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In my previous startup, Scawa, I spent a lot of time selling to enterprise customers. Scawa was a mobile commerce platform vendor, and we had to sell it to large retailers and convince them to use our platform. We were an kind of an unproven early stage startup at that time. With the new technology when people were not even convinced of mobile commerce, will it even be a big part of ecommerce down the line?
So the very first lesson is to be an elephant Hunter, which means to go after the big name customers, not the small ones. While smaller customers might seem easier to sell to as a small startup, the sooner you convince a large customer to trust you, the sooner you get credibility and it significantly simplifies the subsequent sales process
So if you get that one meeting with them to make your pitch, you'll have to make it count. They will ask you questions about technology that only your CTO will be able to answer. And if you cannot answer those questions on the spot, it's over. The sales cycle is over. They will also want to know that they're talking to a team that is really passionate about the problem space and that this team will make it their own problem to help them
Howie Rubin
@Howie · 0:44
Try and bring the room to a point where they're asking you questions and determine based on those questions what you think their needs could be so that you could very quickly show whomever you're presenting to that you have solutions to fulfill their needs
Dwarak Varadarajan
@Dwarak_V · 1:30
It's great to hear from you. Sorry, because it's been a long time we haven't met. I'm sure that Scott is the most company which I have made aid internship, and it's seriously unfortunate for me once I come internship in Scaven, you guys have left Skava and I totally missed. And I heard so many tales of you and Suzanne from the person who are working there
phil spade
@Phil · 4:47
And we weren't really able to get back into those companies after we had done that proof of concept. So I thought that was a major error on their part. And I think had they known a little bit more about the sales process, then we would have done a little bit better. I would have come back, and I would have personally said, okay, we need to set expectations
Hey, Phil, I agree with you. I think a proof of concept in enterprise sales is basically a failure of sales. When you're not able to actually sell the product, the service that you're offering, then it's kind of like a consolation prize. Okay, we'll image do it for free, or we'll do something very small for you. And if you like it, then you can take it for a startup
phil spade
@Phil · 1:06
Something you said there I think is really brilliant for anybody in a startup when they're approaching the clients. And that's to think of it, if you get pushed into a POC situation that it's really a failure to have communicated the value and the technical know how of what the value of your product or service would be in the visualization. Honestly, I agree with you
phil spade
@Phil · 1:26
And they could just bog down the entire company for two or three months while you guys put together a cohesive RFP response to business, you're not guaranteed to get. So for me going down that it route and getting that RFP was sometimes it's a necessary evil to go through. And other times it's just a waste of time and energy and resources. And like I said, just bogs down your company for three months at a time
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