

Ask HN: How do you break inertia in enterprise sales? - manidoraisamy

If you are selling to enterprises, your biggest competition isn’t other startups or incumbent vendors. It’s inertia. Enterprise&#x2F;SaaS salespeople find themselves in a constant battle against the target company’s urge to do nothing. [1]<p>What has worked for you in the past to break this inertia? Can you share your experience?<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;a16z.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;30&#x2F;selling-saas-products-dont-sell-themselves&#x2F;
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maxdemarzi
I've been involved in this for the last 3 years and what works for me is
building Proof of Concepts.

Neo4j sells an empty database. What I do is take the problem the customer is
trying to solve, find the boiled down essence of it, spend about a week
building a solution to that problem, and have it ready to show off to upper
management by Friday.

It brings the risk WAY DOWN to see that in such a short time I can solve the
problem. They know that if they spend the next 3 months building the "real
software" from what they learned from the POC, they will be successful.

It's the best job I've ever had. You get 1 day or so to learn "the business",
another day to come up with model and create sample data, a day or 2 to write
the queries that solve the problem and finally a day to show it all off.

At the end, all the customer cares about is that their problem is solved.

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manidoraisamy
Does this involve a sales person to manage relationship and an additional pre-
sales person to do the POC? Is this done onsite & how does this affect your
pricing?

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tixocloud
As someone in a large enterprise, I'll share some insights on purchasing
decisions.

In addition to what's been shared, it's about the relationships and the fact
that your solution serves the purpose of multiple stakeholders.

Even if your solution serves me well, if you can't justify to my boss and the
other teams we're working with why your software is going to make us all kick
ass, it's going to be a tough sell. We also get pitched tons of software every
day and large companies throw tons of gifts so your
product/message/delivery/service all need to be top class to cut through all
the crap.

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outericky
Selling to enterprise isn't about product or features (or price). It's about
selling a value that comes from process change. Communicate the value you
bring.

And realize it takes time. Someone has to want to do this enough to get the
wheels moving. So that means that either their job will get easier, their
peoples job will get easier, they will save the company money, they will earn
the company money, ultimately, they will get recognition and/or a bonus for
bringing you in. It's rarely about the product.

