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.