How to sell Fortune 500 to the state and other terrible organizations

If you are selling software, then surely at the sight of the budgets of large corporations wondered how you would take a bite out of this pie. Personally, we are in Web-payment.ru , a project on payment systems, constantly looking for ways to get into partners large payment systems or services for advertising services, development, or even assistance in blogging in Habré. This translation article is about how to work with large fish. I would just like to warn you that our realities are different from those in the West, which are described in the article, but in some ways they intersect, so it’s interesting to read.

Many are wondering about selling software to fucking large organizations. Working with such cool companies in the price range you set is extremely difficult, since any values ​​less than $ 500 for them look like an error in rounding. At the same time, having a couple of such customers gives you a social value, which allows you to sell to other such giants as well as to smaller customers. If you get IBM as a customer, you won't lose anything. Well, if at the same time IBM itself did not fire anyone for choosing you as a supplier, it means that you are quite suitable for a big game.

Many ordinary engineers have the misconception that selling cool and large companies requires the ability to play golf, invite customers for dinner with a steak and have a budget that goes far beyond the scope of small business. This is true, but not 100%: you can always use the process of purchasing large companies and benefit from it. Let's delve into the question of exactly how this can be done.

Understanding the B2B delivery cycle and using its features for its own purposes

Most of those who are currently reading this text have already seen half of the B2B supply cycle in their normal work. You fill out a form or ask the manager what you need (copies of MSOffice, a new computer, etc.) and six weeks later you will receive it. Maybe you even imagined that all these six weeks separating you from the thing you need are required to perform proper dark rituals to summon supernatural forces? No, it's all nonsense. You just do not talk about this with the purchasing department, because they value their reputation. Now I will describe to you the usual workflow that big businesses use to buy something “small enough”, that is, orders, the price of which contains less than six characters. If you all know about it - feel free to skip this section, because the most delicious will be after it.
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1. The user needs something. A user within the company (for example, a regular, ordinary employee) finds out that he needs something and asks about it.

2. The purchasing manager is looking for suitable options. The user either knows about the appropriate option from the very beginning, or the employee of the supply department is looking for it. At the same time, he usually does it in the same way as a simple user - googling, occasionally referring to the “Internal List of Suppliers”, with which the company has worked before and has never sued for poor delivery.

3. A purchasing manager checks compliance. The person who is responsible for the acquisition, interrogates several business suppliers to determine whether their products meet the requirements specified in the relevant documents (which, by the way, most likely were filled by another person). This stage often includes a pivot table with a list of approved requirements (did you notice how similar they are to these hateful tables with check boxes that you saw on your competitors' site? Yes, yes, they also know the rules of this game). Answers to the vast majority of questions in such a table are stupidly obvious. And, nevertheless, you will need to answer them on the site, which the purchasing manager looked through fluently and decided that it was much easier for him to give them to you.

4. Purchasing manager requests a quotation. Companies that send back a table in which almost all requirements are marked receive a request for a commercial offer. It is a written confirmation that product X is available for purchase at the price of Y, without any nuances or tricks (in fact, there are always many tricks and nuances, but this document forces us to identify the most obvious ones. Well, or at least, the procurement department thinks so). In most cases, when making small purchases (again, less than 6 characters in price), the purchasing manager will request only one commercial offer.

5. The supply department submits a purchase order, which is a paper document saying: “We accept your offer to purchase product X at price Y and request its delivery with payment after delivery according to the following conditions, which we most likely do not care will break. ”

6a. The business supplier delivers the order. You know this part, right? You deliver your product to a specific employee of the company, whose name is indicated in the documents. Perhaps he will be somewhat outraged by the fact that he had to wait only some six short weeks. His purchasing manager could not inform him about the status of the request.

6b. (Approximately at the same time) The business supplier sends the invoice for payment to the appropriate customer account. That is, you send an invoice for payment (a formal request to pay) to the department that is responsible for paying the bills. Depending on the specific features of your client’s organizational structure, it may be the same purchasing department or some other department.

7. Payment of the invoice. Further, the business provider receives payment in the manner indicated in the invoice. Although, in fact, they, of course, ignore your instructions (especially those related to deadlines).

The easiest way to “hack” the procurement process

Your users within the client company hate the procurement procedure because it creates obstacles for them to perform their duties. The point of making successful sales as part of working with large companies is to find your favorite within such a company, who needs your product “like air” and make this person an ally in the fight with his own employer. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to allow them to use any loophole that they can find in the work of their purchasing department.

All this bother to approve any order is equal to the salary of the decision-maker, so most supply departments have several specific limitations. One of them is the upper limit of costs that a low-level manager or a simple employee can approve on his own, without any ceremonies, using financing from corporate credit cards. This limit is usually $ 500 or $ 1000. The best hack that software development companies have come up with over the past 20 years is monthly invoicing.

This practice allows you to sell products worth several thousand dollars, breaking them up into payments of $ 499 a month, avoiding existing control over the supply companies that prevent your users from doing their jobs. The reason why almost every SaaS business should set the cost of its pricing plans in the range of $ 250 to $ 499 per month is that your customers' employees can easily write off such expenses on a corporate card. For them, this is someone else’s money, so it doesn’t matter to them what amount they are talking about - $ 99, $ 250, or $ 4,999 a month. For large organizations, all these numbers look like errors when rounding and they simply do not bother to control such small purchases. Based on the foregoing, you should set the price as close as possible to the top of this range.

Some types of businesses do not use corporate credit cards and will require them to send a purchase order every time. In this case, your policy should be as follows: “We are happy to provide you with purchase orders subject to your making an annual prepayment (you can also add requirements for the tariff plan here)”. This saves you from a monthly stamping of purchase orders worth several hundred dollars - an occupation you would prefer to avoid. Your customers will also be happy with this approach, because they, in turn, can not tolerate going through the procedure for approving orders.

Bypass the objection that “your company is too small.”

In the course of your business, you may encounter translations in excess of $ 500, as well as meet a more conservative business compared to the usual mega-corporation. In working with such companies, perhaps the only serious obstacle arises at 2 or 3 stages of the delivery process. A typical phrase you will hear from companies at this stage: “We don’t want to be your biggest customer.” There are several ways to mitigate this objection, which I shamelessly stole from my friend Jason Cohen of WPEngine .

The best option is to play on the contrast of the level of your services and those of competitors. You always come out the winner in this comparison: you just need to choose the right words and then even the fact that your competitor, for example, offers telephone support, and you - no, will not play any role.

Magic words to help you: “I appreciate your choice of brand X. You think they are a more reliable company. They can actually answer your call at 2 am, but unfortunately they cannot do anything for you. They will only try their best to make sure that you hang up without talking to those who can solve your problem, because the services of such people cost money. In addition, you yourself know what will happen if you call at 2 pm, the same person will answer you. ”

“On the other hand, during an e-mail with us, the answer may take several hours, but you will receive everything you need right from me each time, and I will do everything in my power to solve your problem. I created this product from scratch, and I am very fanatical about the quality of services that I provide to you, because then you are likely to become the largest of all my clients, and if I don’t care, my business will end. ”

This, by the way, is a magical advantage of the company's founder. Customers can not tolerate talking with sales managers, because they are too intrusive, unable to provide all the necessary information. Clients like to communicate with company founders: they talk about their products with undisguised passion and always, always know all the answers, or at least know how to get them. You can even take advantage of your founder’s advantage in such a way that your answer: “We would gladly do it, but by virtue of X, Y or Z, at the moment it is unrealistic” would sound better than your competitor’s answer in the spirit: “Yes, of course, we also do that, will I add it to the price? ”

Developing social significance for working with big business

My latest software business, Appointment Reminder , is now a one-person company that works with freelancers from time to time. One hospital known in the country included the Appointment Reminder in the list of 12 companies that received from it a list of their requirements for the project, for which it required an event notification system. Why exactly did my service get on this list? Because he is in the first place in the issuance of Google for the keyword “appointment reminder”, well, “since you chose Google itself ...”. Yes, seriously, I quote their words.

The project, which the hospital worked on, did not have a six-digit budget (the amount is protected by a non-disclosure agreement, but let's say that we are talking about ten thousand dollars. This is not true, but it could well be so). Therefore, realizing that you should not expect a good percentage, the sales teams of my competitors limited themselves to sending typical answers describing the capabilities of their software and did not pursue this sale.

I can’t say that 10 thousand is a figure that can seriously motivate me (believe me, I never thought that I would ever think so once), but I decided that I really need this client as the basis for Appointments client base Remminder I wanted to be able to use their logo on my website as evidence of social significance. This would allow me to break through the entrance to a large and incredibly profitable health care market. In the end, I just threw the hospital staff with the answers to their questions and concerns.

You can win in any competition, no matter how large or difficult it seems. This can be done by winning small deals that are economically unprofitable for large companies, expanding at their expense and gaining access to the main lines of business of such companies. Clayton Christensen calls this “disruptive innovation.” Personally, in my head there is an old instruction about how to eat an elephant: bite off in small pieces, starting with the most vulnerable spot, that is, belly.

Twelve providers were interviewed to see if their products would meet the needs of the hospital. My competitors were various companies, ranging from specialized consulting agencies, numbering 10 people to companies from the Fortune 500 list. All of them simply sent standard letters with a list of software characteristics attached to them.

The length of my letters was at least 2000 words. Each paragraph in them began with headings like “* Distribution of public accounts: present”, followed by 200 words explaining why it is generally important for this particular hospital (copywriters board number 1: In a conversation with anyone Refer to the person by name, the same applies to the name of his employer and do not be afraid to slightly bend the stick. This will allow you to make friends and gain influence over people. This is a classic of the genre that never becomes outdated). I also offered to send a copy of each of my letters to the internal team working on the project so that they would also be in the know.

The hospital wanted to conduct an additional telephone discussion on the Appointment Reminder, as well as another main competitor who formally met the requested requirements. Suffice it to say that their annual sales are expressed in eight-digit amounts, and the number of man-years they spend on software development exceeds my figures by 100 times. In theory, I had to lose them in any fight, regardless of the circumstances. Their sales representative answered questions over the phone very superficially and without much interest in order to quickly return to their more promising customers.

When the hospital asked me for a telephone conversation, I remembered the name of the nurse who was in charge of the purchase (let's call her Jill) and thanked her for the electronic correspondence. After that, I once again introduced myself as “the person in charge of the product”. She asked questions. Responding to them, I constantly told her: “I can go into details as much as you like, if you want it, but, in short, I think that * what we are talking about * is necessary for your hospital. I’m happy to tell you more if you want. ”

When we got to really complicated questions, I said: “Right now I’m not ready to give an unequivocal answer to your question, but I will definitely answer it in more detail and by email.” Immediately after the telephone conversation, I sent her a letter (and again asking me to send a copy to the internal team), which gave answers to absolutely all the questions that we had previously discussed, separately stating at the outset that paragraphs 3, 7 and 9 relate to questions which I promised to answer separately.

It's funny that during a telephone conversation, Jill asked: “I really want to know from you, this product - your child? That is, as I understand it, are you the only one working on it? ”. And I said that in short, yes. After that, I used a variation on the topic of Jason's method and said: “This company consists of one person and although in the future I may have employees under my command, at the moment I don’t have them. I wrote this product myself, answer all questions and provide all support myself. And of course, as you said, I take very good care of my child. ”

In order to decide on which product to continue working with, the hospital held an internal meeting attended by 10 people. Each of them, except Jill, referred to the meeting as “the choice between Appointment Reminder and“ that second company ”that few people even remembered at all”. Their inboxes contained two letters with extensive comments from Patrick from Appointment Reminder and a PDF file sent by “the person” that the doctors promised to read when they would not need to save lives. The head doctor wanted to stay on a competitor. Jill passed the story about the “child”, expressing her warm personal support.

So I outplayed my biggest competitor and won a corporate sale, working on my business alone from Japan. If you are curious to know what kind of hospital this is, look from time to time at the Appointment Reminder home page, since I can get permission to publicly mention their name only after a few months.

I will not lie to you: to sell to corporations is a long and hard work. In general, the paper work on this project took 25 hours of my time, stretching for six months. And besides, there were a dozen other stories that began also ended, not reaching the stage of extensive telephone discussions. But now, finally, the sale is made, and a springboard for further attacks on an incredibly profitable segment of the market, which is not easy to get on, has been prepared.

It is interesting that, having received such a springboard, it becomes much easier to expand it. Now, to any following objection in the spirit: “But you are too small!”, I got the opportunity to respond: “* THIS_COMPANY * have already chosen me, but if you still doubt ...” Moreover, in addition to this, it turned out that the hospital that used this service did it together with several partner hospitals, each of which had its own reputation. Essentially, it turned out that I received 8 logos for a portfolio for the price of one.

Sometimes clients want to work with you at corporate rates and this is normal.
Gradually, with constant and careful personal contact, you move to an established automated sales scheme through your website. This is how I always saw this process, given that I myself had experience with sales that did not require personal contact. Sales managers look at it this way: “You find out about the existence of some hundreds of prospective clients, select from them 20 of those who are most likely to be interested in buying your product. Next, call the key decision makers and talk to them by phone. Half of these conversations are constructive. Three customers agree to a demo presentation, and one of them becomes your sale, and you get bonuses. ”

Ultimately, there will come a moment when you have a desire to stop making all the sales personally, as one of the founders, who have to arrange long-term performances for this each time. This desire will lead you to the great and terrible Automated and Structured Sales Funnel. Although you, of course, can find ways around the need to have streamlined sales processes (and with them the sales team). In the future, such non-standard strategies can also turn into “adapted to real conditions” ways of selling to corporations.

For example, a large company that safely uses a pricing plan of $ 250 per month could easily move to a $ 5000 contract if you offered them the appropriate incentive. You probably are now asking yourself: “What is serious, twenty times more ?!”. Look at it in a different way: for them it’s about a kind of “pocket change” to a “bill of a few hundred”. Stop thinking like a normal person, think like a corporation. Corporations behave like people, the smallest cash increase which is equivalent to the largest salary you have ever received.

How would you identify those who need a higher price offer in a separate segment of customers? In many cases, they will give themselves away by asking you questions such as: “Do your software have audit capabilities?”

There are three easy answers to this question:

• Unfortunately not.
• Unfortunately, there are no such functions, but we can introduce them for you.
• Yes of course. We just need to do this, this and this, and they will immediately appear.

Smash yourself properly if you ever say something like that in return.

The word “audit” is one of those whose pronunciation out loud in working with a corporation provokes a sharp price increase. (Examples of other such words and phrases: legal requirements, administrator, access rights, network protection, multilingual, service, etc.) Companies that really can afford to think about auditing have a really huge amount of money. Therefore, the correct answer is a variation on the topic “We provide our corporate clients with all the necessary facilities for conducting an audit. When will it be convenient for you to discuss the details? ”. After that, you complete the transaction at the undisclosed corporate price tag, which is likely to be several thousand dollars.

An important point: there is a big gap between corporate and regular price levels. If, for example, your monthly plan has a cost of $ 250 and provides you with access to 500 units of some kind of garbage, and a corporation needs 5,000 units, it will cost it several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars a month. Even if she only needs 500 units, the cost will still be several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars per month. Or maybe she needed only 50 units? It doesn't matter if it’s worth the same several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars a month. This approach is partially justified by the amount of hemorrhoids to which you subscribe, starting to engage in corporate sales. However, in general, this is just pure, uncovered price discrimination. Large businesses are practically price-insensitive *. Do not even try to sell them, based on their normal prices. (* This is a reference for software development companies.)

I have met many developers who learn about pricing, mainly studying other people's SaaS-prices. The ability to pay some conditionally high price for any SaaS that you have ever heard of always exists, even if the pricing page doesn’t say this in plain text. I know about companies that have their own policies against it (for example, 37signals are well-known followers of this approach), but there are many successful SaaS companies that have a magic lever that can send you very far from their standard price range. And often, the existence of such a phenomenon is never written anywhere.

Here's an example that will definitely not touch anyone: Github offers a corporate tariff, and a feature that allows you to select such customers in a separate segment is the ability to use the service “within its corporate network.” Did you know that you can use your Github account and easily pay five or six-digit amounts for its annual use? It is not hard to guess where Github makes more money: on all of its accounts, which pay $ 7 a month, combined, or on one of the largest corporate clients? Personally, I have no doubt about this.

We work to increase profitability

Sometimes it happens that customers can’t so easily take it and tell you: “Dude, I don’t care what your price is, be kind, take me 20 times more”. Often, however, this can manifest itself in their behavior. Suppose, for example, that you want to bring them up for discussion of the audit functionality. You can simply put the text “Contact us” in the price column on the tariff page. Most of your customers know the rules of the game and quite rightly see it as: “We provide services to large businesses and these services, as you can expect, are expensive”. This is a great way to get a whole bunch of leads without involving the project founders in this process.

Also, have you ever considered the opportunity to talk about the expansion of services through the software itself? For example, you can leave the option “Enable functionality for auditing” in the menu on the account settings page. Let clicking on this option brings up a window with the message: “Your tariff plan does not include functionality for auditing, but you can always contact us by following this * link”. And for those who will not use the link, make sure that an alert is automatically sent to your email that Bob Smith (Bob@mail.com) was interested in the functionality for auditing. After that, you can already contact Bob personally. In such a simple way, you will turn 5 minutes of your programming into a whole automated process of getting six-digit deals and you will be great.

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