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Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

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Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#61

Post by pirsquare »

crmd wrote: post #27

I am the CTO of a “unicorn” B2B tech company that focuses almost exclusively on the global 2000. Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product. If you want to sell into Citibank, you go hire the one guy or girl who previously sold $20M of X to Citi, who golfs with the VP of Procurement and goes to Billy Joel concerts with the VP of infrastructure operations. Once you hire this person it feels like cheating,…

"Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product."

Seen this so many times - not just in sales but also in acquisition. Guy from startup joins MNC in decision making role, then proceeds to acquire startup.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#62

Post by uchman »

cloudking wrote: post #2

Go on LinkedIn, find contacts, email/call them to explain why your product would help them and their business, set up a demo over video chat. Pitch them your product, why it would benefit them and try to secure a deal. After you've got some sales under your belt, sponsor a booth at a tradeshow relevant to your market. Demo your product in-person, collect leads and follow up for more sales. Rinse and repeat.

Skeptical about LinkedIn these days as it might be overused. Even I tend to receive lot of pitches these days and generally distrust the medium.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#63

Post by joyceaa »

muzani wrote: post #12

Cold emails work. Find the best use case for the company. Attach a link or screenshot why/how it would help them. Take a screenshot of their site or chat box, then edit it with an example of your bot in action. Follow up once. Not too many times. Sometimes people ignore the first time because they're in their emails looking for something else. Some people prefer cold calling, but I find the success rates are much, mu…

In my experience, you should follow up 4-5 times. In many instances, we receive positive responses much later in the follow-up cycle. For context: Selling to 100-plus-person SaaS B2B organisations.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#64

Post by uchman »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #54

Reading answers on this thread makes me wonder are those sales techniques really healthy to industry as a whole? No one questions that, and yet normalize probably unhealthy ways of selling utilities. "who golfs with the VP of Procurement" .. that's how corruption works as well, isn't it? Is that natural?

Humans are social. Golf (or whatever it is that floats the VPs boat" can only get you a foot in the door.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#65

Post by jimnotgym »

sk5t wrote: post #29
markbnj wrote: post #26

The advice I'll give is based on my experience as cofounder of an early online banking technology company back in the mid-90s. We started with three people in rented class-C space and over seven years did high six-figure deals with large and small banks including Fleet, Bank of America, Citi and others. There's not really a "how it works" for this. If I had to tell you how it works I'd say: it works by you making fri…

> But just bringing in a hired gun is unlikely to result in success imo. A thousand times, this is right on. Hired gun sales folk are generally going to follow the path of least resistance--they will try to get other people at your startup to do the boring/hard work they themselves ought to be doing. Or try to push through deals with lousy margins to get their revenue commission, or a dozen other pathological things.…

Quick point. If you set commission based on revenue then make sure you attach a minimum margin condition. Otherwise set margin based targets...

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#67

Post by jimnotgym »

rakkhi wrote: post #58
markbnj wrote: post #26

The advice I'll give is based on my experience as cofounder of an early online banking technology company back in the mid-90s. We started with three people in rented class-C space and over seven years did high six-figure deals with large and small banks including Fleet, Bank of America, Citi and others. There's not really a "how it works" for this. If I had to tell you how it works I'd say: it works by you making fri…

Agree with this and it seems like a really hard process. How is it that every enterprise I have worked at then seems to have one of everything and so many redundant tools. Is it just accumulation of crap over time? Good relationships that cut short this process? Straight up corruption?

All of the above, plus vanity projects. If certain people want a system, in many enterprises everyone below will bend over backwards to get it for them.

I will give you an example. A few years ago every c had a BlackBerry. IT ran BlackBerry business server alongside Exchange. Everyone was happy. One day a non-exec got an iPhone from his other job and wanted his emails from your co on the same device. There is no way to resist these requests, they will have it. Need to upgrade Exchange? Do it then, need to turn on web services, do it then. Need to hire back that team from Cisco for the week to sort the router, do it then. Need to hire the compliance consultant to rewrite your policies...etc.

When senior people want a toy they will have it (as long as it doesn't upset the other board members toys).

I guess that suggests that being the toy is the way to shortcut the long enterprise buying pattern. That or being the missing link that lets an IT manager deploy said toy more easily.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#68

Post by elorant »

Spooky23 wrote: post #34
sergiotapia wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this - seeing it first hand. It's truly like magic or some kind of cheat code.

People don’t realize that big orgs are not markets, they are planned economies. There may be 500k people there, but 6 make the decisions for any particular thing. You need the magic salesperson or lobbyist because they know the right 6. Some things get sold to the CEO, other things can’t be because the people downstream have another agenda.

And why would that guy work for you/me and not for another big corp with deep pockets that can hire him for top dollars?

I mean I get it that sales are all about connections but let's not pretend that everyone in here can go sailing with a 10M sailboat in order to meet the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#69

Post by namdnay »

yread wrote: post #60
namdnay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the RFP process. For a small product (maybe Jobs would have called it a feature) like a Chatbot, your best hope if you want to hit the enterprise elephants is to find a “digital transformation” RFP, give a really strong reply for the inevitable chatbot feature in round 1, then get rolled in as a “joint proposal” for future rounds with one of the big boys (Accenture, IBM…

This is interesting. How do you find open RFPs in your area of interest?

Trade publications/newsletters, word of mouth (useful to know people, even low level), and of course for anything regulated or public, they’re published on dedicated directories

Re: Ask HN: How do B2B startups sell to corporations?

#70

Post by codeisawesome »

jimnotgym wrote: post #67
rakkhi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this and it seems like a really hard process. How is it that every enterprise I have worked at then seems to have one of everything and so many redundant tools. Is it just accumulation of crap over time? Good relationships that cut short this process? Straight up corruption?

All of the above, plus vanity projects. If certain people want a system, in many enterprises everyone below will bend over backwards to get it for them. I will give you an example. A few years ago every c had a BlackBerry. IT ran BlackBerry business server alongside Exchange. Everyone was happy. One day a non-exec got an iPhone from his other job and wanted his emails from your co on the same device. There is no way…

How do these people become so powerful..? What do they have to give in exchange?
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