Systematizing Sales with Software and Processes

You need to have a certain mass to be able to sell six figure a year deals to a true Enterprise. I'd ballpark that mass as 90 lbs or so. They'd hire a software engineer who was 110 lbs soaking wet for $100k a year though, right? So clearly that engineer succeeded in an enterprise sales process at least once.

People tell me that that's different, but it is and it isn't. I closed my first (small) enterprise deal for AR, for a consortium of over a dozen hospitals (we got a tiny sliver of their appointments business), back when our run rate was below $2k a month. I felt pretty terrified about being on the phone with a VP they had around just to talk about HIPAA compliance, but no part of that conversation was a blocker to them doing the deal. (Long story short: I had done my homework on HIPAA and demonstrated that I understood what I was promising them. I then delivered it. The end.)

Converting, or just ending up with both? I've worked for two companies with both and neither product was ever going to replace the other. As your disclosure suggests, the Atlassian suite fulfills a different set of needs than SharePoint.

Interesting. I'd definitely like to hear more about how this works.

> Ask me if you’re curious about going into depth on that — I might write an essay about it in the new year.

Yeah! Anything that lets me figure out support and sales better would be extremely welcome. I'd be very grateful if you found the time to write about it.

The next time you find yourself in the situation of wanting a quick number, try it this way and you might get better results. When you make contact with the sales organization, communicate:

1. You have no idea what these things really cost.

2. You need just a non-binding, ballpark budgetary figure to the nearest $10K (or nearest $1K, or nearest $100) to find out if you can put it up for the budget.

3. You are not the purchasing decision maker, but do have influence (see below for variations).

4. A general idea of scope: how many users, seats, whether you are a DIY shop or you want to retain professional services for those things that need to be deployed, or whatever else you think will help the sales rep give you a rough sizing.

The vast majority of participants at HN do not have budgetary signing authority in the $50K+ USD range for a single purchase, and are not familiar with how the sales process works at this level. Indeed, many simply have no purchasing authority whatsoever, but do have influence ("my boss generally buys whatever I tell him to buy"). No offense, but the sales people don't want to really deal with you; they want to work with the people who can make a purchase decision. If you really do have purchasing authority, spell it out ("I can sign for the purchase", or "I sign for departmental purchases but it has to be approved by my division manager if it is above $X thousand", etc.).

Please don't lie about it if you don't have purchasing decision making power. In these days of ever-improving CRM systems, that simply hurts your co-workers when/if they contact the vendor again. The sales teams everywhere are getting increasingly better at remembering (with the help of CRM) companies who pull this stunt, and some are even remembering who told them; they might not drag their feet helping you, but you can be damn sure they're not going to bust their nuts digging through announcement lists and databases to find promotions or push special consideration to give you the best discount possible.