- Oh.
It's like a gremlin.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
(upbeat music)
How do you reduce the enterprise sales timeline.
Look, if you're frustrated, you're working with big
companies and you're trying to get them to adopt and buy your
product and you've done that but then you gotta go through
procurement and legal and compliance and security and,
and, and this videos for you.
I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to get rid of those
frustrations you know.
And also, when you do this right you can actually improve your
experience of the customer, get paid upfront,
joking I can't commit to that, you can get paid faster but I
just really think that you need understand how it all works to
really reduce, compress and make it happen faster.
I was working with a big bank, can't mention them but they are
the entrepreneurs credit card so they rhyme with latex.
I'm gonna let that one sink in for a second,
anyway I was working them and we were doing a big deal for my
company Clarity and I was all excited.
I had to VP on board ready to go.
Gonna deploy our technology into their customer base and
really quickly if you've ever dealt with a bank,
a financial institution you learn that it is literally the
most complicated review, audit, subsystem,
thingamajig.
I mean the checklist is crazy.
They sent over a document and when I looked at it I was like
this is gonna take forever.
At first I was like there's no way we're doing this.
I thought for sure it's going to take my 16, 18 months.
I mean most companies, you're five people.
You're just sitting there and you're trying to figure out how
do you even get a feature deployed and they give you this
long laundry list.
But here's the deal what I did in that scenario is actually
asked them to invest upfront.
I said look if you guys put it was significant five figure
investment because I said look, we're a little startup and if we
go forward and you decide you know in a year somebody changes
jobs or doesn't want to do this then we essentially invested a
bunch of time for something that's not core to our business
yet for your guys' value.
So they actually wrote the check.
It wasn't even an issue and the cool part was is the VP did
change jobs and we still got it deployed but we ended up keeping
that deposit to make sure that we had
our cost and time covered.
But I'm gonna walk with you is how I've been able to navigate
over the years.
I did an enterprise company called Spheric.
We were a consulting business.
I sold to the CTOs.
I understood how to navigate the complexity of enterprise sales
and really get things down to months not a year.
Most deals are 9 to 12 months.
This is the way you want to think through it.
First, when you're talking with the customer,
number one, you gotta test the virtual close,
okay?
This is what happens, so you talk to a company
they're interested.
Then you have another meeting, talk with the rest of the team.
They ask you a bunch of questions,
you answer them. They go this sounds great.
This is what you need to do at that point.
You actually need to ask them and say hey it sounds like we're
really getting along.
Sounds like we can add a lot of value for you guys and it sounds
like we'll probably put a deal together in the near future.
I'm just curious what's the process for a company to get
deployed within your organization?
If we're good today we get everything approved,
what's next?
And they say well we need to get it approved through budgets.
Perfect and once we get the budgets approved,
then everybody's happy then what happens next?
Oh then it's gotta go to, are you an approved vendors?
It's like oh we're not approved vendors.
Okay, well you need to become an approved vendor.
Okay, and how does that process work?
And they walk you through it.
And then, and then, and then.
Literally you just repeat this and once we do this step
successfully, what happens next?
Perfect and what's involved in that step?
Okay, and if we get through that and that's successful what
happens next?
And I know this might sound trite and you guys are like so I
just, yes you write down as they're giving you this,
you're writing down every step.
That becomes your hit list and the reason why it's so important
is most entrepreneurs don't realize that there is literally
several steps to get enterprise deal closed.
It's not the initial buyer.
It's not getting the champion to support you.
It's not getting somebody to just make the commitment.
You literally have to go through.
I mean I've even seen some crazy stuff like compliance
pull up stuff.
I was doing a deal with Babcock and Wilcox.
They're a huge energy company about 10 years ago and we got
held up for four months to try to get the deal and this is like
a motivated manager wants us to start working on this new
project and we can't even get him to go there and he like went
up to the C-suite where all the mahogany walls and he's like I
went up there and I tried to get it and they're just delaying.
Look, people have jobs to do but you need to do a virtual close
where you walk through virtually every step in the closing
process to get commitment and buy it and build that checklist.
Then number two is to compress those stages and the way you do
that is through parallelizing the steps.
So you might be like alright so next step is for us to talk to
your security team and then we go to become an approved vendor,
do you mind if we start those processes in parallel?
And I know that there's still some unknowns but I just want to
start talking and building those relationships with those people
so that we can get things to point where
we understand what's involved.
I call this multithreading, okay?
So compressing which is a second step requires multithreading an
enterprise company to really get things pushed forward.
So you virtually close, then you compress the process by
multithreading into the different people involved to
make that happen.
The third step is asking for the connections.
Building that rapport.
Sometimes I've gotten on planes just to go visit the customer.
If you're talking, you know, a hundred thousand plus dollar
deal some of you guys are doing million-plus dollar deals,
get on a plane.
Like literally get the whole process laid out,
get the introductions, connect to people and
go visit them in person.
Nothing will move something along faster than and anybody
that's build rapport.
If you're talking with some guy in the security team and he
doesn't know you, you're just like an email to him,
the response rate, the care, the interest
it's just not there.
But if you're that guy that showed up and connected maybe
brought some, I mean, I'm just going back to the
East Coast days little
Dunkin' Donuts went a hell of a long way.
No, literally I'd be like I just landed
I'll be in there in an hour.
Just curious does anybody want any coffee.
Do you know how crazy easy that is for you to ask the people
you're gonna meet if they want coffee.
And they're gonna say no, I'm good but you just,
I mean that was super kind of you.
So literally the process, really quick recap,
one virtually close and then once we're successful there,
what happens next?
And then once we're successful there,
what happens next?
And you make that full strategic checklist to close.
Then you compress it by multithreading the account by
parallelizing the different steps involved.
And the third way you do that is by connecting and having
conversations with the people.
And if you have to get on a plane,
for the bigger deals,
don't be that guy that sits behind an email.
Try to do Skype if you can't get on a plane but connect with the
companies and really bring down
the lifecycle of an enterprise deal.
That is how you will close faster,
better, build better rapport and not feel frustrated and be able
to commit on the sales quotas that you've committed to the
rest of the team.
I hope this video finds you excited and well.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
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