on their own, rather than taking up your team’s time asking common questions, and feel more secure in their decision. With the help of Consensus demo automation, enterprise deals close twice as often, 30% faster, and end in 50% bigger contracts — meaning less work for more reward for your sales team.
3. Understand the Difference in Enterprise Pain Points
Research is essential to enterprise sales, and one of your team’s top priorities should be to identify the unique pain points of an enterprise organization. Unlike small-to-medium businesses who may prioritize a few employees’ needs, enterprise buyers have to consider the needs of hundreds or even thousands of people.
Not only does your product have to align with large-scale internal expectations, but it also has to do so for years to come, as enterprise buyers are often looking for long-term partners. Your team’s ability to proactively identify enterprise clients’ unique pain points and demonstrate your product’s ability to resolve them is central to securing a long-term relationship with buyers.
4. Set Clear and Realistic Enterprise Sales Goals
To succeed in enterprise sales, your team needs to enter the sales process on the same page. You probably won’t land a Forbes 100 list client right off the bat, so setting such a lofty initial expectation could set your team up for failure. Aligning with your team on goals regarding deal size, target audience, and sales KPIs can improve your chances of winning over big-name clients through a coordinated effort.
Choosing the right KPIs to measure is also valuable for maintaining a successful strategy. Consider options like:
- Annual contract value
- Win rate
- Average sales cycle length
- Net revenue retention rate
These metrics will help you identify your team’s ability to quickly and effectively close deals, win over large enterprise contacts, and maintain long-term relationships with these valuable clients.
Refine Your Enterprise Sales Strategy
Taking your sales operation to the next level requires careful planning. Using insights from industry experts can help you get a leg up on the competition as you scale into enterprise sales efforts. Uncover the secrets to enterprise sales success by checking out our blog, research, and webinars.
