B2B business founders and venture capitalists shared their first-hand experiences on effective ways of doing business with large enterprises in the recently concluded webinar “Let’s Make a Deal: How to Do Business with Large Enterprises”, organised by SAP APAC and e27.
Watch the webinar here.
Moderated by Aaron Ang, SAP Head of Midmarket Southeast Asia, panellists included Jonathan Tan, Managing Director of Unabiz Singapore; Quah Zheng Wei, CEO of Accredify; Gitta Amelia, CEO of Atola and founder of Everhaus VC; and Badai Tanmizi, Investment Manager at Qualgro VC.
Ang kicked off the conversation by sharing the importance of understanding enterprise customers and taking into consideration the relative complexity and strategy when working with 10-headcount businesses vs. 1000-headcount businesses, such as whether they have regional or global business-coverage, and even how one’s solution may contribute to the overall objectives of an organisation’s growth.
Given the pressing concerns of businesses both large and small such as sustainability and the ability to respond to force majeure situations like the pandemic, being creative in the positioning of one’s business combined with a deep understanding of the organisation being served are essential.
Understanding the stage a business is in
Tan further elaborates on these points through his experience in building internet-of-things company Unabiz, dealing with projects involving sensors and networks.
With over 1.3 million sensors deployed to date around the world, and having a business footprint in Singapore, Australia, and Japan, he advised B2B facing businesses to understand the value of their product line to potential enterprise customers based on its development maturity, and to position how the business will work with the large enterprise based on whether they are in the early, middle or late stage of growth and their corresponding capability.
Tan also mentioned the importance of identifying the nature of engagement with the enterprise: it can be selling to them as an end-user, selling through them as a partner or main contractor, and/or selling by being a reseller of their solutions.
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The sell-through model allows for a larger market size, but it is important to master system integration and leverage on opportunities of packaging your solution together with the product lines of corporates; when engaging via the sell-through model, it is important to educate and work closely with large enterprises in understanding your product properly and engaging for sustained sales push.
While indeed large enterprises present larger and more attractive deal sizes, the reality is that closing the deal will take more time. That is why it is important to focus resources on a set target of large enterprises you aim to work with rather than arbitrarily going around.
This helps you avoid “death by proof of concept” — a usual struggle among early-stage B2B startups – by being selective in who you work with and understanding how each party is going to invest in the deal. Tan also mentioned a good practice of understanding that enterprises—with their massive size—have many agendas across different departments. As such, navigating stakeholders and decision-makers within the organisation, engaging them, and having the right buy-in from the right people is key.
Tan argued that understanding the organisational DNA of the enterprise customer, being ready to reskill from the onset, and making sure you don’t oversimplify or overcomplicate are all key aspects of a partnership.
Other considerations such as designing for interoperability and being ready to work with other departments within the enterprise organisation being served are important. Furthermore, growth can be enabled by strategising further on how to extract greater mileage from a successful deployment and broadening the benefit of the system with further digital transformation.
The biggest challenge of working with corporates
Zheng Wei Quah, CEO & co-founder of Accredify, a company in the business of digital trust with over 12 million independently verified credentials to date, shares that the biggest challenge of working with corporates is going through the sales cycle and maintaining a product sales role versus a service provider role.
This is especially crucial for smaller startups that are only starting out and are now suddenly confronted by situations where large enterprises seek powerfully developed solutions that you simply cannot provide yet. In the discovery, implementation, and development phases, more requirements will be asked and may creep into one’s product development strategy without you realising it.
Quah shared his first-hand experience of being able to close contracts even before their full product release. He emphasises that large enterprises are looking for problem-solvers rather than a certain product. Therefore, it is important to make the buyer remember that you are the person in the room that can solve their problem—that you are the product—especially in the early phases. This period is critical in finding out what features to prioritise in developing the product, which is a constantly iterative process.
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Gitta Amelia, Founder of Everhaus VC, an early-stage sector-agnostic VC fund, with half of its investment portfolio in the B2B enterprise space, advised startups to perform extensive research before the actual customer outreach. It is important to know who the decision-makers are, and what the key pain points are that the enterprise customer is meaning to solve.
When closing deals with large companies, she shared that winning the deal is less about pitching and more about understanding the problem and seeing how you can help. The VC fund works alongside its investee companies in securing their first portfolio of enterprise customers.
Once this is established, it can be replicated and help bolster business credibility. As VCs look for companies that can scale, it is imperative for startups to have a proof of concept before an investor can come in and invest.
In the context of the post-pandemic situation, Amelia further shared that understanding the reality of moving targets is important, and gaining primary information and performing extensive research is even more crucial. This change can present opportunities, with more companies now prioritising their digital transformation strategies.
Amelia also discussed why the VC’s role in good capital injection, especially in the early stages, is key in establishing successful partnerships.
VCs can help in financial planning, setting KPIs to hit, and preparing for the next stages. Introductions to other VCs for the next stages are also accessible. With the network and portfolio approach, she further recommended for startups to be ready before an introduction is made to make it fruitful and to be aware of compliance processes and other requirements needed to close a deal.
Focusing on product
Badai Tanmizi, investment manager at Qualgro VC, a sector-agnostic series A to B venture capital fund focused on B2B enterprise companies, shared the trend and opportunity of startups that leverage the strategy of shifting from sales-led to product-led processes. This entails that sales workflows do not require a human in the loop, especially in the lead generation and pitch phases.
It may eventually require human involvement for demo and sign-off stages, but product-led growth is an emerging practice among series A and B stage startups servicing enterprises. An example of this is having a ready product with a freemium model where potential customers can do a demo without heavy commitments, thereby expanding the target set of enterprise customers.
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When asked about sharing advice to growth-stage founders for greater success, Tanmizi further shared the importance of preparing one’s business and the product for enterprises, meeting certifications to meet enterprise procurement standards, ISO, security audits and the like. It is also good to plan for complicated and multi-stakeholder processes and keep the business focused on delivering a product rather than a service, as this may compromise scale to achieve regional or global growth for a startup.
The “Let’s Make a Deal: How to Do Business with Large Enterprises” webinar is only one of many initiatives sponsored by SAP to share insights on sales strategies for startups and to highlight the importance of acquiring large enterprise customers through partnerships with global technology providers like SAP. With all the tips, trends, and insights shared by our esteemed panel of experts, SAP and e27 hope to bolster and embolden growth among relevant stakeholders in the larger business ecosystem.
To view the recent webinar, you can visit the official video. For more information, you may contact e27’s Joel Pelo at joel@e27.co
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by SAP
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