Does your company deal with long-term business processes? If so, it is interesting to know the sales strategy called enterprise sales. This practice consists of selling to large companies and requires a good B2B relationship, in addition to specialized sellers, since closing the sale usually takes some time.
If you want to enter this area, it means that your company is at a high level in the market, where there are few companies for you to offer your service, but with a higher contract value. For your business to be able to close the sale, your sales team needs to stand out.
Keep reading and discover more how to specialize your team for enterprise sales with 6 important characteristics!
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How does the enterprise sales process work?
These B2B sales demand time and knowledge from employees working in the commercial sector. Unlike traditional sales, enterprise sales involve more people, more meetings and, with several people being able to make decisions, your team needs to manage very carefully so as not to lose the lead in the middle of the process.
Normal sales take, on average, a month or less to close. Enterprise sales last 3 to 4 months of negotiations. The objective, in these cases, is to focus on the mindset and have an innovative discourse, as large companies sign high contracts and cannot even think about wasting money on a service that they do not like. Therefore, your company must be sure to introduce innovation. For this, the commercial team needs to be aligned with a good strategic sales plan.
Learn more: Sales performance: how it works and what is its importance
The challenges of enterprise sales
To stand out in high-performance sales, it is essential for the commercial team to know the characteristics to deal in the best way with the factors that are part of the business. This type of sale is very challenging and obstacles cannot discourage your sellers.
6 characteristics of sales for large companies
Long sales cycles
The bigger the budget, the longer it takes for the decision to buy or not. Most large companies have different people to approve budgets and, as these are long-term plans, planning must be thorough until closing time. Therefore, it is important to know the lead cycle, so that your sales team does not get lost in the schedule and is always attentive to deadlines so that the lead is well attended
Although the sales time is long, the actions taken by your team to cultivate the lead must be quick.
Smaller number of companies to contact, but with high potential
With the lower number of leads, the individual preparation to approach each one and offer the services must be more efficient and personalized. All sales planning must be based on the specifics of the company and the commercial team must be prepared with all the necessary information for the negotiation.
For your company to be noticed in enterprise sales, it must have a consolidated inbound, with a well-known brand in the market. Because, even if there are fewer people to prospect, the market analysis will be much more contextualized.
Provide good shopping experiences
Providing good shopping experiences is not just offering quality products, it is also having a service focused on agility and efficiency. In enterprise sales, the company needs to feel valued to close a large contract with you. It is important to maintain a good relationship during the negotiation months and offer a unique and personalized experience.
Invest in personalization
Traditional practices will not work with enterprise sales. Personalization is an essential tool to reach the big contracts. There is no need to invest in tiresome standards, creativity has to flow freely so that the prospecting process takes all of your company’s commercial intelligence to the other organization.
It is necessary to understand what the lead’s day-to-day life is like. Thus, sellers can specialize and present good arguments in negotiations.
Escalate contacts
In large companies, it is very difficult to maintain direct contact with a single purchase decision maker. The big business hierarchy shows several decision makers, or a decision maker almost impossible to contact. Your commercial team needs to learn how to overcome these obstacles and reach those who really have an impact on the purchase decision. For example, it may be that in your company’s sales process, the commercial team talks to the commercial director, but the investment will also be evaluated by the financial director.
Balancing high customer acquisition costs
If your company is going to earn a lot from the enterprise sale, it will also spend on resources to prospect this lead. So as not to invest in vain, optimize business processes to offer the solution that B2B really needs.
Having a shallow qualification is not good for this type of sale. The lack of knowledge makes the lead run away and avoid their sellers for not knowing the basics about negotiation. Already in a deep qualification, the focus is to collect important data for the lead to advance in the purchase journey. The information ranges from the size of the company, to its purchase cycle and its budget to invest in the innovations that your organization provides.
Count on ASB Marketing to increase your sales
If you want to implement demand generation strategies in your business, it is of paramount importance to start with planning.
In this scenario, understand your audience, online behavior, preferences and, especially, make an analysis of your competitors and current demands of the market.
Then understand how your sales process works and what characteristics need to be changed to meet your ideal customer profile.
In addition, it is essential to keep in mind that demand generation does not only occur by paid media, on the contrary, inbound marketing actions (attraction marketing) and demand generation generate very advantageous results for organizations when well employed.
Finally, you can count on an experienced marketing and sales company to support the implementation of these strategies, such as ASB Marketing.
With the best innovative methodologies and tools, ASB Marketing finds its ideal customer and qualifies them through fully automated and personalized email cadence.
When the lead arrives at the purchase decision phase, we only passed on to your commercial team to close the negotiation. With this, we guarantee increased sales, reduction of trade cycle, cost optimization and support in long -term business expansion.
Do you want to know more? Go now and see how ASB Marketing can help your business!