
Enterprise Sales Guide: The Process of Selling Enterprise Software Demystified - mickeygraham
http://www.enterprisesales.nyc/
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parasubvert
I'm in technical presales and have been in and out for about 10 years. It's a
very rewarding career, if you like socializing and are particularly interested
in tying your individual/team efforts with your pay (vs. the RSU/option
lottery).

These are all good articles, though I'd particularly point to the a16z
articles and Ben Horowitz' book "The Hard thing about Hard Things" for an
appreciation of what sales brings to a company that needs enterprise
customers.

Also, sales can be learned by anyone. Some of the best sales people I know
(earning $400k most years to upwards of $1m in a year if they hit a home run)
are deeply technical.

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johnward
As someone on the implementation side I have a sour taste for Sales and Sales
Engineers. Always selling features we do not have or things we cannot do. Then
they mock it up and leave and I have to break the news to the customer.

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otoburb
You may wish to consider your sour taste to be less targeted at Sales and SEs
and more around (broken) company-wide processes and (lack of) clout the
implementation teams wield.

I'm also on the implementation side (sometimes referred to as professional
services), and two immediate thoughts jump to mind:

1) Unless you're a practice manager directly responsible for maintaining a
targeted book-to-bill ratio or other quota metric (which usually entails
account and long-term customer relationship management), your management
should _not_ be throwing you under the bus and exposing you to break that news
to the customer. Nothing destroys a booking pipeline faster than customers
with mismanaged expectations.

2) This type of behaviour from Sales teams is usually indicative of misaligned
incentives. A concrete example of this type of situation could be company in
an early "hyper-growth" phase where they only comp on new bookings, and don't
comp Sales on contract renewals.

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johnward
Is it common for managers to actually get involved in projects in other
organizations?

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otoburb
I had a long response written out but my browser barfed. Short answer is
"yes". Longer answer is "it depends" on the size of the budget/deal, the
business function that the manager fulfills, and the size of your organization
as a whole:

* Business function: If you're customer facing, most [project|practice|field|support]managers should be sticking their nose into day-to-day projects, especially when a bad message needs to be delivered (e.g. the product we sold you will fall short of your expectations). This is not only because the customer will be incensed, but because there may also be commercial repercussions (e.g. SLA penalties) that you may not be aware of in umbrella master [service|support|license] agreements.

* Deal/budget size: Typically, the larger a manager's deal or budget, the more headcount they have. And the more headcount on a project|team|division, the more intermediate managers there will be to layer the manager in question. Hence, if the deal size is rather large, in most cases managers will _not_ get involved on a day-to-day basis, but should be available for escalations (presuming an account management role for larger deal sizes). If the deal size is usually smaller, more than likely the manager will be more involved (e.g. as a project manager).

* Org size: BDC - not usually. Startup - usually yes.

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ar0
Working in an enterprise and having bought enterprise software, my suggestion
to the sales staff would be: Learn to say "no"!

If we send you twenty pages of requirements, we do _not_ expect your product
to cover each and every one of them (especially not those labeled as "nice to
have", and also not those that were inserted just to please some internal egos
and will be ignored in the decision-making altogether... although I grant you
that this will be hard to judge from the outside). Nevertheless, I have
experienced time and time again that sales agents waste 45 minutes of their
two hour presentation to try to explain some clumsy workaround for something
their software cannot do instead of spending that time to focus on what their
software _can_ do. Also, a software that supposedly can do everything makes me
wonder if it can do these things _well_... or if we might end up with a
solution so customized that every upgrade turns into a nightmare.

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tootie
I was absolutely expecting this site to be satire. In my experience,
enterprise sales involves building a great demo, lying through your teeth and
cashing the checks.

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inmyunix
this is an antiquated point of view.

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tootie
I have seen it with my eyes in the last 6 months and it seems to be a model
that never stops working. I'll specifically name Adobe, HP and Oracle as
offenders. There is only 1 sales model I'll accept. A 30-day limited developer
license to install/access and tinker with your product. Maybe companies exist
that are "doing it right" but the old way is still alive and kicking and
raking in millions.

EDIT: Exhibit A-Z is the current $240M lawsuit by the State of Oregon v
Oracle: [http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/health-care-
inc/201...](http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/health-care-
inc/2015/02/oracle-v-oregon-101-a-primer-on-the-4-so-far-court.html)

~~~
notahacker
Any sufficiently advanced technology takes more than 30 days to customise,
never mind decide it's the optimum solution...

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tootie
It's not a matter of building out your entire project, it's just to get a feel
for the quality and decide if it's complete bullshit. If you think 30 days
isn't enough time, then a vendor demo is worth less than zero.

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bliti
By the way: The Sales subreddit has some very good information regarding
sales. A good amount of knowledgeable people visit it. They've helped me
before to get over my self-inflicted sale issues (due to my introverted
nature).

[http://reddit.com/r/sales](http://reddit.com/r/sales)

~~~
pbowyer
Do you mind linking to the thread where they helped you? Sounds like it'd be
very useful to me too.

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bliti
I'm afraid of asking questions publicly, so all is done through PMs. Most
people will gladly answer and help. I find helpful people by combing the most
commented on threads and reading the answers. Thoughtful answers tend to be
written by people with a sincere desire to help. I don't usually ask the same
person for more feedback to respect their time. To get the best advice ask
actionable questions. Like "I'm using this this email script to land cold
leads from small businesses. People are not replying much. What call to action
can I include to get replies?"

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davidjgraph
There's a lot of SaaS articles in an Enterprise selling article list. I'm
curious how many SaaS products have broken the Enterprise market that people
know of? And by Enterprise, I mean at least 6 figure annual price tag, not a
few sales to 10 person teams that happen to work within an Enterprise. I guess
Google for Work and Salesforce are two...

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_sword
ServiceNow - ITSM / ITOM Workday - HCM / ERP NetSuite - ERP, Commerce, CRM

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ananthrk
[http://a16z.com/2015/05/20/enterprise-sales-for-product-
peop...](http://a16z.com/2015/05/20/enterprise-sales-for-product-people/)

This article by Steve Sinofsky provides a broader framework to understand
Enterprise sales.

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snambi
Very interesting.

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the_falcon
lol, enterprise tech sales needs a guide?

1) Wear douchy leather shoes, slacks, look smart 2) BS and make stuff up on
software you 20% understand until the client nods 3) Keep going 4) Call
client, every, freaking, month, for 2 years 5) Do this enough - Sale!

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benihana
ha ha! I get it! Cause the job title you have determines your personality and
style and ethics and morals. And all sales guys are slimy, not like us pure,
rational engineers.

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webtards
1\. Go to expensive golf course, 2. Propose large software purchase, 3. Large
envelope stuffed with cash, 4. Profit! Rinse repeat.

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the_falcon
haha I said almost the same thing above.

