Selling software/services to corporate clients

[mig]

Can any one on this discussion forum please share their experience on how they went about selling their software/service to a corporate client? What's the best way to approach prospective client companies once we have identified them? Do we just go to their office if they are local? Call them or email them?

What kind of documents, supporting material(other than a demo of the product etc.) should we carry with us?

Neither my cofounder, nor I have any formal sales/marketing background. We would really appreciate any advice/suggestions/feedback regarding this.

Okay, thanks a lot for reading this,

-Manu.

[cstejerean]

While I'm not familiar with how to sell to corporations here are some things that can prevent a company from doing business with you (I've worked for several large companies and it's been interesting to watch some of the smaller vendors screw up in interesting ways).

1. Some large companies won't deal with you if you aren't profitable or at least well funded. A big concern is what happens if you go out of business. Be prepared to answer that question.

2. Some big companies deal with really big data sets, make sure your application can handle it. For example some companies deal with numbers bigger than 32bit integers. Make sure you can handle that.

3. Make sure there are no memory leaks in your application. I've seen more than one vendor saying that their product requires daily reboots. That's usually a sign of crappy code and business with decent IT staffs can tell.

4. Sometimes being cheaper than the competition is a bad thing. Make sure to have some pricey versions and support plans for companies that feel better when they spend more money.

5. Depending on the companies you sell to and the types of products you build you'll get questions about security compliance of your application / service with things like SAS-70, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. This is particularly important if you keep sensitive data and your client is a public company. Some big companies request a right to audit in order to do business with you (which means they have the right to come over to your business and check things out whenever they want). Be prepared to deal with all this mess.

Hope that helps.

[edw519]

Businesses in general are not looking to buy products or services. They are looking to solve their own problems. This is NOT a discussion about your product or service. It is a discovery of the thing that bites them in the ass (that they would do just about anything to get rid of).

As you meet people (and you need to be out there in order to do this), you'll have to let them know what you do or have in order to get the discussion going. After that, the discussion is entirely about their problem.

"What do you do?"

"We have a web service that does <your offering>."

"Interesting. We've never been able to <their problem>."

"Really? Why is that?" OR

"Really? Tell me more about that?" OR

"Really? Then why don't you <something you know works>. We've had a lot of success helping <whoever> do that."

You get the idea.

Once you help them identify and articulate their problem, one of 2 things will happen, either you drive the dialogue into the next step in the process or you turn and run the other way. Either way, you both win.

[gibsonf1]

My advice: find another founder that has that kind of experience. It is a whole different world selling to corporations. A good friend of mine spent years getting good at it: studying, reading, networking like crazy, getting coaching, and he's pretty good now. Another very important detail: the corporate sales pipeline is very long. 6 months would be pretty fast to close a sale.

[staunch]

I've had a little experience with stuff like what Reddit did. Companies saying "Can I license your product, so I can run it on my own servers?". So far that's been from them contacting me out of the blue, so I don't have experience with searching them out. I think that's a lot tougher and I'm looking forward to this thread.

The best advice I have is to follow-up really well and be super responsive. Be flexible and tailor yourself to the client. Don't be afraid to charge big sums of money, as cstejerean pointed out, larger organizations frequently equate price with quality.

If you've done any professional contract work there are a lot of similarities to that I think. Networking, referrals, not flaking, charging "what you're worth", making happy customers.

[hoskinscharles]

Finding a lead is one of the hardest parts.

Many methods exist to generate "leads": from advertising, SEO to email marketing.

In this new world where the Internet has become important, your website is a crucial part.

7 out of 10 business deals start with an Internet search, thus most of your potential customers have been on your website long before they address to you.

All of your advertising will mention your website.

Thus try to get the business customers from your website, by identifying the company name of the website visitor. Next qualify the companies by the website data on company level: search terms used, pages visited, click path, returning visitors, ..

Several web services exist providing this information, however these are not web analytics as the data needs to be about the visiting companies, not about your website. Google: "Website visitor identication leads" to find these services.

[skmurphy]

If you don't have any reference customers you are going to need to find a department manager who is in a lot of pain. It's very hard for an early stage startup to sell to a large corporation, but it can be done if you find someone with budget, or who can secure budget, who is in a lot of pain.

We blogged about the need for startups to sell around IT in larger firms here: http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/03/08/selling-around-it-in...

Probably the best book on this is "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank

The best book on how to give a good software demo is "Great Demo!" by Peter Cohan of http://www.secondderivative.com/

[amirnathoo]

I am really interested in this since we are trying to sell our TagandFile document management service into corporates right now.

I went through IBM's sales training before leaving to do the startup and we have also done part-time contracting to bring money in doing technical sales roles and sales re-organisation consultancy. Here's a braindump, but do contact me if if you want to discuss further - use the email address on the TagandFile.com site.

Sales Process:

The buying cycle for a corporate takes months and you won't succeed if you try to rush it. At each stage in the process you must seek to move on to the next stage in line with the speed the corporate wishes to move at. Do not expect a high success rate, you will need to generate hundreds of leads to get a handful of sales. At each stage you need to QUALIFY the opportunity (i.e. decide whether it is strong enough to be worth investing more time in). This high cost of sale can only really be justified by deals > $10K minimum.

1) Identify opportunity - you need to have a means of identifying / creating opportunities in your target market. You will waste a lot of time on this unless you have a very clear idea of what your target market is. Typical ways to create opportunities are cold calling, networking at industry events, getting introductions through contacts. Once you have identified the opportunity, your aim is to get a face-to-face meeting with someone close to the opportunity with-in the corporate.

2) Explore need - when you have your face-to-face meeting, your goal is to understand the corporate's CRITIAL REASON TO ACT (CRA). This is a fundamental thing and should have a timeframe associated with it. If you cannot identify one then do not waste more time with this opportunity, focus on generating others.

3) Refine requirments - you should seek follow-on meetings and calls with different people in the corporate (e.g. end users, business sponsor, IT manager...) in order to fully understand their circumstances and needs. This will help you to propose the right solution, but you are also trying to identify the KEY DECISION LEADER (KDL). Another fundamental concept - without the support of the guy who has the power to decide in your favour, you are wasting your time with this opportunity.

4) Propose solution - if you have done the previous steps correctly, you will know what solution to propose, who to propose it to and when, and you will be confident that it meets the requirements. In fact, ideally the KDL has specifically asked you to propose something at this stage. The proposal will usually consist of a 10-20 page document (I can send examples if interested) plus a set-piece presentation plus demonstration to key people in the corporate. You are most likely to succeeed if can demonstrate UNIQUE VALUE - the risk here is that after all your hard work, you have persuaded the KDL that he should do something, but then he puts it out to tender so all your competitors can bid since he does not recognise the uniqueness of what you offer.

5) Negotiate terms - if your proposal goes down well, you will move into a negotiation phase where you agree the final price and terms and conditions. As a startup you won't have much leverage in this phase, but you will do better if you can present the TOTAL VALUE PROPOSITION - i.e. a business case showing that your solution will created business benefit, preferably using their own numbers rather than your own estimates.

6) Close sale - get the necessary paperwork signed. Typically this will involve you presenting a contract or Statement of Work for signature and receiving a Purchase Order from the customer's procurement department. Remember, the sale is not complete until you have the purchase order since until then you cannot be sure that whoever has signed your contract did in fact have the authority to close the purchase on behalf of the company.

7) Maintain relationship - look for more opportunities in the customer, keep them happy, deliver on your promises, send accurate invoices and chase them for late payement!

Sales Skills:

This is an absolutely massive topic and I've already written a lot, so I'll restrict myself for a few key points.

- EARN THE RIGHT. In any conversation with a potential customer whether you have cold called them or this is the final presentation, you need to keep giving them reasons to keep talking to you otherwise you are out.

- LISTEN. I mean really listen, deploy your antennae, stop worrying about what you are going to say next when they have finished talking. Ask open questions, listen for 'Hooks' that will allow you to ask follow-on questions and dig a bit further on a particular topic.

- Always be on the look out for key pieces of information that will help you qualify the opportunity. Think BANT - Budget, Authority (who is the KDL), Need (what is the CRA), Timescales. Don't be afraid to ask for these pieces of information directly.

- Understand who you are talking to. There are plenty of 'Empty Suits' who will waste your time in corporates and seem important when really they have no intention or authority to do anything. You want to be on the look out for 'Rising Stars' who will sponsor your proposal.

- Amir Nathoo

[skmurphy]

This is a good sales process overview. Startups typically face two additional challenge with their early sales: they can't be sure if they have the right product (or an adequate feature set) and they can't be sure if they have the right message. They may also lack sales skills but early adopters are more tolerant of that if they can figure out what you have. Two good books on technology sales process that are worth reading for additional background are

Spin Selling by Neil Rackham

Solution Selling by Mike Bosworth

[hoskinscharles]

Cold calling If you cold call on companies who have visited your website, the cold calls won't be so cold anymore.

Identify the companies visiting your website, and qualify them before calling.