For any startup, rather for any company, it is important to have
large enterprises as customers because that is where you will get
good showcase logos on your customer list and also the deal sizes
will be big. There is also a lot of growth potential within the
large accounts once you make an entry. The entry into these large
accounts can be very lengthy process and will eat a lot of sales,
marketing and management bandwidth. Once you cross the entry point
and are a registered vendor with some business engagement, it will
also not be easy to navigate across all the other business units
and get more business unless you
approach the account strategically and leverage sales
intelligence.
All sales and marketing executives understand how different it is
to sell to large enterprises than to SMEs. SMEs, because of their
size, are able to take quick buying decisions and the sales cycles
are short. The deal sizes here would be relatively smaller. In
large enterprises, there are
multiple decision makers and influencers involved
in the buying process. The different perspectives like Data,
Security, Legal, IT, Finance, HR, Management, Business Units and
Procurement all are equal stakeholders in any important decision
making. If you are selling to large enterprises then
navigating through these multiple influencers
becomes very important. Any one of them can be your sponsor and at
the same time any one of them can completely jeopardize your
chances of winning the deal.
Your sales cycles are very long in these large
enterprises. You need
good connections and references to move fast and
also if you pitch your solution to address some acute need, the
decision process accelerates. For this you need good insights of
the account and the decision makers. It is not only important to
navigate strategically in these accounts but equally important to
understand the different stakeholders and your connections in the
decision making tree. That is where the account maps or
organization charts of the big enterprises are very useful.
The account maps are even more effective when you can have your
connections mapped on it. The connections like -
someone who worked with you in the past, someone who worked at
your key customer, studied in the same college - can be
effectively leveraged to communicate. Many a times you may not
have direct connection with the decision maker but your strong
connection anywhere in the organization can help you with the
useful internal insights which help you to move
further in your sales cycle. Sometimes you can leverage your
management’s or colleague’s connection to get introduced in an
account.
In addition to the connections, the account maps need to have
key insights around the
ongoing relevant projects and technologies that
the person or the BU is associated with, some indicators on
budget and some communication points about the
business or the individuals. The messaging and the contents need
to be customized. If you have an insight about some recent
relevant investment or recent talk by the CTO, then the mention of
this in the communication makes a huge difference. The emails and
calls need to be more intelligent to be more effective.
There are multiple approaches you need to take
to crack the deals in large enterprises –
leverage your senior management connections with
the decision makers, leverage your
sales team connection with insiders to get useful
information, create awareness of your solution by doing an
awareness campaign, meet the decision makers in
the events and reach out to them over emails and
calls. This reach out should not be cold calls but what we would
call as “Calls with Intelligence”. The account maps that map your
target decision making tree with your connections and that have
insights relevant to your offerings help you in all these
approaches and ensure that these different approaches are executed
with the same themes and in collaboration.
Your
sales, marketing, inside sales and management
need to collaborate and work in
synchronization to make the big deals happen. The
account maps help to have one common view of the
target account for the inside sales, marketing, inside sales and
management. That way all have the same knowledge available to
discuss and exchange notes. This ensures that no key connections
or insights are missed out by any team. The maps are also
interactive and can be leveraged to track the
movement within the account from getting connected to moving to
warm stage till the sales closure and even beyond that for account
mining.
Many a times, you get some headway into an account, but after
initial interest the authority stops responding. There could be
multiple reasons for this. There are continuous restructuring
initiatives happening in these large enterprises. The person might
have shifted to new responsibility and may not be responsible for
your interest area. How do you cross over this? You need to
find an alternate route into the decision making
path, just like you would be “re-routed” by the
Google map to take another route. The account map helps you to do
exactly the same. One or two person may stop responding to you but
that should not stop you from pursuing the account. In large
enterprises, there are multiple entry doors and
all of these you can see in the account map. Even if you get stuck
at one door, you should continue to do campaign to the other
decision maker, leverage your connections at other places and keep
trying using insights and connections till you are successful in
getting into the account.
Just like Google Map helps you to navigate and
reach faster to your destination, the Konnect Maps help you to
navigate in the large enterprises on the fastest sales track along
the decision making tree.