Great piece, and a lot of it rings very true, especially the part about managing warring subgroups within enterprise sales prospects. Back in the early 2ks a st

Great piece, and a lot of it rings very true, especially the part about managing warring subgroups within enterprise sales prospects. Back in the early 2ks a startup I cofounded to sell to huge banks (enterprise sales on steroids) did a deal with a marketing group at one of the largest US banks. IT was opposed, wanted to build internally, and we had many meetings like those described by the author. We did a 600k deal but behind the scenes the battle continued, and a couple of months after signing the IT guys won, the marketing guy who did the deal with us left the bank, our contract was bought out and we were sent packing.