- I've been working with three founders
over the last 12 months
who have seen significant growth in their SaaS businesses
through an enterprise sales motion.
Two of them went from more or less zero
to a million ARR within the course of a year
through enterprise sales.
One of them went from a million ARR
to three million ARR,
which is something that I've done myself
over at ToutApp,
all because they embraced an enterprise sales motion.
Now here's the thing,
enterprise sales motion is not perfect for every business,
it's not perfect for every product.
It's not the only thing that I coach founders on.
But when it is the right fit, when it is the right motion,
it can be incredible in driving growth.
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you
through the three principles you absolutely need to know
based on everything I've learned
about enterprise selling through my ToutApp journey,
my Marketo journey, and now my SaaS go-to-market program
coaching journey.
I'm gonna give you the three principles
you absolutely need to know
to master the enterprise sales motion.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK
and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
If you are new to the channel, welcome.
Be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way you will get notified
every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy.
If you're already part of our community
and if you're already part of my SaaS
go-to-market coaching program, welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
And also happy New Year.
So through my journey and being part
of SaaS businesses, like over at ToutApp,
we did enterprise deals, we did six-figure deals
and I thought that was the most amazing thing.
It was one of the biggest drivers of our growth.
We had some of our biggest quarters
because we were doing massive, multi-year six-figure deals.
And I thought that, man, this is enterprise,
this is awesome.
And then I got to Marketo.
Marketo bought ToutApp, I joined the executive team.
I did a bunch of different stints,
including being managing director of Europe
and then managing director of Australia.
And that's where I really got front row seats
of truly massive enterprise deals.
One of the deals that we started working on
while I was running Europe was a deal with booking
and that deal ended up closing the quarter after
and it was over a million dollars, which was incredible.
And then I was like, oh my God, forget six-figure deals,
the seven-figure deals are incredible.
That's when I was really hooked on enterprise sales,
when the product and the company
and the market that you're in is equipped
to really sell to large enterprises.
And you don't always have to be a massive startup
to do that yet, it can be small startups doing this,
it's really cool and it can drive growth very, very quickly.
So having seen the movie at ToutApp and at Marketo,
having worked with some incredible enterprise sales reps
and enterprise sales leaders,
having gone on sales calls with some
of these brilliant people, having run deal points
on some of these deals, here's the three principles
that you absolutely need to know as a founder
if you wanna embrace the enterprise sales motion.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go ahead and smash that like button
and let's go to principle number one.
So principle number one of enterprise selling,
believe it or not, is the founder and CEO
has to embrace selling
and also has to embrace being an authority in the space.
Now this is regardless of what size you're in.
When we were at Marketo,
which was north of 300 million, this is public information,
the CEO was still heavily involved in enterprise deals.
Enterprise deals have multiple touch points.
They're massive deals,
whether it's a six-figure deal or a seven-figure deal.
And a lot of times it's not just about the software,
it's about the partnership, it's about the vision,
it's about the transformation.
And needless to say, when you have group buying like that,
as soon as you get executive involvement,
as soon as you start to engage executives
on both sides of the company,
every deal is more likely to succeed.
Which is why, regardless of how big you are, as a company,
when you are doing enterprise-level deals,
the founder and CEO has to embrace selling
and has to be an authority in the space.
The reason authority is also important is
a lot of these conversations aren't just shaking hands
and saying, hey, I hope you buy.
It's really about, hey, this is the big transformation
we're bringing, here's a big partnership we're gonna have,
here are the other ways we can work together,
this is how we can help each other,
here's where we think the space is going
and that's why we wanna make sure
that you guys buy our platform so we can help you,
here's our view on what the future looks like.
That's what a lot of enterprise selling is
and that's really when the founder and CEO shines.
Buyers wanna know that not just
that they're buying a great platform,
they wanna know that there's great people behind it,
there's clear leadership around it.
And that's when the relationships really get built
and the trust really gets built.
So principle number one on this is
regardless of whether you're a tech entrepreneur,
in terms of you come from the technical side,
or you're a sales-driven entrepreneur,
whatever it may be, you are now chief sales officer,
even if you have a VP of sales,
because they wanna hear from the CEO,
they wanna hear from the founder,
they wanna hear their vision,
and they wanna know that you're an authority in the space,
they wanna know you're a thought leader in the space
and you have a unique perspective.
And that's really one of the core things in the bedrock
of what gets a deal done in the enterprise sales motion.
So principle number one, founder CEO has
to embrace selling and authority.
Principle number two, as you get into
the enterprise sales motion is,
unlike a transactional sale,
where you're selling into the mid-market
and maybe you have two or three calls,
you get to a demo, under an enterprise sales motion,
if they're looking to spend $500,000,
a million dollars, $5 million...
And I've been on the buying side of these deals,
I've been on the sales side of these kind of deals.
Even if they're spending $250,000,
in the lower end of a true enterprise deal,
even in those cases, it's not transactional.
It's about building relationships,
it's about building trust.
So principle number two is you need to have
a clear strategic narrative
about the enterprise transformation you're bringing.
When you actually have this,
when you have a clear deck, when you have a clear story,
when you have a clear message,
when you have a clear way to ask the questions,
when you have a clear way to engage with them
and say, hey, here's a big transformation
we wanna bring into your enterprise, to your company,
and here's a group of people that really care,
and here's the problems that they're having,
that's really when enterprise deals happen.
You don't really just go to an enterprise deal
and say, hey, listen, we have this widget,
do you wanna to buy it?
That's not how enterprise software deals really come along.
What you are really doing is you're pitching them
on this vision for the future
and that requires that you have a very,
very clear strategic narrative.
A great strategic narrative actually outlines
what the big change you're doing is,
why they need to act now,
if they're not doing it now, what happens.
This translates itself in how you introduce yourself,
how you get the meeting,
how you actually run the first meeting,
how you actually ask questions around it,
how you identify who the key people are,
all of these things stem at the right strategic narrative.
And when you're running an enterprise sales motion,
this is super, super important, right after the founder.
And by the way, these two things are true in all stages.
It's very, very true in the early stages.
When you're an early stage founder,
you're a session with a sales rep,
you're essentially the marketer,
you're everything, you're gonna have to do these things.
But even at a much larger scale,
there is gonna be multiple people that work together
to bring these things together.
You're gonna have the enterprise sales rep,
you're gonna have the product marketer,
you're gonna have the key marketing people
to develop the strategic narrative with the CEO,
you're gonna have a demo expert,
you're gonna have a sales engineer.
All these people come together
for enterprise deals and in the early stages,
the founder kind of leads all of these
and then you earn the right to hire more people.
But it's true in all stages,
these two things are super important.
But let me just pause here for a second.
Before I go to principle number three
where this really comes together,
in terms of your enterprise sales motion,
let me just highlight something.
If you are a company that is selling primarily
to the mid-market
and you have a much more transactional process,
I would actually tell you to think
about, hey, is it time to go up market?
And can you just do one or two enterprise deals?
Here's the reason.
When you do one or two enterprise deals
and you get some really recognizable logos,
your mid-market companies actually buy from you faster.
Your win rates go up, your competitive dynamics improve
because they'll say, oh, it's good enough for Toyota,
it's good enough for that large company that I know about
then it's gotta be good enough for us.
So if you are squarely in the mid-market
and you're saying, you know what,
I don't know if we're ready for an enterprise sales motion,
I always tell founders to have a hobby project on like,
hey, maybe we can get two or three
really large enterprises that tend to be early adopters
that need this.
Because once you get that logo on that customer logo page,
every mid-market deal moves a lot faster.
The other thing to highlight is if you're squarely
on the enterprise and you're in the early stages
and you're kind of telling yourself
and hemming and hawing like,
oh, maybe we're too small to land enterprise deals,
it's simply not true.
There is tons of founders that I work
with that are doing outrageous deals
and they're outrageously small.
If the product solves an important enough problem,
if it's truly differentiated,
it's truly bringing a transformation
and you're able to actually articulate that,
you will be able to get massive deals.
It's crazy sometimes to think about it
but you will because companies have problems
and if you have a solution, they'll take a bet on you
if there's nothing else available in the market.
On the other hand, if you are a super tiny company
and you're going after a very crowded space
with well-entrenched enterprise competitors,
then you may not be able to win, but you may be able to win
if you actually get the right differentiated message.
So it's not impossible, but you have to think about it.
So I just wanted to give those thoughts
on how to kind of frame the enterprise sales motion
in your mind.
If you can start to see how,
and just these two principles can start
to really revamp your enterprise sales motion
and get you to think about it in the right way,
how it's not transactional, it's very relationship-driven,
it's very transformation-driven.
Can I just get a yes in the comments below
so I can hear from you?
And also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Also, if you are in that position where
you're developing your enterprise sales motion
or just your go-to-market strategy
on whether you do mid-market or enterprise
and what your value prop is and what your ICP is.
How do you actually run your marketing activities?
This is why I created my SAS go-to-market coaching program.
In these free videos,
I give you all the principles and strategies
but I don't give you the step-by-step and I don't
give you the coaching, that's inside of my programs.
So if you're interested in getting the cheat codes,
if you're interested in following a step-by-step process,
if you're interested in following a framework
that helps you get the results faster,
then I invite you to check out my SAS go-to-market program.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video.
Let's go principle number three.
Principle number three is ask smart questions
to build relationships and then have a champion
to engage in the group buying process.
That's a mouthful.
And by the way, I could probably do 10 more videos
on enterprise sales motions
and just sales motions in general.
So if you want me to do more on this stuff,
comment below and let us know
so we'll prioritize it.
But let's break this down.
A lot of enterprise selling is actually not about selling,
it's about asking smart questions,
it's about building relationships,
it's about building trust.
I learned this when I really started to work
with some really experienced enterprise sales reps,
really experienced enterprise sales reps.
In some of these cases,
these enterprise sales reps were making more money
than the executive team because the comp plan was great,
and they were really great at their jobs
and they were in a hot market.
And for these guys, they are professionals.
Like they are mini-CEOs in these organizations
because when you see them run a meeting, it's amazing.
They'll show up, they're well dressed.
They're not like slick and like in a distasteful way
but they're just like smart, intelligent humans.
They're not your coin-operated salespeople.
And they're thinking strategically
about how to map out the organization,
they're thinking strategically
about who the key players are,
and they're constantly asking smart questions
to understand where this enterprise is,
in terms of the problems they're facing,
and how they can map that to the problems that we solve,
and how to build consensus around that,
and build trust around that,
and build relationships around that.
And the one thing that they're really great at,
that you're gonna be great at as a founder,
you're gonna be great as an enterprise sales rep,
is you ask smart questions.
Why do I say smart questions?
Because you don't wanna ask questions
in a 45-minute meeting that you can easily Google
and get the answer to about their company.
You wanna ask questions that they don't publish,
they don't blog about, they don't write about.
You wanna ask questions
about the problems that they're facing.
You wanna ask questions about what's top of mind.
You wanna ask questions about what gets them waking
up in the middle of the night and thinking
about this particular problem that you are here to solve
and that ties in to your strategic narrative.
So asking smart questions helps actually
build relationship because as people are talking
and answering the questions,
it builds a really strong relationship
and you start to understand who the key players are.
At the end of the day, the biggest thing to understand
about an enterprise sales motion is it's usually
a group buying process.
It's rarely just this one person that buys.
There has to be consensus in the group saying,
yeah, we're gonna sign up a check to spend all this money
to put our careers on the risk to go buy this
and then go make it successful.
And so what you wanna do is start
to understand who the key players are in that group.
You wanna find a champion,
an internal person that's on your side
that'll help you navigate the deal,
you wanna figure out who the decision makers are,
you wanna make sure you start actually getting the demos
at the right stage, not too early, not too late,
you wanna start asking for the sale at the right stage.
These are all deeper things in the sales process
you wanna start doing after you've built a relationship,
asked the smart questions,
and really established that group buying process.
So those are my three most impactful principles
on an enterprise sales motion
because, at the end of the day,
a lot of the brass tacks of sales we already know.
But what we forget is what makes enterprise
sales motions different.
And when you embrace these three principles,
you are actually gonna be more successful,
you're gonna be able to grow a lot faster.
So to recap, number one,
you wanna make sure the founder and CEO embraces selling
and is an authority in the space.
Number two, they're an authority
around a strategic message that you carefully developed,
which differentiates you
and highlights the transformation you're bringing.
And number three, as you engage
you wanna ask smart questions, build relationships,
and then engage in the group buying process.
And then you get into all the brass tacks
around demos and the product,
and who's gonna buy and which budget does it come from,
and negotiating and all that stuff,
and procurement, which is for a different video.
If you're starting to see the power in this,
be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
comment below with any questions you have.
If you want us to cover more topics around sales
be sure to let us know below as well.
Also, if you're going through this and you're building
out the go-to-market machine, like I said,
if you're focusing on the mid-market,
getting a couple of enterprise deals will help you win
in the mid-market more.
If you are going after the enterprise,
you absolutely to make sure you have a clear ICP in place.
You need to actually make sure you have
a clear strategic message.
You need to make sure you have a consistent flow to go
after your most strategic customers.
And this is true in the mid-market as well.
So if you're building a go-to-market machine
and you want a well, time-tested proven playbook to follow,
if you want a step-by-step framework to follow
to build out a proper go-to-market machine,
to build out your ICP, your value proposition,
your strategic narrative, and how to actually engage
with these target buyers, if you want
a proven framework to follow,
then I invite you to apply
to join my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of my coaching program,
I give you the step-by-step instructions
and process and framework to follow
to build out a scalable go-to-market machine
so you can grow your SaaS business faster.
We are accepting new members into the program.
Just go to Tkkader.com/gtm.
When you go in there, you can learn more
about the program and you can apply to join.
Once you put in your application, we'll review it,
we'll get on a call, and we'll figure out
if we can help you, if the program is the right fit for you.
The better the fit, the better the results,
which is why we do the application call.
And what that will give you is instead
of trying to piece together all this knowledge,
internalize all these principles, you get a framework
you can follow along with my coaching,
which brings 15 years of experience
in building and scaling and exiting SaaS businesses.
I've four exits under my belt,
created over $5 billion of enterprise value,
and now I use all of that.
I've distilled it into a framework that I teach SaaS founders
and I coach them on it to help them grow faster.
So go to Tkkader.com/gtm
and we'd love to explore
if we can actually help you in the program as well.
Lastly, I drop a video like this three times a week
with more strategies, principles that you can follow
and you can learn about so you can figure out
how to think about these things right.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon
that you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK and I'll see you in the next episode.
(happy music)