Enterprise Software: Selling to an enterprise is not easy – if it were, everybody would be doing it. It’s challenging to get an enterprise to buy your software on a long-term, repeated basis while enjoying sales growth at the same time. Some companies have found success on this tenacious market, but most continue to struggle. Product deficiencies, timing issues, and competitive challenges can all slow your progress.
Software companies tend to make a series of common mistakes.
By avoiding them, you’ll start to close better deals.
1. Failure to Recognize (Stiff) Competition
Competition comes in various sizes and forms. Your competitors include larger establishments with elaborate sales departments as well as other, smaller private companies. You are also competing with the enterprise’s own internally developed solutions. It will pay off to invest time to obtain insightful data on your market competitors.
More than two-thirds of on-premise software sales are based on channels according to TechCrunch. What is more, only 20% of software-as-a-solution vendors operate channel programs allowing other firms to sell their solutions. It would pay off to talk to prospective customers about the competition, including potential goals and emerging targets. You’ll find this to help you gain insight into your competitors’ activity.
2. Is Your Product Good Enough?
The modern software enterprise market is huge and constantly being attacked by new products. To be successful, your product – and user experience – should stand out. Pursue the segments, for which your solution is compelling and unique. A common problem with marketing to enterprises comes from insufficient focus. It’s important to be able to prioritize, but this is not easy. An ongoing dialogue with your client will help. Your solution should be interesting enough to overcome the barriers enterprises normally set.
With an improved focus on your targeted segment, you can find a niche by developing insightful understanding of the company’s needs.
3. Being Ahead of the Demand Curve
For a newcomer, enterprise software markets aren’t the friendliest of places. Look for ways to integrate your solution into an existing platform. If you are marketing a new version of a given technology, you might face resistance from enterprise staff, who are relying on an old and familiar one. Try to combine the old with the new – have an option to apply the new solution, but also to revert to the old one when needed or preferable.
Let’s take streaming analytics technology as an example. There is cutting-edge tech that can handle different types of log data within the framework of an end-to-end stack. While this might sound forbidding and overly complicated, the technology is actually not hard to set up and apply, and it will go a long way toward optimizing a company’s business processes. Reference link for more details.
It’s important to encourage potential customers to make a change. An enterprise software will stick with its current solution by default. Present the benefits of yours convincingly. Be aggressive. Uncover as many urgent and unique requirements as you can and address them in a proactive and credible manner.
4. Prolonged Sales Cycle
Sometimes, companies are slow to close deals due to an extensive sales cycle. Selling software to an enterprise is all about suppressing negativity. There are few early adopters when it comes to enterprise IT. However, there are also ways around this. It is crucial to employ best practices with your marketing and sales process.
Multiple groups of influencers or decision-makers are involved in the vast majority of Global 2000 companies, including IT gatekeepers, product users, and executive or administrative groups. All of them work together to hamper your sales process, as your sales team must make do with incomplete information. It is of the paramount importance to track and measure all customer communication by applying marketing automation tools to ensure optimal team management.
Also Read: The CLV Calculator’s Impact on Your SaaS Business
