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I am the CTO of a “unicorn” B2B tech company that focuses almost exclusively on the global 2000. Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product. If you
by crmd 7y ago
I am the CTO of a “unicorn” B2B tech company that focuses almost exclusively on the global 2000. Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product. If you want to sell into Citibank, you go hire the one guy or girl who previously sold $20M of X to Citi, who golfs with the VP of Procurement and goes to Billy Joel concerts with the VP of infrastructure operations. Once you hire this person it feels like cheating, like playing super Mario brothers hitting warp zones, but alas I learned this is how business gets done. To get a PO you have to build a coalition: procurement, architecture, operations, finance. You almost certainly will also need a reseller who has an MSA (master services agreement) with the firm, so you don’t have to spend 6 months in due diligence with their lawyers. You have to give up ~15% to the VAR just for that facilitation, but it’s part of the cost of doing business.
- sergiotapia 7y ago100% this - seeing it first hand. It's truly like magic or some kind of cheat code.
- Spooky23 7y agoPeople don’t realize that big orgs are not markets, they are planned economies. There may be 500k people there, but 6 make the decisions for any particular thing. You need the magic salesperson or lobbyist because they know the right 6. Some things get sold to the CEO, other things can’t be because the people downstream have another agenda.
- elorant 7y agoAnd why would that guy work for you/me and not for another big corp with deep pockets that can hire him for top dollars? I mean I get it that sales are all about connections but let's not pretend that everyone in here can go sailing with a 10M sailboat in order to meet the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.
- unionpivo 7y agoyou don't need to start selling to Citibank to suceed. there are many smaller corrporations, where man to know is just CEO and maybe 1 or two others. And then build from there. Edit: Also your existing clients are your best "comercial". If you can get one CEO/CTO/(...) to make a phone call for you, this can help a lot. For above your product kind of cant suck (90% of IT related stuff getting sold to enterprises is overpriced crap)
- Lordarminius 7y ago> Some things get sold to the CEO, other things can’t be because the people downstream have another agenda. This describes why the vast majority of sales pitches for relatively good products fail. In many companies the agenda of the cliques and players and internal politics of the firm is the major hurdle.
- not_a_moth 7y ago> You almost certainly will also need a reseller who has an MSA (master services agreement) with the firm, so you don’t have to spend 6 months in due diligence with their lawyers. How exactly does that work with the reseller? This is a person you pay ~15% to, and then technically your product is sold under their brand to the big corp? If so, how are they found typically? New to b2b and figuring things out.
- Androider 7y agoYou don't need to find them, the decision maker in the corp tells their procurement people they want to buy your product, the procurement people tell their approved reseller to reach out to you (someone like these fine folks https://www.trustradius.com/value-added-resellers-vars https://www.trustradius.com/value-added-resellers-vars) for the purchase order. The VAR gives you the PO, you bill the VAR, and the VAR just hands over the license key or whatever to the corp, and deals with things like renewals (if they're good, and sometimes that's up to you). The VAR probably has no idea what your software does. The corp still uses your software, not some whitelabeled version. This broken-telephone purchasing game is solely there because in a big corp it's really hard to write a check to a new unproven vendor, you'll just be a little line in the invoice they pay to the VAR each month.
- user5994461 7y agoWas surprised to find out from that page that CDW is a VAR. I used to buy network equipment from them. https://www.cdw.com/ https://www.cdw.com/
- narnianal 7y agoI think most people would agree that this is how the game works. Even corps like Citibank would agree that this is the right way to do it, because if you hire someone that is so integrated into their world they also don't have to worry too much about him f*cking them up just because you are his current employer. But the problem still is, how do you get that guy. There are so many people who claim to be that guy and few who actually are (and would be willing to switch). Smart people won't switch companies just to earn a more money. Strong relationships are worth more than a bigger paycheck and while you might retain many relationships you certainly can't retain all when switching companies.
- pirsquare 7y ago"Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product." Seen this so many times - not just in sales but also in acquisition. Guy from startup joins MNC in decision making role, then proceeds to acquire startup.
- vinay_ys 7y agoMost big corps have anti-corruption policies that prevent decision makers or key influencers from letting sales people take them to golfing or to concerts.
- ohples 7y agoNo they have policies against paying for those concerts or golf games.
- pas 7y agoIBM's BCG for example has very strict rules about giving and/or receiving gifts.
- Amygaz 7y agoI don’t know about that. I am think they call it a business meeting, and they’re all set... There are certainly some restrictions for audit purpose, and a bunch of loopholes to make sure business people can keep doing business stuff the way it as always been. Most places have no alcohol on premise policies, but that doesn’t include the CEO suite.