Sales Laundry

Q&A’s are excerpts of questions I have answered as part of Sales Laundry or other forums that I am apart of. If there is a relevant sales message for the masses I post it here to share, gather feedback and discuss.

Q: We have a strong sales guy, excellent with Small/Medium Enterprise accounts, but is obviously struggling to land large enterprise accounts and failing to sell them on our services.  He has not closed a single large enterprise opportunity.

I would appreciate any help in steering this guy in the right direction, any issues you feel they may have with these account types, and what plans/procedures/proposals may be put forward to resolve this issue. Thanks

A: The absolute best way to get to the bottom of the problem is to go with him on some SME account calls where he is excellent and some large account calls where he is struggling and see first hand where the challenges are getting the best of him.

The good news…

He is able to at least get an appointment with the Large Enterprise accounts, so he is able to convey value over the phone (I assume) to a viable company contact and get the meeting.

The fact that your sales professional is excellent with Small/Medium Enterprise accounts tells me he does have the ability to convey your products value to a prospective customer and secure a signed contract.

Areas to look for an answer…

The fact that he is struggling to land a Large Enterprise account does suggest some potential problem areas worth investigating.

1. SME accounts will almost always have fewer decision makers involved in making the ultimate decision to purchase your product while large accounts may have a handful of individuals scattered across the organization that need to be collectively convinced.

Look at who he is meeting with at the large accounts, is he uncovering all of the potential people involved in making the purchasing decision?  He might need help identifying who the key players are in large corporate environments and developing a successful strategy to get in front of all of them.

2. While he may be getting meetings at the large enterprises, I would evaluate his efforts at qualifying the person he is meeting with making sure they can make a purchasing decision vs. being an internal advocate that cannot influence vendor/product selection.

3. The problems of the SME customer may not be the same as the large enterprise customer.  If he is selling to the same pain points in a large enterprise as a SME account, he may be missing the mark by trying to solve problems the large enterprise does not have or are of too low a priority to garner immediate attention.

Ask him what pain points/problems he is trying to solve for the large enterprise and evaluate his answers with other sales professionals successfully landing large enterprise accounts.

4. Look at your historic sales cycles.  It is not uncommon for a sales cycle to be longer with a large enterprise account vs. a SME account because of the bureaucracy and volume of departments and decision makers that have to be won over to your offering.  Benchmark the sales cycle you went through to land your other Large Enterprise accounts and SME accounts and compare them to this sales professional’s benchmarks.

From my experience, the answer you are seeking is most likely somewhere within these four suggestions.  If, however, none of these seem to address the problem, pinpoint the specific areas (from first call to signed contract) where your sales process differs between your SME and Large Enterprise accounts.  Systematically work through each one of those identified areas with your sales professional as it is almost a certainty that one or more of them are the source of his struggles.