Selling to enterprises is all about building consensus

So your startup or organization wants to sell to enterprises. The first thing you should do is to put aside classic sales manuals and legacy theories teaching to focus all your marketing and sales activity on individual decision makers. It simply doesn't work for enterprise-level organizations. Recent reports suggest that the number of people involved in B2B buying process has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today, and these stakeholders come from various roles, functions, and even locations. My personal experience of selling to large business sees an even bigger "group of buyers" - around 8 people on average - whose decisions, actions, and goals are loosely coordinated. Building consensus among those people is your key to success.

Your goal is to bring stakeholders to a common ground

From the very first point of communication, do your best to align objectives among decision makers. Building a shared perception of value and a common language is a critical step here. Avoid personalization, use terminology that is comprehensible for every participant (remember there are people of distinct backgrounds there!) and try to base your value proposition on corporate goals rather than individual benefits. If you are selling marketing automation software, do spend some time explaining CIO how the new solution will improve information security and reduce server load, showing CFO how much money new software would save and the like. In case of changes in the buyers' line-up (which is a very likely scenario) putting new members in the previously aligned context should be the top priority. One of the biggest mistakes of sales reps and startup CEOs is being naive to believe that the enterprise would make its own efforts to harmonize a purchasing process.

Your goal is to educate stakeholders

Focusing on the competition too early is another mistake many b2b vendors make. The truth is, many large companies fail to reach the so-important consensus long before they start exploring alternatives. Your duty as a merchant is to convince your buyer that the solution is necessary. The best way to do it is by "educating" enterprise members on their current bottlenecks, threats, opportunities, prevailing market and technology trends. You're halfway there if your business already does some content marketing - a quality whitepaper or a blueprint would save you a lot of time. In many cases, however, a more in-depth and tailored presentation or workshop will be required to convey the entire message to the group. Just make sure all stakeholders participate so that you won't need to get back to step 1.

Your goal is to find your solution's advocate

Selling to an enterprise-level company is a mountain to climb unless you have an internal "champion" to promote your brand. First and foremost, be selective in choosing such a person. There are a lot of people within large companies that battle for the right to be the change champion creating excitement around every second new product or technology. Do some homework by evaluating a person's motives, studying profile or even collecting feedback when possible. And as soon as she or he has been found, express your wholehearted support by providing with necessary content and tools, responding timely to concerns and requests and assist in specific actions. In the end, you will either share a victory or take the defeat together.

To sum up, enterprise selling is nowhere near a classical funnel-based process (read about the new Demand Unit funnels and the ABM approach) since the decision is being made by an uncoordinated group of people that have to reach an agreement to approve the solution and sanction the deal. A vendor must nurture the consensus by aligning goals, expectations, and language among decision makers and by specifying benefits for executives of distinct roles (CMO, CIO, CFO, etc.). Instead of focusing on unique selling points, companies and startups should spend more time educating a corporate client on problems and solutions by sharing digital and verbal content. And last but not least, finding a reliable solution advocate within an organization and mobilizing her to collectively push the deal forward can become a key to success.