I have been selling enterprise software for the construction industry (a niche product) for about a year. In my situation the sales process is fairly simple once you have the right product (e.g., product market fit). Although this example is about the construction industry, some of the ideas may apply to other industries as well.
I start by attending industry trade shows and other industry specific events (i.e., conferences). Typically the upper management of these companies (VPs and Project Executives) attend these events since some of the events are in the day time and regular people have to work at that time. These events are great for networking and gathering new clients because the people who you meet are either the decision-maker or they can quickly introduce you to the decision-maker in their organization. One thing that I learned from selling to companies is that you should start as high up the organization as possible. A new employee or some in middle management is much less likely to pass your message along to their boss.
The most difficult part of enterprise sales is setting the right price. Typically enterprise software does one of two things. It either (1) increases revenue or (2) decreases cost. For both situation you need to quantify the client's current process - what they are doing now without your software. I typically measure labor hour saving per year per employee or new revenue generating potential per year. Then I calculate the new condition if the client were to use my software. The difference between the current condition and the new condition is the amount of value that the software is creating for the client. And finally, the price that I charge them should be a percentage of the new value that has been created. The price also needs to be high enough to cover all the cost (sales, development, marketing, and operations) and profit(20% to 60%).
Basically:
If (Price < Value_Created && Price > Cost + Required_Profit){
Deal} else {No Deal}
What I have found is that most software engineers under price their products. An engineer might think along the following lines: "It costs me about $1000 to host my servers on AWS per year. If I charge $5000 then I would be highly profitable."
The problem with this way of thinking is that the person does not consider the value that they are adding to the client. The client doesn't really care about how much it cost you to build your product. They only care about the value that you can add them.
I can go on further if anyone is interested or have any questions.
I start by attending industry trade shows and other industry specific events (i.e., conferences). Typically the upper management of these companies (VPs and Project Executives) attend these events since some of the events are in the day time and regular people have to work at that time. These events are great for networking and gathering new clients because the people who you meet are either the decision-maker or they can quickly introduce you to the decision-maker in their organization. One thing that I learned from selling to companies is that you should start as high up the organization as possible. A new employee or some in middle management is much less likely to pass your message along to their boss.
The most difficult part of enterprise sales is setting the right price. Typically enterprise software does one of two things. It either (1) increases revenue or (2) decreases cost. For both situation you need to quantify the client's current process - what they are doing now without your software. I typically measure labor hour saving per year per employee or new revenue generating potential per year. Then I calculate the new condition if the client were to use my software. The difference between the current condition and the new condition is the amount of value that the software is creating for the client. And finally, the price that I charge them should be a percentage of the new value that has been created. The price also needs to be high enough to cover all the cost (sales, development, marketing, and operations) and profit(20% to 60%).
Basically: If (Price < Value_Created && Price > Cost + Required_Profit){ Deal} else {No Deal}
What I have found is that most software engineers under price their products. An engineer might think along the following lines: "It costs me about $1000 to host my servers on AWS per year. If I charge $5000 then I would be highly profitable."
The problem with this way of thinking is that the person does not consider the value that they are adding to the client. The client doesn't really care about how much it cost you to build your product. They only care about the value that you can add them.
I can go on further if anyone is interested or have any questions.