4 ms·
Although I agree with a lot of the advice in the article, there's a "new school" of enterprise too, and ideas like virality from the consumer world often apply
by brandonb 14y ago
Although I agree with a lot of the advice in the article, there's a "new school" of enterprise too, and ideas like virality from the consumer world often apply to the new enterprise.
"Old school" enterprise sales meant hiring an army of field salespeople. It meant on-site visits, and pitching directly to the CIO, CFO, CMO, hiring sales engineers to build pilots, negotiate with procurement for months, etc. And all that meant the cost of a sale was high -- often $50,000+ -- which meant that your contracts had better be in the six-figures if you want to be profitable.
That's now how most B2B companies work in 2013. Look at Stripe, Yammer, Parse, Github, or Twilio -- you can sign up directly on their web site, often get started for free or cheap enough that you don't trigger purchase approval. Most of the customers for those companies come in through inbound channels, like blog posts, ads, partnerships, or referrals. And to the extent that they have sales, it's inside sales, primarily working to convert existing, happy users of the product to paying customers.
Chris Dixon has a great related blog post on this:
http://cdixon.org/2012/09/24/the-rise-of-enterprise-marketing/ http://cdixon.org/2012/09/24/the-rise-of-enterprise-marketin...
- davedx 14y agoYes, I think the technical points (e.g. interop & the other 'requirements') are more relevant than the marketing/sales points.
- F_J_H 14y agoHmmmm...careful there. Check out this excellent Steve Blank post on "selling with sports scores": http://steveblank.com/2009/06/25/convergent-technologies-war-story-1-%E2%80%93-selling-with-sports-scores/ http://steveblank.com/2009/06/25/convergent-technologies-war...
- davedx 14y agoThanks for that! Filed for later, when I'll start polishing my shoes and donning my suit :)
- patio11 14y agoThere are many, many more companies on the old model than there are Twilio-esque companies. Regardless, broadly speaking you are right: there are really interesting things happening in B2b right now. It's a great time to be alive if you like figuring out compelling ways to get people to buy software, and these days, not all of them involve steak dinners.
- makmanalp 14y agoI want to make an observation: All your examples sell to tech-savvy businesses. But the majority of the world needs software, not just them!
- TWAndrews 14y agoTypically models like that are a way to get small groups using the software which then functions as lead generation for an enterprise salesforce.
- dmor 14y agoI agree with this, Twilio has enterprise sales for this exact reason.
- rgrieselhuber 14y agoOne other thing the article didn't mention is that, for many software categories, IT purchases are not happening through IT but directly via the department that uses the product (eg. marketing, sales support / CRM, etc.)