San Francisco – For solution providers that have mainly focused on the SMB market, selling to larger enterprises in even departmental implementations can be a culture shock. While it can be challenging though, the rewards can be lucrative.
As San Mateo, Calif.,-based hosted ERP, CRM and e-commerce vendor NetSuite increases the functionality of its platform, the vendor says more of its partners are going after enterprise implementations.
Speaking at the company’s annual Revolution partner conference, Stephanie Palmer, an account manager for NetSuite in the software vertical, said a key change when selling to larger businesses is that you’re not just pitching to one business group. You’re pitching too many business groups, each with its own unique dynamics and interests.
“Often it’s challenging to find-out who the key power brokers and decision-makers are, and often executives aren’t the key decision makers,” said Palmer, adding getting those stakeholders onside is key, because they’ll make the recommendations to the executives.
Enterprise deals tend to involve bigger dollars but much more process, with the client much more likely to validate your total cost of ownership (TCO) projections with their own methodologies. A good approach, said Palmer, is to lead with a specific product area, such as finance. Once they’re on board, look for opportunities to extend the scope to other functionalities.
She added it’s also important to know what the competitive landscape is, and who you’re competing with for the deal. As well, given the longer timeliness for enterprise sales, she recommends building a time line, setting milestones for achievement and using a deal sheet to manage all components of the sales process.EnabledSuccess Inc., an Ottawa-based NetSuite partner and solutions provider, recently closed a deal with a client they can only describe as a business unit of the largest telecommunications company in Canada, and a Microsoft Gold partner. The company was also honoured at Revolution as NetSuite’s breakthrough partner of the year.
Paul Doucet, president of EnabledSuccess, said it began with the company looking for an order entry system, and before they could even respond to the request for proposals they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
“They’re a public company but they can’t let other companies or customers know they’re changing their systems,” said Doucet. “That’s a difference with an enterprise deal; you’re going to have to sign an NDA at some point.”
The main competition for their NetSuite pitch was Microsoft’s Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision), said Doucet. And since another division at the company was already doing a Navision implementation, the pressure was on this division to go the same route.
It was a lengthy sales process, with an RFP and then a later addendum and second round of proposals, but Doucet said what won the deal for them over the Dynamics proposal was their boardroom presentation to the company’s team of evaluators. While their competitor white boarded their proposal, EnabledSuccess built a rough proof of concept demo and let the evaluators actually see how the system would work live.
“You’re not going to get everything right because you’re not going to know all their bushiness processes, but you can give them the feel,” said Doucet, adding this was a cost EnabledSuccess took on itself. “It’s the risk of doing business. You invest in it, but we felt good about (the potential for a deal).”
Other key factors included that no code had to be written, and that the implementation could be done off site. Once the choice was made however, the legal and negotiation process proved just as lengthy and challenging, said Doucet, as they worked with the client and NetSuite to structure the three-year deal with both capital and operating funding components as well as software and services licensing. In the end, however, the client dumped Salesforce.com and decided to go end-to-end with NetSuite, making it an even bigger deal then originally anticipated.
Looking back, Doucet said managing the long sales cycle was a challenge. He recommends partners treat the sales cycle just like they’d treat the product implementation cycle, with heavy importance placed on project management.
“It’s exciting, buts it’s a long sales cycle,” said Doucet. “Just treat it like an implementation, because that way you’re not going to let things slip.”
He added as well that partners shouldn’t be afraid to bring in other partners to shore-up their expertise in different areas, as doing enterprise deals on this scale can be a resource challenge for smaller partners.
“Most importantly, don’t be greedy,” said Doucet, emphasizing partners should focus on one strategic functionality at first. “It’s going to grow. Just get them started off and let them grow.”