Selling to large enterprises is complicated. Selling complex products and solutions to these same organizations is even more difficult.
As I travel, presenting at sales meetings, professional conferences, and industry events, sales professionals are very open with me about the challenges they face. It’s tough to set up meetings with busy decision makers, get them to move off the status quo, and set themselves apart from competitors.
It’s not any easier for executives. They’re struggling to adapt their companies to the turbulent business environment, stay unique, maintain market share, and drive ongoing growth.
Sounds familiar? You probably live with these issues every single day. And everything keeps changing. The large enterprises you sell to are in constant flux. They regularly reorganize, open and close offices or entire divisions, and change emphasis among geographies, products, and brands. The roles, priorities, and identities of decision makers shift. Meanwhile, your competitors nip at your heels as they close in on your once-differentiated offering.
Your own company is also evolving, creating its own new set of challenges. You’re introducing new products, implementing new marketing strategies, and launching lead generation initiatives and sales programs. The sheer amount of new information overwhelms sellers’ ability to keep up and creates internal conflict for their mind share.
In response, they resist or ignore new approaches and stick to selling what they’ve sold before, to customers who have bought before, using techniques they used last time. To compound the challenges to field adoption, companies are slashing the sales enablement budget. They’re keeping reps in the field and out of training.
This prevents the transfer of knowledge required for in-depth business domain expertise. We’re left with sales forces that know the product details and the high-level messages, but not the context in which it all comes together. For decision makers, this leads to messaging overload. Every vendor seems to promise a similar set of benefits, but few truly understand the relevance to their organization.
As a result, decision makers mistrust salespeople, tune out their claims, and erect barriers to keep them at bay. They have no desire to waste their precious time with product-pushing peddlers who are under extreme pressure to shorten sales cycles and bring in the business now.
In my book, Selling to Big Companies, I show sellers what it takes to overcome these roadblocks and get the attention of corporate decision makers today. But salespeople can’t do it alone.
42 Rules for Growing Enterprise Revenue gives dozens of ideas for turning customer relevance into a company-wide effort. Sales reps want products that deliver on customer needs and are simple to deploy and use in the context of the customer’s business. They want the intelligence and awareness that an effective marketing organization provides. They want the extra boost in deal size that comes from selling well-thought-out service offerings.
Sales reps need to be able to articulate to partners and customers why their products are a great ft alongside complementary offerings. If their organization doesn’t give them what they need, salespeople will improvise. Many do it regularly and well.
But they are more effective if they don’t have to make it up as they go along. They are also more efficient if they don’t have to spend time recreating sales tools, messages, and pitches because marketing just didn’t get it. When provided with the right tools, average salespeople immediately perform at higher levels, and new sales professionals get up to speed much faster.
Sales efforts don’t take place in a vacuum. They are accelerated and amplified when the entire company focuses on what matters to customers. When you follow the excellent strategies outlined by Lilia Shirman in 42 Rules for Growing Enterprise Revenue, that’s exactly what will happen.
Jill Konrath
Author of Agile Selling, SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
CEO, JillKonrath.com