BIG TIME

prospecting, selling to, and closing the largest deals in our pipeline

Photo by Henry Be on Unsplash

Hello friends -

This week has me reminiscing on a couple of prior posts like:

and:

Basically - how we can become more adept in prospecting, selling to, and closing the largest deals in our pipeline. With the year in front of us, let’s brush up on bagging the biggies.

In this week’s edition of Stretch Weekly -

• Jason Lemkin gives us 10 tips to start selling to big companies as a startup

And don’t miss this week’s snippets in helping your team land the largest deals in your pipeline.

THANKS for reading!!

-Grant

And lastly - as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- subscribe or share it with someone who might as well 👊.

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STRETCH SHARES

10 Tips to Start Selling to Big Companies as a Tiny Startup

Jason Lemkin asks why would a Big Company buy from a tiny 10-person startup? Especially in these days, of more scrutiny on new vendors and new spend?

They wouldn’t. Unless, the gain way outweighs the risk.

And yet … they do all the time. He gives us 10 tips to sell to big companies:

1. Figure out your 10x feature for large enterprises — and distill it to a subject line.

2. Take that 10x Headline Feature — and do targeted outbound and ABM promoting it.

3. Go to every leading event and meet everyone you can. Put that 10x feature on your T-shirt and business card

4. Do every bit of press, every podcast you can that even a few prospects might listen to

5. Build on the platforms your target enterprise customers use.

6. Content marketing is slow, but it does work.

7. Minimize risk by encouraging paid pilots and small deployments to start

8. Ask what problem they most want solved — and just solve it for them

9. Find technology and integration partners. And build webhooks and an awesome API to make it easy on them

10. Start smaller, and go upmarket over time.

Full post HERE

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STRETCH SNIPPETS

• 🔟 'Lotta sales teams are moving up-market for larger deals. If you're trying to land your first $100K+ deal, here's Nate Nasralla’s list of 10 things to know about the "inner life of enterprises so you have more empathy for your deal champions...

• 📈 “When selling to larger companies you must come to every conversation with a point of view about their business,” said Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital. “You have to know what they are focused on: growth, mitigating risk, or cutting costs. These strategic initiatives for the business will trickle down to every department across the organization. When you know what their strategic initiatives are then it's easier to map/align your solution.”

• 💰 Budgets are tighter than ever, and all large purchase requests are scrutinized closely. Your champion must defend their request with a compelling business case and speak to it clearly, and it's your job to empower them to do so, says Ian Koniak as he gives us a simple formula that you can use to create a business case and ROI for all large deals.

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🧠 Mindset

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” -Anne Lamott

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Thanks for reading!

My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).

— Grant 👋

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About stretch vp: confessions, learnings, and insights from sales leaders in SaaS

Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights, and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles, and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.

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