Do you want to know what's the best thing
about running an enterprise sales process?
The deal sizes are huge.
When you actually close the deal and get that logo
you can use that logo to actually get five more logos
because if you're good enough for this amazing logo
you're gonna be great for these other logos.
When you actually land a deal, there's so much upside
and potential to actually expand that deal
and sell them more.
And on top of that, the lock-in is amazing.
These are all the things
that are great about enterprise sales.
Now there are some pitfalls.
The win rates in enterprise sales deals are incredibly low.
The sales cycles are incredibly long.
They can go a year, two years sometimes, it's insane.
And there are so many pitfalls along the road.
Now having closed enterprise sales deals;
five-figure deals, six-figure deals, even seven-figure deals
across my ToutApp and Marketo journey,
I've learned a few things.
So on this episode,
I'm gonna give you the three principles
that you absolutely need to know
to actually close those enterprise deals.
Intro.
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What's up everybody.
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK.
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welcome it's so awesome to see you over here.
I remember the first million dollar enterprise deal,
software deal that I was part of.
Honestly, it was an incredible experience
because I saw how people came together
to make that deal happen.
I saw how long it took
and how we navigated all the pitfalls along the road.
But more importantly, it was amazing to me
that a company would spend a million dollars on software.
It was insane to me, but that's what happened.
It was a Marketo deal.
And it was with a very notable brand and it was in Europe.
And like it was amazing to see.
And my eyes opened to just how powerful
enterprise deals can be.
But also what great looks like when you're navigating
and closing an enterprise deal.
Obviously, that wasn't the only deal I've been part of.
I've done five-figure deals, six-figure deals,
seven-figure deals.
I've learned a ton.
So I'm gonna get through the three principles
you absolutely need to know
so that you too can close your enterprise.
If you excited to dig in,
go ahead and smash that Like button
and let's go into principle number one.
So principle number one is that
when you're starting off an enterprise sales deal
you need to start at the C-suite as much as possible.
Let me explain, when you're doing an enterprise deal
chances are in order for an enterprise deal
to even be possible,
you're gonna have to be driving a very
strategic transformation across the business.
That means this is likely gonna have multiple stakeholders,
multiple departments that are going to be chiming in.
And on top of that, in order to justify this at all
it needs to be a 10 to 20X return on investment.
So they're spending $1M,
that means someone's got to be able to say,
"Hey, this is gonna return to us 10, 20, $30 million
in terms of revenues and growth and profits
and all those kinds of things."
So because of all these things,
that's a high and tall order.
Because you're driving that strategic transfer.
Because there's such a high ROI.
Because there's going to be multiple stakeholders.
If you're gonna get a deal to actually work,
to click, to drive through
you need to actually have support from the C-suite.
So often I'll see people start to spin up
their enterprise sales motions
but they'll start all the way at the bottom.
And that's always the wrong way to go
because you end up losing a lot of time.
You'll end up with people that don't really
have the decision-making power, they can't rally the troops.
And at the end of the day
you still have to convince someone up top.
So starting up top is always a great way
to kick off an engagement, to kick off an outbound process,
or to actually open up a discovery meeting.
Whatever it is, start at the C-suite.
Best case scenario, you're gonna actually get
a member of the C-suite to say, "Yes, this is important.
This transformation is important.
We wanna hear what you have to say."
Worst case scenario is they'll say,
"Hey, listen this is important but I'm not the right person.
This is the person you wanna talk to."
And even still because the C-level person
is gonna refer you to that VP or SVP or whatever it may be,
that as SVP is gonna take you a lot more seriously
because the C-suite person referred them to you.
And that's why the power of this principle
is you always want to start as high as possible.
Start at the C-suite, even though it may seem scary
because that's the only way
you can get that strategic transformation going.
You can actually get the buy-in from multiple stakeholders
which are all gonna be important
in an enterprise sales deal
and in order to actually close it.
All right, principle number two.
This is something that I learned
through some of the best enterprise AEs that are out there
just going through the process
and selling a bunch of these deals
is that you should always take a land and expand mindset.
Here's the thing, it can be very appealing to say,
"Oh, IBM is interested in our sales engagement software.
Let's get all of IBM to get on
our sales and engagements software."
But here's the thing, it's really hard to actually
eat an entire elephant like that.
I think that's the right phrase,
but anyway you get the picture, it's really hard to do that.
What you're better off doing is actually identifying
maybe a specific department, a specific region
or maybe a specific use case
that you can solve for to kind of land your first deal.
And once you land that first deal
then you can expand to multiple regions,
multiple departments, multiple use cases,
and you can grow that book of business over time.
There's a couple of reasons for this.
Number one, just obviously, it's easier to land
a smaller deal and then expand than to try
and get that giant deal all at once.
Number two, when you're dealing
with these enterprise sales processes
you're gonna have to go through procurement,
you're gonna have to go through legal.
And those two departments have very very specific processes.
So if you can get a deal done
by actually getting through procurement,
by getting the MSA master services agreement,
and the legal agreement in place
then it becomes a lot easier to do more business.
Meaning that first deal is always going to be the hardest
but once you get the groundwork down
on how to actually work through procurement
procurement vets you, maybe security vets you,
you have the right MSA and the legal things in place.
And all those things will start to come together
it will be a lot easier to do future deals.
So because of this, instead of trying to get one big deal
always take a land and expand mindset.
Now, if you're thinking about, "Hey, like I don't know
if I have the right legal agreements."
So legal agreements are super important
especially the right MSA, the right contracts,
especially when it comes to enterprise sales.
Be sure to check out this video I did with my brother,
who happens to be a SaaS attorney,
where we go deep into the exact agreements
that you must have for your SaaS business
particularly if you're going into the enterprise.
You don't have to go right now
I'll link to it below and you can check it out later.
But principle number two,
is you have to take a land and expand approach
after you start all the way up top at the C-suite.
Now, before I go into principle number three
and I also have a bonus principle for you
that I'm excited about,
before I go to that let me just pause here for a second.
If you starting to see the power in this
of starting out top and taking a land and expand mindset,
and actually following these principals.
If you're starting to see the power
and how this can transform
how you approach your enterprise sales methodology,
can I just get a yes in the comments below.
Also be sure to smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm, if you haven't done so already.
Also, if you're building out your SaaS business
and you're establishing your sales methodology,
you're figuring out how to run
your enterprise sales process,
you're trying to figure how to get actually pipeline going,
then I invite you to check out
my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
Inside of the program, I give you the step-by-step process
that you need to follow based on my experience
on how to actually build out
your marketing and sales machine
so you can scale quickly
and actually drive these enterprise deals.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode
but let's go to principle number three.
Principle number three is you should plan the wedding.
Plan the wedding, this is something we used to say
all the time at ToutApp.
I saw it in play in Marketo.
As you're going through the sales conversations,
as you're trying to bring together the key stakeholders,
and you're starting to bring together
what that initial deal looks like
one of the things you should start thinking ahead of
and start to pull in early is planning the wedding.
Meaning, don't just wonder if they're gonna say yes to you
when you ask them to marry you,
you should start talking about
what the wedding is going to look like.
That's the whole analogy behind the plan the wedding.
Meaning what you should start to incorporate
in your sales process,
is exactly what it's gonna look like after they say yes.
There are couple of things that go into this.
Number one, you should start to think about
how customer success is going to work.
Bring in the customer success person into the deal
so they can start to get introduced and say,
"Hey, this is the person who you'll be working with
as we formalize the deal."
This is the kind of stuff that brings it closer to a close
either a yes or a no.
Instead of going on months after months after months
of not really knowing if you're gonna get that deal or not.
The second thing you should think about
is how you're going to do onboarding and training.
A lot of times companies actually want to pay you
to make sure that their people are gonna be trained on it
and onboarded properly so they actually get that ROI.
Meaning they're not looking to save money on this.
What they wanna make sure
is they secure their investment to get that 10X to 20X ROI.
So when you start to talk about
this is your customer success person,
here's how we're gonna onboard you,
here's the project milestones,
here's how we're gonna do the training,
here's how we're gonna ensure you get success
everything starts to shift for them.
They're starting to feel a lot more comfortable and like,
"Okay, cool. These people have a plan
on how to drive success.
How are we gonna get that ROI?"
And they're gonna be more likely to say yes.
So planning the wedding is super important.
The last piece on this,
and I saw this work really well at Marketo,
is start to think about partners,
professional services and implementation.
A lot of times because they're making this big investment
they don't necessarily have the know-how or the bandwidth
to implement your full product.
So if you can include professional services
from your own company
on how you're gonna implement it for them,
if you can start to bring in partners
that they already trust into the deal to say,
"Hey, these guys worked with our other customers.
They know how to use our platforms.
They're gonna implement it for you."
The the buyer is actually gonna be very happy.
You would think that they would be like,
"Oh God, this is more cost."
But they look at these expenses
as a negligible expense to spend
so that the bigger spend on the software
is actually worth it.
And it ensures there's ROI and ensures that it's successful.
So planning the wedding is the third principle.
You should think about customer success,
on-boarding training,
partners you can bring in, professional services.
These are all things that are gonna show like,
"Hey, once you say yes, we have a plan."
And everyone is a lot happier when you have a plan.
"We have a plan on how we're gonna onboard you, train you,
make you successful and get you that ROI."
They're gonna start to feel a lot more comfortable
about all of this.
So to recap these principles.
Number one, let's see how we line up.
Start at the C-suite, startup up top
make sure its a strategic transformation
that you communicate.
Think about landing and expanding.
Don't just try to eat the entire elephant all at once.
And also plan the wedding.
Now, these are three principles
that I've used over and over and over
to ensure we're closing these enterprise sales deals.
If you're thinking about, well, how do we actually
you know, build out our enterprise sales process?
How do we think deeper about this?
I have a bonus principle for you.
Hopefully it's okay to over-deliver on these videos.
I have a bonus principle which is,
I put together an entire 17 minute guide
to enterprise sales.
This video has done incredibly well.
You can check that out over here.
You can click on the link or I'll link to it below.
You don't have to go right yet,
let me close out on these thoughts.
But that bonus principle, where I go into in-depth
17 minute guide on enterprise sales process,
how to think about it,
and apply these to actually close them
is gonna be super powerful for you.
So now you know how you can start closing
these enterprise sales deals in a much more effective way.
How you can start opening them up
with these three principles.
Go check out that guide.
A link to the legal agreement.
But let me leave you with this message.
If you're at that stage
where you're building out your scalable,
go to Go-To-Market machine.
If you have some revenues
and you need to really build that scalable machine,
you need to establish your strategic narrative,
your ideal customer profile,
you'd actually establish a sales methodology.
Then I invite you to check out
my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
Based on everything that I've learned
15 years of being in the SaaS industry,
multiple exits, multiple companies.
I've codified a framework that you can follow
to actually build out your scalable go-to-market machine.
And I also provide along with that framework
I give you my coaching so that you actually
can talk to someone that's been there, done that.
So this program is my SaaS Go-To-Market Program
and it's an application only basis
which means that you should check out the details
and if you feel like this is a fit for you
and this is a priority for you, you can apply to join.
When you fill out the application form, we'll get on a call.
We'll talk through application
and I'll tell you if I can help you or not.
It's super simple, super straightforward.
So to learn more, go to tkkader.com/gtm.
Tkkader.com/gtm.
And all the details will be over there.
All the videos I talked about;
the SaaS law agreements,
the 17 minute enterprise sales guide
both of those will be linked below as well
along with the link to the Go-To-Market Program.
So you should check those out.
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I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode.
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To help you grow your SaaS businesses faster
with the TK energy.
Did I say that already?