Managing Enterprise Sales

Introduction

So you’re the new enterprise sales manager. Lucky you! You get to be a part of one of the most exciting, challenging and rewarding roles in business. You’ll have an impact on revenue growth for your company, and ultimately help it achieve its vision for success. That’s pretty cool! But just because you’ve been promoted doesn’t mean that everything is automatically going to fall into place for you – there are still some things about being an enterprise sales manager that might not be so clear-cut or obvious at first glance. So here are five tips from an experienced enterprise sales manager:

Understanding the enterprise sales pipeline

The enterprise sales pipeline is a process that measures the progress of an entire deal from start to finish. It consists of four stages: prospecting, qualification, negotiation and closing. There are also steps within each stage that are crucial to success.

• The prospecting stage involves identifying potential customers who have a need for your product or service. This may be done through ads or referrals from current customers; however, it’s important to note that you should never spam potential customers with unsolicited emails or phone calls—this can cause you to lose credibility with them and make them less likely to do business with you in the future.
• In order to qualify prospects properly, they must pass through three filters: company fit (does their organization align with yours?), individual fit (are they qualified themselves?) and demonstration fit (can they demonstrate how using your product will benefit them?). If any one of these tests fails, then the prospect isn’t qualified yet; if all three pass successfully then congratulations! You now have a qualified lead on which further work can be done during this phase of selling into enterprise accounts

The sales cycle is an important concept to understand when selling into enterprise accounts. It’s essentially the process of going from prospect to customer by identifying a need, creating a solution and delivering it with ongoing support. In order to properly execute this cycle for your business, you must first identify the needs of your customers and then find ways to fill them; this will help you identify which specific products or services they want from you.

Enterprise sales planning

Enterprise sales planning is a process that helps you figure out how to sell to large companies. You can use this process if you want to secure enterprise sales, or if you already have them but are looking for ways to boost your revenue. Here’s how it works:

• Set targets for your enterprise sales numbers each quarter.
• Determine how many units of product your company will sell in the next three months, six months, and one year by talking with others who work at other businesses that have similar products or services as yours (like marketing managers) and asking them about their budgets for making purchases like yours in the future. Also take into account any upcoming events that might affect those budgets—for example, the holiday season often sees a spike in spending on toys because kids need presents from Santa!
• Use analytics tools like Google Analytics (GA) or Mixpanel to find sweet spots of data regarding where certain customers are coming from online and what channels they’re using most often when they visit websites or apps where they’d be interested in purchasing products offered by companies just like yours! Using these sweet spots will help guide all future efforts related toward bringing more traffic through those same channels so we can continue growing our customer base even further!”

The last step is to take all of your research and create a sales forecast for the next three months, six months, and one year. This will be used by your company’s leadership team when making decisions about how much money should be spent on marketing efforts, which channels are working best for driving traffic to websites or apps where customers can purchase products sold by companies like yours, as well as deciding whether or not it’s time to hire more employees to help with sales efforts if things are getting too busy!

Sales goal setting

• Before you start, set clear goals for your sales team.
• Know what success looks like in terms of both revenue and new customers.
• Be ambitious but realistic: You want to exceed your targets, but don’t set them so high that you’re setting yourself up for failure. If you’re not sure where to start, speak with your manager or CMO about what they feel is reasonable. They should be able to provide insight into realistic goals based on past performance and other factors such as market conditions and industry/company competition.
• Measure progress as often as possible; make adjustments where necessary.

In addition to setting goals before the year begins, it’s also important that you hold yourself accountable throughout the year by measuring progress against those goals regularly (ideally weekly). This will help ensure that everyone stays focused on achieving their targets for growth!

Building relationships

Building relationships is the key to successful sales. In order to build a relationship, you need to communicate with buyers in a way that’s accessible and relevant.

It can be tempting to try building rapport by sharing industry gossip or talking about sports—these are great topics for conversation, but they’re not always appropriate when trying to establish trust with your buyer. The best thing you can do is ask questions about their life and business needs, then listen closely for cues about what matters most to them.

Hiring, firing and training great enterprise sales reps

If you’re hiring enterprise sales reps, make sure they can handle the demands of this position.

• Hire people who are good at working with others in a team setting.
• Hire people who can balance customer needs and company goals.
• Hire people who have a solid understanding of how to create value for customers, and how to communicate that value effectively.

Bear in mind that there are some differences between hiring enterprise sales reps and consumer-facing ones:

• The skillset will be different; enterprise reps need some technical knowledge about the product being sold (for example, IT infrastructure). Be prepared to train them on those aspects if necessary!
• The mindset is different; enterprise reps often have more experience (and more confidence) than their younger counterparts in other areas of their lives—for instance, they may already have children or mortgages when they start working at your company—so they won’t be intimidated by challenges like learning new products as quickly as possible while still getting results from existing clients within budget constraints imposed by upper management.”

Conclusion

The most important takeaway from this blog post is that managing enterprise sales is a different beast than managing consumer sales. It requires a deeper understanding of your company’s organization and what it takes to build a successful enterprise sales team.