All Too Well
WMMM #046 - This week, I share a perspective on selling enterprise software.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter December 16, 2023 8 min read
Lessons from the Real World
This week, I deliver the rest of the content from two recent meetings with enterprise sales pros.
We explore why enterprise selling differs from what most people think.
I hope you enjoy.
A Path to Enterprise Sales
As the end of 2023 approaches, many of us take this time to assess where we are relative to our career goals.
Speaking recently with a seasoned enterprise seller, they shared with me the advice they have given to those who want to follow in their footsteps.
For those early in their selling career, a typical path looks like this:
Sales Development Representative (SDR) inbound
Business Development Representative (BDR) outbound
Sales Representative - Commercial Accounts territory
Account Representative - Named Accounts territory
Account Manager - Enterprise.
The first four steps are often accomplished within 8-10 years.
We then reach a crossroads where we have a decision.
Do we want to try selling to the biggest companies in the world, or are we happy with what we have become good at?
Why?
Selling Enterprise Technology
Selling enterprise technology to the Fortune 500 is hard.
The job is often misunderstood.
Therefore, as we are developing a strategy for our career advancement, it is prudent to ask ourselves:
Do we really know what we are getting ourselves into?
Here are some clues to the answer.
Only 30% of our time is spent performing the traditional selling tasks which we've become accustomed to:
Prospecting
Qualifying
Influencing.
The other 70% is invested in working the Buying Process.
We work with people who:
do not own the budget,
do not have the business pain that our solution remedies,
will not directly realize the business value,
And do not have access to discretionary funds.
We deal with members of departments like:
Supply Chain
Sourcing
Procurement
Legal
Vendor Management
Standards Committees
Risk and Compliance.
We must earn their trust.
They are vital to winning an enterprise order.
Why?
A Chance Encounter
A personal experience of mine may explain why.
Years ago, we were calling on a unit of AT&T based in Murray Hill, NJ, called Bell Labs. Researchers at Bell Labs are credited with many seminal technology innovations in American history, including the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C and C++ programming languages.
Ten Nobel prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Labs.
Not in My Wildest Dreams
A building full of accomplished research scientists is hardly the place I'd pick to learn a sales tip I'd value to this day.
We explored a concept from a brainstorming session whereby we opined that aging technologies managed the country's legacy landline networks.
With wireless networks soon to replace them, our database management system could be the ideal modern solution to embed in these networks to enable software-driven features.
As we maneuvered through that building by getting the next meeting followed by the next, we came upon an interested group and began building a relationship.
As a result, during one visit to Murray Hill, an individual on that team offered to provide their perspective for why obtaining buy-in to our idea would take excruciatingly long.
I took him up on his offer.
Ma Bell
This Bell Labs leader was a veteran of "Ma Bell," the affectionate name for the former Bell System.
The Bell System was a system of telecommunications companies led by Bell Telephone Company and later by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) that dominated the telephone service industry in North America for over 100 years. In 1983, the US Government forced an antitrust breakup of the Bell System.
This becomes relevant to enterprise selling because of the "culture" adopted by the Bell System.
When one has a monopoly - before the breakup, if a US citizen wanted telephone service in their home, they had only one choice - one had predictable revenues and guaranteed profits.
Without competition, there was no risk of losing business.
Possessing a monopoly made it relatively easy to meet your objectives: invest in the network just enough to support the population growth in your territory and place tight expense controls on everything else.
The company's leadership had to have an accountant's discipline.
Sales and marketing expertise?
Not so much.
The business processes and operating procedures of Ma Bell were designed to control expenses.
And with time, the processes of the Bell System evolved into a culture that blew past merely conservative expense management.
Obstacles were put in place to make it difficult for Ma Bell departments to spend any money.
Built-in Obstacles
Our Bell Labs leader explained that these Ma Bell business processes, including the built-in obstacles designed to discourage any spending, survived the 1983 breakup and could still be found in each of the Baby Bells (aka Regional Bell Operating Companies - RBOCs) created in 1984.
The seven RBOCs have since consolidated into three companies: AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen (formerly CenturyLink). The operating procedures and business processes first implemented in the Ma Bell days remain in place, even if in a modern version.
Additionally, these expense controls became considered a big business best practice.
The large companies in the financial services industry were some of the first to imitate these telcos.
In time, much of the Fortune 500 has implemented some form of these best practices.
In my recent meeting with that experienced enterprise seller, they were dealing with a company that made it difficult for its departments to spend money.
Their Buyer also informed them that their company made it difficult to spend money.
In fact, they made it even more challenging to invest in technology from a supplier with whom they had no prior business relationship.
Extra steps were required.
It was taking more time than usual to move from one step to the next.
The company was not a telco but a global leader in medical supplies.
Difficult to Buy = Hard to Sell
Of course, this explains why selling to enterprises is inherently more difficult than to smaller or newer companies, like digital natives.
But, another outcome is the frustration of the line-of-business leaders in these large enterprises.
This culture makes it difficult for departments to spend.
The inability to spend slows innovation and makes a large enterprise more vulnerable to competition.
Ironically, the vulnerability creates even more justification for a purchase and a seller.
Understanding this history helps explain what we experience as we perform our roles as enterprise sellers.
And the better we understand these enterprises, the more effective we are at selling to them.
I am grateful to have been educated by someone who lived much of this history.
It has helped me navigate the buying process of enterprises for a good deal of my career.
When It's Not What They Think
When selling to enterprises isn't what they think, the degree of difficulty increases exponentially.
Who is "they" in this context?
"They" are those in a position of authority and are responsible for sales.
"They" can also be:
Those who have never carried a quota but think they know
Those who believe their intellect automatically qualifies them to be able to sell
Those who don't value the sales profession
Those who underestimate what it takes to be a successful enterprise salesperson
Those who don't respect the enterprise sales role.
"They" might include:
Those who do not understand the path we've taken and the skills we've acquired to arrive at where we are today
Those who think that since we have reached the level of Enterprise Account Manager, we cannot "hunt," we are merely "farming" salespeople. (See Path to Enterprise Sales above.)
How is the job made more difficult?
All Too Well
I know this all too well from personal experience.
I have only encountered it a few times in my career.
But I've seen it more frequently in the last few years such that it is worth discussing in hopes that at least one of the "they" reads this edition and is helped by it.
Enterprise sales cycles are messy and unpredictable.
Week-to-week updates can have ups and downs.
It's not easy.
It requires problem-solving.
It requires those who understand and have done the job.
Otherwise, expectations are not aligned.
Standups have become public "dress downs" when a positive, predictable update is not provided.
The salesperson is blamed for poor performance for providing a truthful update.
It wastes time and energy, making the already challenging job tougher.
Enterprise sales professionals do not require a "fear of management" to show up on time and perform their jobs correctly.
Sure, we can take the criticism, but when it's coming from a lack of understanding, it only hurts the source's credibility.
If we have hired the right sales professionals, we have a team expected to have difficult conversations with executives in Fortune 500 companies.
So why are we surprised or taken aback when these individuals push back on nonsense?
Our sales pros want and need to use our leadership in our complex sales cycles.
Team selling is a powerful tool.
If our leadership is a "they" (instead of we), it eliminates a powerful tool from our strategy and increases the degree of difficulty.
An experienced sales leader prevents much of this lost productivity and impaired culture.
Inserting an experienced enterprise sales leader into this equation, even temporarily, can solve many of these problems.
When We Aren't What They Think
Who do "they" think we are?
Can you blame them if they judge us by the titles of the books that we read?
"The Art of War"
"Winning Through Intimidation"
"The Secrets of Closing the Sale"
"Think and Grow Rich"
"Everyone Else Must Fail"
"The One Minute Salesperson"
"Hooked"
"SPIN Selling"
"Never Split the Difference"
"Pitch Anything"
"Sell or Be Sold"
War, winning, intimidation, pitch, never split, secrets, spin, closing, rich, must fail, and one minute are not words and phrases that conjure images of sophistication or professionalism.
They only help perpetuate the misconceptions many have about the sales profession.
I am constantly reminded of the wisdom of knowing which things in life are within our control.
Others' misconceptions are not among them.
As sales professionals, we can control the enthusiasm we bring to our role.
When we are enthusiastic
- our listener is likely to become excited
- those around us become enthusiastic.
If we can get people excited, we have the power to influence them.
For sales leaders, be awesome to work with.
People want to work with people they like.
"I'm at my best when I'm working with you."
That's the reputation we want.
Thank you for reading.
When you think “sales leader," I hope you think of me.
Jeff
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I possess the skills identified in this article and share them as part of my service.
I offer my help to sales leaders and their teams.
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