What is Enterprise Sales? A Quick Guide to Closing Deals

Enterprise sales refers to sales of services or SaaS products to large enterprises and companies with at least 1000+ employees, which are typically harder to sell to.

Tired of chasing small deals? Imagine closing contracts worth millions.

That’s what enterprise sales help you achieve. And it’s not rocket science - it’s a process.

This guide will walk you through the secrets to cracking enterprise sales to help you stop leaving massive revenue on the table.

What is Enterprise Sales?

Enterprise sales, unlike small-cap sales or mid-cap company sales, refers to sales closed with companies with more than 1000 employees that are typically within the Fortune 500 in their local market. That said, these companies don't have to be listed publicly.

These can also be companies that generate over a hundred million USD in revenue, which for SaaS and IT service companies translates to high-ticket sales and contracts.

Why Does Enterprise Sales Matter for SaaS Companies?

Enterprise sales can make a huge difference for a multitude of reasons. The top two are that one, the enterprise sales can improve your overall brand value, and secondly, these sales can improve your overall topline and revenue dramatically.

There are other aspects, such as the fact that enterprise sales can end up being a source of consistent revenue. And also, create a lot more revenue opportunities due to the large network of partners, clients, and associates that enterprises typically have.

Enterprise Sales vs. SMB and Mid-Market: What’s the Difference?

Put into simple words, when compared to SMB business sales, enterprise sales are both a lot more lucrative but can be challenging to close. But in a little more detail, these are their main differences:

• Revenue: As mentioned earlier, enterprises, when compared to SMB and mid-market companies, generate a lot more revenue, typically from 100 million USD to even above one billion. For SaaS and service companies, closing an enterprise sales deal can mean lucrative deals and contracts.‍
• Difficulty in Closing: Since they have a lot more revenue, the general probability of closing enterprises as clients is quite challenging, given their existing network and the fact that they typically only work alongside established brands that have a track record of meeting international compliance requirements.‍
• Compliance With Industry Standards: Due to data privacy laws as well as all the compliance laws, potential enterprise clients typically require that you have strict security and access protocols. Non-compliance for enterprises can lead to heavy fines from regulatory bodies due to data breaches and non-compliance with laws like CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS, to name a few. ‍
• Dealing With Multiple Stakeholders: Unlike small-cap companies or mid-cap companies, enterprises often have a wide range of stakeholders from various departments. For each of these, they have different end-goals and pain points, and proving how your product can add value can take time.‍
• Heavy Competition and a Limited Pool: Due to how heavy the competition is, booking even a sales call can be quite a challenge. To work around this, you must establish trust with stakeholders. These companies bring high revenue, meaning they are less likely to agree to a pitch, and your emails or messages are often ignored.‍
• Credibility: To work with an enterprise, you need to have or create a good degree of credibility. This can be through the usage of case studies and existing projects you’ve worked on. However, on the flip side of this, after working with an enterprise client, you establish an impressive brand image and a lot more credibility in your market.

The 4 Essential Steps in the Enterprise Sales Process

Enterprise sales are not completely different from any other type of sales except for the fact that it require a lot more attention to establish trust, and it is a lot harder to close. According to sales influencer and CRO Andy Paul ‘How you sell is more important than what you sell’

1. Know Your Customers

Like any form of marketing or sales, knowing your customer is the first step in closing enterprises. 

• These can be the pain points, this can also be job positions, or the type of industry issues relevant to that industry. 
• In doing this, 63% of sales reps say that they use LinkedIn to get to know prospects better.
• In knowing your prospects first, you realize how much value and in what terms you can add value to the company.

2. Build a Rapport

Sales is never a one-sided conversation; a lot of the time, it requires mostly listening. But in listening, you must create a rapport with the client to create a healthy back and forth in your channel of communication.

Once this is established, your prospects are a lot more likely to convey what their main problems and issues are, leading you to tailor your product as a solution a lot better to their specific needs.

3. Know Your Products

Regardless of whether you on the service industry or the SaaS industry, you need to understand your product completely. 

• In enterprise sales, you need to understand who your competitors are and what they offer, and how your product offers a unique value proposition that positions you better.
  
• Aside from this, if it's a service industry, you need to understand the ins and outs of that service. For instance, what kind of issues these companies are most likely to face or have faced in the past, and how you address those concerns along with objections.

4. Use Social Proof and a Strategy That Shows Value

Social proof is one of the best tools in closing enterprise sales; it shows that you have solved this problem before, and it also shows that you are capable of delivering value to clients.  

• Where your social proof or case studies are not an exact match, you need to create a pitch or sales strategy where you can convey the level of value you’re offering to this specific enterprise.
• This value proposition can be an alternative to a competitor company. A good way to do this is through unique selling points that make you stand out, but curated to their specific pain points.

How to Build a Top-Notch Enterprise Sales Team

Hire Good Sales People

Sounds obvious? Well, the fact remains that sales is a very people-centric process and hiring good salespeople is the first step in creating a top-notch enterprise team. 

• In sales, a lot of the time, it’s a practice makes perfect sport. This is also shaped by the industry you have sales experience with - ideally, hire salespeople with experience in your industry. ‍
• In the grand scheme of hiring your sales team, however, these must be empathetic people. Apart from this, your salespeople must be good at prospecting, be numbers-driven, and proactive in generating and following up on leads.

Set Clear Goals, Expectations, and Incentives

Any sales team is only as good as its goals and expectations. To drive sales forward, incentives are a very powerful tool.

• To generate sales quickly and have better revenue, motivating your sales team with incentives can significantly speed up your sales process. 
• In the case of enterprise sales, goals would have a lot more to do with how many meetings you set with potential clients and less so with how many of these you can convert. 
• On the whole, enterprise sales are more of a quality game than a quantity game, meaning even with one sale, you can generate a lot more revenue than your traditional small-cap and midcap contracts.

Train Your Sales Team Proactively on Your Services and Products

Your sales team needs to understand your services and products completely. And in order for them to successfully interact with stakeholders, they need to understand the stakeholders' pain points and what is motivating them.

• Training and prospective knowledge shape how they are most likely to respond to specific messaging and benefits you can offer them.
  
• In doing so, they need to have a genuine interest in the client and the problems their facing. Enterprise sales rely heavily on the trust, expertise, and integrity you put across.  

Create a Sales Centric and High Performance Environment

Although competitive and high-performance KPIs can seem toxic for some, at the end of the day, they allow your team to be proactive and have results. 

As a sales manager or chief of sales, you need to create an environment that is built around performance and numbers.

5 Biggest Challenges in Enterprise Sales

Building Trust at a Slower Pace

• In the case of enterprise sales, it can be a lot more drawn out, and a lot of the time, this can lead to you having to build a longer rapport with clients.
  
• This means you might have to build trust, address objections from multiple teams, which is unlike your usual midcap and small cap clients, however, it can be lucrative in the long run.
• In fact, 87% of companies that buy expect sales professionals to act like trusted advisors.
• For most outreach campaigns, pausing for 2-5 days within cold emails yields the best results
• In the short run, the challenge is that you have to deal with revenue targets, which can be stressful.
  

Prospecting and Qualifying Good Leads

Within the sales process, finding the right enterprises that actually require the product and are ready to decide in the short run can be quite challenging. 

For this, knowing whether the deal will close or not takes time based on conversation and how well you know your target demographic. To deal with this, you need to have certain benchmarks to qualify your ideal customer profile.

The truth is not every enterprise or stakeholder will be your ideal customer; however, creating an ideal customer profile or ICP helps you make sure you don’t waste your time.

Avoiding Discounting

Although discounting can be very tempting, it’s important not to make a habit of reducing the pricing of your services when dealing with bigger clients.

However, with this, it sometimes becomes more a question of how much potential for growth the deal carries versus how much it will cost you in the short run.

Whether the business is actually worth the time investment depends on the current market pricing and how it will affect your company’s profit margin.

Creating a Situation of Urgency

A lot of the time, for enterprises, there is no urgency when it comes to new initiatives or trying out a new tool. This can be due to various other targets and grand scheme plans that are being carried out for the company at large. 

For sales personnel, creating a situation of urgency, prompting plans to make a decision a commit to a contract can be a challenge. However, it is a skill that you need to develop relevant to your product and industry, often using potential ROI or risk factors in order to do this.

Dealing with Multiple Decision Makers and Handling Objections

Another common challenge in enterprise sales is dealing with multiple stakeholders and decision-makers. The major reason this is a challenge is that they come with their own individual set of objections and are often motivated by different metrics.

While a sales guy might be more inclined to numbers and revenue, a tech expert is more likely to look at scalability and technical difficulties that could arise from implementing your product.

How to Craft a Winning Enterprise Sales Strategy - Expert Tips to Shorten Your Enterprise Sales Cycle

Use AI-Driven Sales Enablement Tools

Using sales enablement tools can significantly improve your overall outcomes when it comes to enterprise sales cycles.

• This can help with timing follow-ups, recording conversations and meetings, and help you make the most of every microcommunication and message.
  
• 83% of teams using AI saw revenue growth, while it was only 66% for those not using AI.
  
• AI sales enablement software can also look at your historical data based on past conversations with other prospects and clients to help you make suggestions and improve meetings that follow this with a better approach.

Identity Pain Points and Requirements for Specific Markets

Without identifying the pain points of your enterprise prospect and then realizing the requirements, you are nowhere near ready to close or even pitch a sale.

• The secret behind any good enterprise salesman is understanding what is motivating your client and what outcome you need to help facilitate for them.
• To do this, knowing their pain points and getting them to talk about them in detail is what will help you speed up your sales process.
  

Put a Label on Objections and Address Them Proactively 

Instead of side-stepping or brushing aside objections, putting labels on what the major concerns can be and addressing them proactively, even if slightly hinted, can assure that you understand a company’s hesitance.

• This helps put across that you’re here to create as much value for them as possible. 
• For enterprises or any sale, for that matter, handling objections proactively demonstrates that you are confident in the products and services you pitch.

Qualify for Your Leads Early to Understand if the Prospect Can Make the Purchase

In case of enterprise sales, you need to quickly understand if your enterprise is in a position to make a purchase.

• Moreover, whether your specific lead is in a position to make the purchase or convey this need for the purchase to stakeholders is also important.
  
• A lot of the time, in enterprises that have several stakeholders and the overall plan and strategy of the company may not align with a specific prospect that you are trying to sell to.
  
• So to deal with this, qualifying whether there is any immediate need that you can fill is a challenge that you need to undertake proactively to not waste your time in endless meetings.

Make Signing Contracts or MOAs As Easy as Possible

After all the meetings and agreements, the major part of closing your sale is the signing of the contract. To do this and to close an enterprise successfully,  you need to make signing the contract as easy as possible.

In doing this, you should consider using digital tools and digital agreements can be carried out within a short, specific timeframe. Running them through the details of your MOA or payment plan makes it as easy as possible for your enterprise client to be on board.

Using Technology to Supercharge Your Enterprise Sales Process

Enterprise sales significantly change the course of your ARR and profitability.

But the reality is that numbers and visibility on quality, a how you constantly improve your sales, which is what something like AI can enable for sales teams.‍

Sales automation software like Thunai can help you get clear visibility on how your team's sales calls are going. From automating CRM data entry and follow-ups to more, to having automated call reviews, it’s an AI tool that improves your odds of conversion. 

Want to know more? Explore Thunai free of cost here ( no credit card needed and without any hidden costs)

FAQs for Enterprise Sales

What is an example of enterprise sales?

One example of enterprise sales would be a company like HubSpot selling a customized enterprise package to an enterprise like Deloitte that has multiple offices and is a lot more likely to scale up.

What are enterprise and B2B sales?

The difference between enterprise sales and b2b sales is the size and potential revenue from the deal. All b2b sales are technically enterprise sales, however, only sales made to companies with 50+ million in revenue or 1000+ employees can be considered enterprise sales.