Closing in sales process for purchasing

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Do you want to know what's the best thing about running an enterprise sales process? The deal sizes are huge. When you actually close the deal and get that logo you can use that logo to actually get five more logos because if you're good enough for this amazing logo you're gonna be great for these other logos. When you actually land a deal, there's so much upside and potential to actually expand that deal and sell them more. And on top of that, the lock-in is amazing. These are all the things that are great about enterprise sales. Now there are some pitfalls. The win rates in enterprise sales deals are incredibly low. The sales cycles are incredibly long. They can go a year, two years sometimes, it's insane. And there are so many pitfalls along the road. Now having closed enterprise sales deals; five-figure deals, six-figure deals, even seven-figure deals across my ToutApp and Marketo journey, I've learned a few things. So on this episode, I'm gonna give you the three principles that you absolutely need to know to actually close those enterprise deals. Intro. (lively upbeat music) What's up everybody. Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK. And on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. If you are new to this channel be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon cause I dropped an episode like this three times a week to help you grow your SaaS businesses faster with the TK energy. If you're already part of my SaaS, go to market program. If you're part of this community, welcome it's so awesome to see you over here. I remember the first million dollar enterprise deal, software deal that I was part of. Honestly, it was an incredible experience because I saw how people came together to make that deal happen. I saw how long it took and how we navigated all the pitfalls along the road. But more importantly, it was amazing to me that a company would spend a million dollars on software. It was insane to me, but that's what happened. It was a Marketo deal. And it was with a very notable brand and it was in Europe. And like it was amazing to see. And my eyes opened to just how powerful enterprise deals can be. But also what great looks like when you're navigating and closing an enterprise deal. Obviously, that wasn't the only deal I've been part of. I've done five-figure deals, six-figure deals, seven-figure deals. I've learned a ton. So I'm gonna get through the three principles you absolutely need to know so that you too can close your enterprise. If you excited to dig in, go ahead and smash that Like button and let's go into principle number one. So principle number one is that when you're starting off an enterprise sales deal you need to start at the C-suite as much as possible. Let me explain, when you're doing an enterprise deal chances are in order for an enterprise deal to even be possible, you're gonna have to be driving a very strategic transformation across the business. That means this is likely gonna have multiple stakeholders, multiple departments that are going to be chiming in. And on top of that, in order to justify this at all it needs to be a 10 to 20X return on investment. So they're spending $1M, that means someone's got to be able to say, "Hey, this is gonna return to us 10, 20, $30 million in terms of revenues and growth and profits and all those kinds of things." So because of all these things, that's a high and tall order. Because you're driving that strategic transfer. Because there's such a high ROI. Because there's going to be multiple stakeholders. If you're gonna get a deal to actually work, to click, to drive through you need to actually have support from the C-suite. So often I'll see people start to spin up their enterprise sales motions but they'll start all the way at the bottom. And that's always the wrong way to go because you end up losing a lot of time. You'll end up with people that don't really have the decision-making power, they can't rally the troops. And at the end of the day you still have to convince someone up top. So starting up top is always a great way to kick off an engagement, to kick off an outbound process, or to actually open up a discovery meeting. Whatever it is, start at the C-suite. Best case scenario, you're gonna actually get a member of the C-suite to say, "Yes, this is important. This transformation is important. We wanna hear what you have to say." Worst case scenario is they'll say, "Hey, listen this is important but I'm not the right person. This is the person you wanna talk to." And even still because the C-level person is gonna refer you to that VP or SVP or whatever it may be, that as SVP is gonna take you a lot more seriously because the C-suite person referred them to you. And that's why the power of this principle is you always want to start as high as possible. Start at the C-suite, even though it may seem scary because that's the only way you can get that strategic transformation going. You can actually get the buy-in from multiple stakeholders which are all gonna be important in an enterprise sales deal and in order to actually close it. All right, principle number two. This is something that I learned through some of the best enterprise AEs that are out there just going through the process and selling a bunch of these deals is that you should always take a land and expand mindset. Here's the thing, it can be very appealing to say, "Oh, IBM is interested in our sales engagement software. Let's get all of IBM to get on our sales and engagements software." But here's the thing, it's really hard to actually eat an entire elephant like that. I think that's the right phrase, but anyway you get the picture, it's really hard to do that. What you're better off doing is actually identifying maybe a specific department, a specific region or maybe a specific use case that you can solve for to kind of land your first deal. And once you land that first deal then you can expand to multiple regions, multiple departments, multiple use cases, and you can grow that book of business over time. There's a couple of reasons for this. Number one, just obviously, it's easier to land a smaller deal and then expand than to try and get that giant deal all at once. Number two, when you're dealing with these enterprise sales processes you're gonna have to go through procurement, you're gonna have to go through legal. And those two departments have very very specific processes. So if you can get a deal done by actually getting through procurement, by getting the MSA master services agreement, and the legal agreement in place then it becomes a lot easier to do more business. Meaning that first deal is always going to be the hardest but once you get the groundwork down on how to actually work through procurement procurement vets you, maybe security vets you, you have the right MSA and the legal things in place. And all those things will start to come together it will be a lot easier to do future deals. So because of this, instead of trying to get one big deal always take a land and expand mindset. Now, if you're thinking about, "Hey, like I don't know if I have the right legal agreements." So legal agreements are super important especially the right MSA, the right contracts, especially when it comes to enterprise sales. Be sure to check out this video I did with my brother, who happens to be a SaaS attorney, where we go deep into the exact agreements that you must have for your SaaS business particularly if you're going into the enterprise. You don't have to go right now I'll link to it below and you can check it out later. But principle number two, is you have to take a land and expand approach after you start all the way up top at the C-suite. Now, before I go into principle number three and I also have a bonus principle for you that I'm excited about, before I go to that let me just pause here for a second. If you starting to see the power in this of starting out top and taking a land and expand mindset, and actually following these principals. If you're starting to see the power and how this can transform how you approach your enterprise sales methodology, can I just get a yes in the comments below. Also be sure to smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm, if you haven't done so already. Also, if you're building out your SaaS business and you're establishing your sales methodology, you're figuring out how to run your enterprise sales process, you're trying to figure how to get actually pipeline going, then I invite you to check out my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program. Inside of the program, I give you the step-by-step process that you need to follow based on my experience on how to actually build out your marketing and sales machine so you can scale quickly and actually drive these enterprise deals. I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode but let's go to principle number three. Principle number three is you should plan the wedding. Plan the wedding, this is something we used to say all the time at ToutApp. I saw it in play in Marketo. As you're going through the sales conversations, as you're trying to bring together the key stakeholders, and you're starting to bring together what that initial deal looks like one of the things you should start thinking ahead of and start to pull in early is planning the wedding. Meaning, don't just wonder if they're gonna say yes to you when you ask them to marry you, you should start talking about what the wedding is going to look like. That's the whole analogy behind the plan the wedding. Meaning what you should start to incorporate in your sales process, is exactly what it's gonna look like after they say yes. There are couple of things that go into this. Number one, you should start to think about how customer success is going to work. Bring in the customer success person into the deal so they can start to get introduced and say, "Hey, this is the person who you'll be working with as we formalize the deal." This is the kind of stuff that brings it closer to a close either a yes or a no. Instead of going on months after months after months of not really knowing if you're gonna get that deal or not. The second thing you should think about is how you're going to do onboarding and training. A lot of times companies actually want to pay you to make sure that their people are gonna be trained on it and onboarded properly so they actually get that ROI. Meaning they're not looking to save money on this. What they wanna make sure is they secure their investment to get that 10X to 20X ROI. So when you start to talk about this is your customer success person, here's how we're gonna onboard you, here's the project milestones, here's how we're gonna do the training, here's how we're gonna ensure you get success everything starts to shift for them. They're starting to feel a lot more comfortable and like, "Okay, cool. These people have a plan on how to drive success. How are we gonna get that ROI?" And they're gonna be more likely to say yes. So planning the wedding is super important. The last piece on this, and I saw this work really well at Marketo, is start to think about partners, professional services and implementation. A lot of times because they're making this big investment they don't necessarily have the know-how or the bandwidth to implement your full product. So if you can include professional services from your own company on how you're gonna implement it for them, if you can start to bring in partners that they already trust into the deal to say, "Hey, these guys worked with our other customers. They know how to use our platforms. They're gonna implement it for you." The the buyer is actually gonna be very happy. You would think that they would be like, "Oh God, this is more cost." But they look at these expenses as a negligible expense to spend so that the bigger spend on the software is actually worth it. And it ensures there's ROI and ensures that it's successful. So planning the wedding is the third principle. You should think about customer success, on-boarding training, partners you can bring in, professional services. These are all things that are gonna show like, "Hey, once you say yes, we have a plan." And everyone is a lot happier when you have a plan. "We have a plan on how we're gonna onboard you, train you, make you successful and get you that ROI." They're gonna start to feel a lot more comfortable about all of this. So to recap these principles. Number one, let's see how we line up. Start at the C-suite, startup up top make sure its a strategic transformation that you communicate. Think about landing and expanding. Don't just try to eat the entire elephant all at once. And also plan the wedding. Now, these are three principles that I've used over and over and over to ensure we're closing these enterprise sales deals. If you're thinking about, well, how do we actually you know, build out our enterprise sales process? How do we think deeper about this? I have a bonus principle for you. Hopefully it's okay to over-deliver on these videos. I have a bonus principle which is, I put together an entire 17 minute guide to enterprise sales. This video has done incredibly well. You can check that out over here. You can click on the link or I'll link to it below. You don't have to go right yet, let me close out on these thoughts. But that bonus principle, where I go into in-depth 17 minute guide on enterprise sales process, how to think about it, and apply these to actually close them is gonna be super powerful for you. So now you know how you can start closing these enterprise sales deals in a much more effective way. How you can start opening them up with these three principles. Go check out that guide. A link to the legal agreement. But let me leave you with this message. If you're at that stage where you're building out your scalable, go to Go-To-Market machine. If you have some revenues and you need to really build that scalable machine, you need to establish your strategic narrative, your ideal customer profile, you'd actually establish a sales methodology. Then I invite you to check out my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program. Based on everything that I've learned 15 years of being in the SaaS industry, multiple exits, multiple companies. I've codified a framework that you can follow to actually build out your scalable go-to-market machine. And I also provide along with that framework I give you my coaching so that you actually can talk to someone that's been there, done that. So this program is my SaaS Go-To-Market Program and it's an application only basis which means that you should check out the details and if you feel like this is a fit for you and this is a priority for you, you can apply to join. When you fill out the application form, we'll get on a call. We'll talk through application and I'll tell you if I can help you or not. It's super simple, super straightforward. So to learn more, go to tkkader.com/gtm. Tkkader.com/gtm. And all the details will be over there. All the videos I talked about; the SaaS law agreements, the 17 minute enterprise sales guide both of those will be linked below as well along with the link to the Go-To-Market Program. So you should check those out. If you got value from this video please smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm. It's also for my team, we just love hearing from you. Put any questions you have in the comments, I answer every single comment that comes through. And lastly, if you have a co-founder, a team member, a fellow founder, that would get value from this video please share this video with them. We wanna spread our message as far and wide as possible to help as many people as possible. Strategies two, three times a week. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon, if you haven't already. And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode. (light airy music) To help you grow your SaaS businesses faster with the TK energy. Did I say that already?