Enterprise Sales Challenges

Better get good quick at enterprise sales

Both comments are right on target. "[they] simply facilitate the buying process" and the question "how they plan to cope with not having inbound leads" are pure gold and articulate my frustration with enterprise salespeople. They would not typically be the types to play the long game at a startup when they could be making real money.thanks guys

This is how enterprise sales are done.

To be totally fair to sales people, it's very, very hard to say "no" when an enterprise customer is dangling a contract in front of your nose that means your company keeps the lights on for another year. But enterprise is really something you should look at if you really understand the niche, have lots of contacts, and plenty of patience and runway.

Atlassian found their niche: enterprise sales. Because the buyer is not the user usually so it's way easier to sell shitty products.

If you don't have any experience with Enterprise sales, you're in for a rough time with an early stage product. These customers are demanding, the sales cycles are long, and there are often many players you need to please. I would recommend finding someone experienced in Enterprise sales before chasing those customers. Otherwise, you'll probably end up wasting a lot of time and effort chasing deals that just aren't going to happen.

Yes. But it's not for everyone, especially not for a lot of engineers.Many of these buyers feel more comfortable meeting you in-person, so going to trade shows, writing articles for niche trade publications, and sometimes doing site visits are all very helpful. So is cold calling.Sales cycles are often slow. You have to get used to customers taking months to decide, having lots of meetings with different stakeholders, and to get good at telling the difference between those who need a

You should separate between inbound and outbound sales. If you work at AWS you are receiving a lot of inbound inquiries which make sales much easier than doing outbound work. In the case of top companies such as AWS, their marketing team performed a big part of the work while in small companies marketing cannot move the needle with a minimal budget, so they should be smarter, lucky, etc.

If you have money and resources, sure perhaps the sales cycle in Enterprise is dead. The part I think is missing from this article is that rarely are systems this simple. Most Enterprise level systems require some sort of "integration" where there are several moving parts. A good salesmen is able to pitch why your product, or company can perform this. Perhaps Atlassian has enough momentum now to not need a salesforce, but what about smaller companies that are trying to get customers? H

For those that may not have experience in enterprise facing sales (same topic, different submission):https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38964345