What are your best tips for selling to enterprise and SMEs?

Question

Hey everyone,

As someone who is completely new with selling to enterprise and SMEs and would love your best tips.

I have an enterprise landing page https://leavemealone.app/enterprise

It’d be great to get any feedback on this too :)

Thanks!
Danielle

Arjun R Pillai · Accepted Answer

@dinkydani21 A few tips to get started
1. Don't focus on enterprise and SMEs together. The processes, paths, ways, timelines, content and everything else are totally different b/w these two. 
2. You are in the startup phase. I suggest a bottom top approach of start with SMEs, get traction, get product feedback, improve the product, get to decent MRR before thinking about enterprise. 
3. Once you define your target market, define your ICP (Ideal Customer Persona). Read all about it. Hubspot and others have templates to help you prepare one. Get it as focused as possible with whatever limited data you have. 
4. Once you know your ICP, think about where these folks are hanging out. How can you reach out to them? Read the book - Traction. It talks about all channels available. Then you can choose where you can go. 
5. At your stage and being a B2B SaaS, I think you should do outbound emails, LinkedIn outreach, product postings (PH and other related places), PR to get the initial kick off. 
6. By this time, you should have a few meetings on your calendar. Get on the call with a few intro slides and killer demo of your product. Talk about value prop (all about them and not your product), present case studies, give them metrics and actual time savings etc etc. Hopefully you'd start closing them.

Happy to chat more if you want details. Feel free to ping.

Go, get 'em :) 
Arjun

Lanre Akinyemi · Answer

@dinkydani21 Congrats on launching the enterprise plan & SME's! I used LMA when it first launched on Product Hunt so it's exciting to see it spread@

SME & Enterprise sales are totally different with enterprise often being slower, requiring a lot of additional steps and will often require successful experiences from other companies to close!

I personally have found that the path to enterprise sales is to build up a trove of SME's who love your product and can offer lots of case studies and testimonials. If you've already done this, then I have found that investing the time to find the right contact + targeted non-markety emails works wonders!

Also referrals = 🤑

Arjun R Pillai · Answer

@dinkydani21 
SMEs vs Enterprises:
B/w SMEs and enterprises, there are a lot of differences. 
1. It is very difficult to get meetings set up with Ent. 
2. Ent will want completed product and not half baked startup products
3. Ent sales cycles are very long, as long as 18 months which can kill startups just coz of that
4. Product roadmap will be very different (for eg; you integrate with different tools).
5. Ent will have heavy requirements for compliance, security, certification (SOC 2) etc. 
6. Pricing has to be different. SMEs can be billed at $5 per month per seat. Ent will have to be $75K ACV or more (Annual Contract Value).
7. Hiring Sales people for Ent vs SMEs is different since process will be different.

I can keep going on and on. If you are resource constrained (which startups are), don't try to boil the ocean. Shit won't work :)

LinkedIn Outreach:
Inmails do work, not very well though (in my experience). If you are targeting SMEs and you have some network in the kind of people you are trying to reach, then connecting with them with a quick intro message would work. Use a combination of email + LinkedIn Outreach.

#My2c :)

Lydia Sugarman · Answer

@dinkydani21 Arjun's advice is so smart.

So many have the idea that targeting enterprise customers is the B2B holy grail, ignoring the fact that there are literally 10s of thousands of SME prospects that are being overlooked.

The next mistake is focusing on an "over-hunted" niche, e.g. tech, professional services, when your product may be exactly what an ignored segment has been waiting for.

So, once you've defined your ICP, think about hiring sales talent out of that niche with an established book of business or network. For example, if it's in the manufacturing sales space, which niche, e.g. restaurant equipment distributors, and then, find a seasoned salesperson who's looking for a new opportunity.

Danielle Johnson · Answer

@rarjunpillai Wow great feedback thank you!
1. This is a great point, we are definitely focusing on small businesses first as they are easier to approach right now - could you tell me the main differences for the processes of these?
2. 100% - I have just implemented a testimonial gathering process for individual users so I will be definitely using it for businesses too and adding the testimonials to our landing page as we get them
3. Awesome, I'll check out Hubspot thanks
4. Will grab that book!
5. Do you have any advice for LinkedIn outreach? Do you recommend using InMails?
6. Great advice

Thanks again!

Arjun R Pillai · Answer

@dinkydani21 @lanre_akinyemi +1 for this :)

Arjun R Pillai · Answer

@dinkydani21 @lksugarman Fully agree with Lydia here. Adding to her point of hiring talent, I'd try and do the first few closes myself as a founder.

1. The first few sales have to be consulting way than a 'salesy' way. A founder is the best person to ask the right questions about problems faced by the customer, how they envision them to be solved etc. 
2. This will help you to hear from your customers first hand and will inform your product roadmap so much. For a startup, the first few iterations are super critical. 
3. Once you have a repeatable, scalable , target segment, then you start bringing in SDRs and account execs to close more.

If you hire before that, make sure it is a sales person who has been with a startup and who grew revenue from $0 - $2M.

Lanre Akinyemi · Answer

@dinkydani21 @rarjunpillai Wow this is amazing advice - thanks for sharing!

Lanre Akinyemi · Answer

@dinkydani21 - @lksugarman & @rarjunpillai have totally slayed this advice column so I don't have much to add re: enterprise vs teams.

For referrals I'm talking about inter-company referrals. If existing clients can intro you into other companies, this will seriously shorten the length of the sales cycle and provides the instant validation the new company needs to buy in 😸

Like most SaaS businesses, a happy customer/great customer success function is needed.

Hope this helps!

Danielle Johnson · Answer

@lanre_akinyemi ah right of course yes that makes perfect sense thank you!

It all helps so much 😄

Danielle Johnson · Answer

@rarjunpillai Really amazing advice thank you so much for taking the time to share!

Lydia Sugarman · Answer

@dinkydani21 Teams are good! Just not enterprise. SME is a BIG category and the right prospects have a lot of money.

Arjun R Pillai · Answer

@dinkydani21 No worries. Happy to help! :)

Danielle Johnson · Answer

@lksugarman great advice! You're right we have put all businesses into one "enterprise" box but I think we will change our landing page to focus on SMEs - even just "Leave Me Alone for Teams" :)

We had better start finding a niche! Thank you :)

Danielle Johnson · Answer

@lanre_akinyemi Hey Lanre! That's awesome to hear, thank you so much for your support! It's changed quite a bit since launch :D

I can totally see how it's going to be a lot slower and require more work to close the deal, but I am ready to put in the hours and try to convert our first few customers! I know it won't be easy. We have a few small teams using LMA for Enterprise in beta right now so I am hoping that I can convert at least one!

100% behind the case study and testimonial route - we definitely neglected that initially. We have a wall of love with a few tweets which hasn't been re-designed since launch. I have very recently started asking for proper testimonials from individual users and will be re-doing that page. Then any businesses who are using it now (even for free in the beta) I'll be trying my best to get a case study and testimonial from to sprinkle on the enterprise page.

What do you think to changing our enterprise page to target SMEs more right now - "Leave Me Alone for Teams"? As we went straight in with the big Enterprise word but we're far off actual big enterprise sales haha.

We have referrals for individuals - refer a friend and you both get free credits. Do you mean referrals for recommending us to their company? Maybe we could give a money reward if you recommend us to your employer and they sign up.

Thanks so much from your advice!

- Danielle

What are your best tips for selling to enterprise and SMEs?

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