
Ask HN: How do you cut down long B2B sales cycles? - ransith
Can you help me with some examples of startups in the  B2B space that had long sales cycles, which were later cut down to very short sales cycles. ? How was this done.
======
davismwfl
The most common ways:

1\. Adjust your target market. Large enterprises will always take longer than
SMB's to make a purchase. However, if you build up a solid SMB market with a
few Enterprises than the cycle shortens.

2\. Adjust your price point and up-sell more. Large enterprises give managers
and directors freedom to spend a certain amount of money each month without
going through a procurement process. So one way is to adjust your basic price
with enough features to get you in the door at the lower manager or director
level. Then as they become dependent on your company and need more features
you can get walked through the procurement much faster because it is already a
vetted tool.

3\. Networking is not necessarily fast on its own, but it helps drastically in
cutting down the delays on sales. A good networked intro can save you 50-75%
of the time you would otherwise spend getting in the door and past the
gatekeepers.

4\. Having a product that solves a serious pain point is critical. If you
build a me to product it will take you 6-18 months to sell to large
enterprises. If you build a product no one else is offering and is desperately
needed by an enterprise it is crazy how fast they'll move. I had a fortune 100
firm sign a deal in less then 10 days from the first meeting when we solved a
serious pain problem they were having, pricing was barely even discussed and
we all kicked ourselves at that point knowing we were not priced high enough
and represented too good a value.

I don't think there are "shortcuts" to take beyond working the larger
businesses processes against itself.

~~~
ransithf
Thanks a lot davismfl for taking time to write detailed and useful advice. If
its not a secret I would love to hear more about the product you sold in 10
days to a fortune 100 firm.

~~~
davismwfl
Definitely not a secret. I did it years ago. We had an CRM solution focused on
events (think conferences) that had built in digital advertising management
and marketing automation, e.g. emails, sms reminders, follow up sales etc.
Clients we sold to were usually small to mid sized and were putting together
conferences or hosting events at like hotel conference rooms etc and needed to
get the word out and manage the event (500 people and less was a typical
client conference with a few in the 1000s). Essentially from advertising,
signup and then check-in at the event the software handled it all, including
posting facebook, google ads (and managing/tracking them).

What happened for us to sell it to this enterprise was we found out they (a
large public firm) were trying to hold a conference but had been struggling to
glue systems together themselves to make it work and advertise it etc (they
disliked other in market products). We heard this as a pure rumor from some
engineers that were bitching about it at a meetup we went to on mobile
development. From there we researched the company, the conference and started
cold emailing/calling the people who were responsible for the conference at
the company. We were able to meet with them within a couple of days, did a few
demo's and showed them it wasn't vapor and really existed (seems to always be
an enterprises concern). Like all small companies, we had the normal "call for
pricing" for "enterprise" clients (though we hadn't really had anyone this
size), so pricing was on the fly customized for them. We screwed up a little
on pricing because I bet they would've been happy to pay double the price and
still feel they got a good value which would've given us a better margin.

In the end, no regrets just a good lesson for the team (me included) that
pricing is relative to the client and while you should never rape a client you
do need to make sure the clients expectations and your pricing are in line. In
our case we made a profit, but it wasn't as much as even a standard client
simply because of all the extra support we had to do, hence we should've asked
for more. Enterprise clients are super needy and they know it so pricing it
like they are is critical. Funny part is we came up with a price, then doubled
it (thinking they would be needy) which also made them feel good about it (too
cheap and enterprise clients will back away knowing you can't handle them),
but we should've triple or quadrupled it to make better margins.

~~~
ransith
Thanks davismwfl, what we do at forestpin is to help companies find mistakes
and fraud in transactions, the customers who use the product really like it.
How ever some of the discussion goes on and on. The longest sale took 2 years
from the first meeting and the shortest sale was about three months. We pitch
to the finance director of the company. In its pretty hard to find the correct
influencer in the company since no body in a company is responsible for
collective mistakes. Lot of companies have no insight to the cost of
transactional mistakes they make. We got customers after doing proof of
concept projects successfully. These take time, since once a POC is agreed, we
need to depend on different teams to get data and the associated time lags. I
had a one on one session with a YC partner (SUS online) and he recommended the
book "Impossible to Inevitable" I am going thru the book these days its pretty
helpful. Thanks again on your helpful insights. Hope you and your loved ones
stay safe from COVID19

