Questions

Enterprise Sales: How to Approach, Pitch and Close the deal. We are a full -service Business Intelligence start-up looking to find ways to get sales from enterprise companies. More so we want to handle all BI needs for companies that currently have none.

So, you’re a start-up but you have a full suite of BI tools now. Since you can handle all BI needs, I assume a) you can work with a variety of warehouses and marts including structured, unstructured, location and raw data and b) offer ad hoc analysis, querying, reporting, data visualization and dashboards. You may have tools, or at least some experience, with mobile and real-time BI, data mining and predictive analytics. You’ll need two sales decks. The “long” deck must a) explain who you are and what you offer, b) describe how you implement and support your tools/services, c) prove you can do what you say and d) explain your fee structure and the benefits of your BI tools to your prospect. Your challenge is to convince skeptical prospects that you’ll generate a positive ROI with real world examples. The short deck is based on the long deck: it can be read in two minutes and gets you in the door for face to face meetings. A comparison of your BI tools vs. well known competitors should be included in some versions of the short and long decks. Your proof (c above) is a demonstration with case studies – they will garner most of the prospect’s attention in the face to face meetings. Devote most of these meeting to the case studies. You’ll need sales, operational and financial data, and perhaps industry data, from two or better yet three companies for the case studies. The data must be at scale. A sales demonstration based on sample data will not convince skeptical VPs of Technology that you can handle their data. Creating powerful case studies takes time but it’s doable. Approach previous employers, former clients, companies owned by one of your investors or companies that you know need BI tools. Offer free services in exchange for data if necessary. Offer to anonymize the data and only use it for sales purposes. Each case study in your sales presentation should include examples of how your BI tools identify top or bottom line improvement opportunities. The case studies must knock the prospect’s socks off. Your price (or pricing structure) should include a promise to deliver X times the price in top or bottom line improvements within Y period. I would be happy to help you create the sales deck, particularly the case studies which are so critical to your success, and a pricing strategy.


Answered 7 years ago

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