Having worked with SMBs and Enterprise accounts, I realized, contract size isn’t the only difference between enterprise and SMB sales. The actual sales process tends to be quite different as well.

👥 With small businesses the Shareholders (Principal) are often the Managers (Agent) siting at the CXO positions. Eliminating the conflict of interests as they can decide if something is of their Company’s best interest (directly benefiting the Shareholders). The Decision making process is a lot simpler, Sales Cycle is a lot shorter and you can expect a faster turnaround time.

🏢 When you work with Large Enterprises, the Shareholders do not interact with the Company directly and generally the board directors and mangers are their point of contact.

With Enterprise sales, you have different buying criteria and a larger group of decision makers.

Managers are naturally inclined to act in their best interests (which are not always the same as the interest of shareholders), leading to conflict of interests.

And keeping in mind the Agents (Managers) do want to maintain their own interests (can be in any form). So, your offerings do matter but there are so many other factors which are of significance to make a deal. Can’t comment on how things work internationally but at least in India it is very difficult to crack a deal without providing some extra favors (especially if the ticket size is big). Customers’ lifetime value (LTV) justifies a more resource-intensive process with a higher customer acquisition cost (CAC)💵.

📢 Would love to hear your views and your first-hand experiences on this.

💭 Does Industry in which you deal with make any difference to this?

#foodforthought #sales #processcontrol #principalemployee #enterprisesolutions #smbs #salesandmarketing #cloudcomputing #businessandmanagement