We had a good idea where we wanted to be - HR software. We built our enterprise product by looking online at what others were doing in the space, then building something that had a single key screen in it that was better than anything else we could find. It seems one good page is often all you need to entice prospects (we certainly didn't have a fully formed product).
Then we got lucky, which is something you probably need at some stage. We came across (chance networking) a giant Telco who needed our product. They'd just 6 months earlier been through a typically elaborate and baroque RFP process to pick their incumbent, a big US player with an exceptionally ugly legacy product. Despite doing their due diligence up the wazoo, they got shafted when the vendor decided to stop selling that product and asked them to pony up again for a multi-100K re-implementation fee onto their new platform.
Telco was enormously pissed off, and we lucked across them just at that moment. They were open to procuring their replacement product in a more lightweight way, so we side-stepped the RFP process and snuck in (also found out afterwards we were about an order of magnitude cheaper - though cost is often not that big a factor in enterprise sales).
From there on we were on a roll, because Telco was so ginourmous, we got plenty of other people signing up just off the back of the halo effect of that one deal.
Then we did all the hard yards - converting those steadily growing revenues into product improvements, and all the stuff that's less luck and more execution. We did awesome, great work, but its questionable whether we'd have got the chance to even run onto the field if not for an initial lucky break.
Things you need for enterprise sales:
- luck
- a likeable, trustworthy front person with a cultural affinity with target customers
- the illusion of a solid, well managed company, i.e. not a one man band
- the patience to do a swag of accompany paperwork - RFPs, disaster recovery plans, external audits, etc. All a PITA, but worth gold
- the balls to ask for large amounts of money for your product, because its worth it, and you're worth it
Really a matter of faking it until you've made it..
- have a physical address
- have photos of your employees (even if some were drafted in from the office next door)
- be highly responsive to strange (to you) requests for documentation etc. from their IT, procurement, exec and management teams
- this is hard but don't over stress when they are late paying you. It takes a hideously long time for corporates to actually cut you a check. They always pay - eventually. But its not impossible to wait for 9 months longer than you thought to get paid, just because of their process. You have to somehow survive this
- have a lawyer
We bootstrapped off of consulting revenue to cover the costs in the start
Then we got lucky, which is something you probably need at some stage. We came across (chance networking) a giant Telco who needed our product. They'd just 6 months earlier been through a typically elaborate and baroque RFP process to pick their incumbent, a big US player with an exceptionally ugly legacy product. Despite doing their due diligence up the wazoo, they got shafted when the vendor decided to stop selling that product and asked them to pony up again for a multi-100K re-implementation fee onto their new platform.
Telco was enormously pissed off, and we lucked across them just at that moment. They were open to procuring their replacement product in a more lightweight way, so we side-stepped the RFP process and snuck in (also found out afterwards we were about an order of magnitude cheaper - though cost is often not that big a factor in enterprise sales).
From there on we were on a roll, because Telco was so ginourmous, we got plenty of other people signing up just off the back of the halo effect of that one deal.
Then we did all the hard yards - converting those steadily growing revenues into product improvements, and all the stuff that's less luck and more execution. We did awesome, great work, but its questionable whether we'd have got the chance to even run onto the field if not for an initial lucky break.
Things you need for enterprise sales:
- luck
- a likeable, trustworthy front person with a cultural affinity with target customers
- the illusion of a solid, well managed company, i.e. not a one man band
- the patience to do a swag of accompany paperwork - RFPs, disaster recovery plans, external audits, etc. All a PITA, but worth gold
- the balls to ask for large amounts of money for your product, because its worth it, and you're worth it
- perseverance