DeutschThis title sounds a bit like dirty secrets, doesn’t it? When thinking of enterprise software sales most people think about arcane, lengthy, sometimes sleazy bureaucratic processes entailing:
- Vendors who are very secretive about pricing: If you have to ask for a price our product isn’t for you!
- Lots of pointless meetings
- Obnoxious PowerPoint presentations
- A plethora of stakeholders
- A decision maker who won’t be using the software product being bought
- and – of course – a user who doesn’t have a say but has to use this product anyway and hence always and inevitably ends up unhappy and frustrated
Sometimes enterprise sales processes even involve seedy business practices such as kickbacks.
While some of this might once have been true and some aspects such as having to go through a lengthy, arduous sales process are certainly still true if you want to sell to enterprise companies, most of this information – or in most cases prejudices – is pretty much out-of-date.
So, in order to clear up some of the mystery and confusion about enterprise sales and to give prospective enterprise software companies sound and tangible advice, a new website called the Enterprise Sales Guide tries to “demystify the process of selling enterprise software“. The site is a veritable treasure trove of articles by people who’ve been there. These articles contain a lot of insights and useful information on various topics such as:
- pricing
- metrics
- scaling up
Although they’ll take some time to read and take in, if you’re dealing with enterprise sales in any way these articles are very much worth reading.
Another highly recommended article on how to devise a modern enterprise sales process is A Product Person’s Perspective on Enterprise Selling by Steven Sinofsky. In this article Sinofsky explains enterprise sales from the point of view of product designers or product managers who’re often nonplussed and out of their depth when facing the seemingly unsurmountable task of actually selling their new product to enterprise customers.