What is the single biggest challenge that Enterprise Salespeople selling complex solutions face?

Lack of patience is their biggest challenge. Enterprise selling is a marathon not a sprint. For every two steps you take forward you invariably take one back. You have to keep your eye on the end game, keep the team (both internal and external) focused on next steps and due dates and move the ball forward in baby steps not bounds. Not easy to do and that is why there are so few real "A" players in enterprise sales. We are a nation that requires instant gratification and that is not the case in this instance.

Prospects don't want to buy your product or service. What they really want to buy are solutions to their problems. They want to buy a desired outcome. They want to buy something that takes away pain.

Your product might do that, but your prospect doesn't know it yet. And launching directly into feature/benefit statements fails to put what you're selling into any relevant context for the buyer.

That's one reason why the consultative sales approach has worked so well in recent years. The concept, in general, is to first better understand the circumstances, priorities and needs of the prospect before deciding if they're a candidate to buy.

Many sellers who attempt a consultative sales approach still fail. The reasons why generally come down to three things:

You're asking questions that require the prospect to educate you on basic stuff. Many sales professionals begin their consultative sales approach with basic, fact-finding questions. Tell me about your organization. What is your role. What are your objectives. These are certainly important questions to have answers to, but it's not the prospect's job to answer them. Your prospect is busy, doesn't yet know why you're calling and what you're trying to sell, and isn't interested in taking time to educate you.

Alternatively, if you do your homework and understand answers to some of these basic questions beforehand, you can begin the conversation by asking questions the prospect may not have thought about or answered for themselves before. And, with that, they're at least interested and engaged enough to hear more.

You ask a good first question, then immediately start selling. Sellers are anxious to start selling. Even with a thought-out consultative approach, it's easy to ask the first question and immediately come back with an answer that includes your sales pitch. Unless your consultative approach truly only pivots on one question, keep working through the discussion. Probe for more needs, more context, so that (simultaneously) you have the information you need to determine if there's a fit, and the buyer is sufficiently intrigued by the line of questioning that they naturally want to hear how you think you can solve the problem.

In other words, be patient. Follow the process. A qualified prospect, with the right set of consultative questions, will stay engaged because you're asking smart questions, relevant to their focus, and they already want to learn more.

Your questions don't make the prospect think or learn something new. Many buyers fail to buy because a need hasn't been established. They may have a problem but they can't see it. They can't envision how that problem will manifest itself in the future. Your consultative sales approach needs to be built to help the prospect discover answers to these questions. It doesn't have to immediately answer the question, but should at least get the prospect thinking that they do, in fact, have a potential problem they need to explore further.

The fact that you're asking questions, relevant questions, they don't have the answer to is itself valuable to the prospect. They'll wonder what other questions you have they should have answers to, and they'll also immediately start believing that 1) you probably know what you're talking about, and 2) you might have some of the answers or solutions they all of a sudden need.

At its core, consultative selling is about asking questions first. But the right questions and the right sequencing is key.

Hi Pat! What Brian and Trish wrote, and a couple others, too.

Internally: the structural and functional roadblocks to mustering the right resources at the right time. Example: enterprise sales reps / account managers often have to negotiate / plead with colleagues for timely support, materials, and technical expertise, and with finance people for the money to pursue the opportunity appropriately.

Externally: the inherent complexity of large organizations. Example, reported by MarketingSherpa:

Number of participants in the buying process for technology purchases over $25,000
100-500 employees 6.8
500-100 13.5
1000 21.0

Some great answers here! I find that with the exception of sales reps that are true, pure hunters, most of the rest of the sales force (about 80% or more of the sales force) does not know how to qualify opportunities out quickly enough. The old expression is that there are two winners in sales: the company that gets the business and the first company to drop out.

Great question Pat. There are a lot of great answers here, I'll try not to repeat, but offer some additional perspectives.

Too often, the sales person focuses their sales effort on just a few people. In large enterprises and major sales, there are typically a lot of people involved in the process. It's important for the sales person to identify all the stake holders and even people who may be only inflencers (but not stake holders). The sales person needs to understand the role of each person, what their needs and priorities are, what their vested interests are, how they will participate in the decision/implementation.

Additionally, we find sales people tend to focus their efforts through their "friends," sponsors, and the people they traditionally deal with, without undertanding how power and influence will be exercised in making the decision. So then they are working with the wrong people.

Finally, they do a poor job of understanding what customers value and presenting their differentiated value. They tend to present value in a "one size fits all" approach, rather than realizing that value is in the eye of the beholder---meaning each customer involved perceives value differently--therefore to be successful we must develop and deliver differentiated value that is meaningful to each individual involved in the decision making process.

We've written extensively on both understanding how customers make decisions and how to develop and deliver differentiated value, just email me at dabrock at excellenc dot com for free copies.

Since "enterprise" and "complex" are operative words in this question, dealing with procurement processes in the post Sarbanes Oxley environment (post 2000) would be the single biggest challenge. Many solution selection processes are turned over to the Supply Chain organization to enforce organizational governance and compliance policy. Pre-2000, these processes were only experienced in the public sector.

In all likelihood, the enterprise sales teams in both the public and private sectors will be confronted with proprietary procurement and sourcing solutions with which you have no prior experience. Therein lies the challenge; you must quickly adapt to an array of new procurement platforms to best position your solution. Resistance is futile and counter-productive.

This means that your RFI/RFP/RFQ generation tools may be rendered useless. Yet, the enterprise sales teams that can adapt and quickly develop response mastery will have an unfair advantage over competitors that react in a sclerotic or negative manner to these procurement platforms.

You must GET OVER IT - these procurement platforms and supply chain-driven processes are there for a reason and they are not likely to go away anytime soon. For larger sales enterprise sales teams, it might be advisable to develop and identify internal resources that have some expertise with the dominant sourcing and procurement platforms.

See reply to Pat O'Brien

Thanks everyone for all your insightful answers. I’m going to possibly break protocol here and answer my own question. Sorry, can’t help myself.

The biggest challenge is still an emphasis on seeking to be understood vs seeking to understand. It’s backwards.

The whole ecosystem of enterprise selling – and buying – is built around the notion that buyers are waiting to be educated (read sold to), and vendors are there to pitch. Therefore vendors practice their pitch. Buyers expect a pitch. Everyone rushes to do their part. It’s neither simple nor easy to break out of this model. “Sales” Training? Please. Most company-built sales training is really product training. Demand Gen, Inside Sales, marketing – how many of these groups really embrace any notion of learning? Don’t get me wrong, there is a time for a pitch, a demo, and discussion of features, but that usually happens way too early.

Are there salespeople out there who practice the art of diagnostic value based selling? Of course. But the ones who really do it are few and far between. Because it’s different, it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable. For managers too: it’s easy to measure the number of leads, calls, or meetings. Much more difficult to measure how effectively someone has qualified opportunities, or “aligned” value. Rarely is this different approach followed through to the extent necessary. I’d much rather be asked, “you’re going to help me improve my application deployment time, successfully implement my cloud initiative and drive a $1MM improvement through an improved Sale Cycle time? How?” vs “Let me see how your product works.”

Many folks mistakenly believe, or act like they believe, it’s all about efficiency. More. More leads. More meetings. More calls. Is having more a bad thing? No (gosh knows I could eat ice cream for every meal!). But at the expense of focusing on efficiency, more is bad. Yes, social media is changing the landscape of enterprise selling as it has for many things. But, at least as far as I can see, it hasn’t changed this emphasis on pitches, demos, features, and functions. Frankly Social Media has made the effort by the customer to get educated on the product, and the marketing spin, much easier. In other words an emphasis on this stuff during the sales cycle is even LESS useful than it used to be. Where social media can help me get informed about jugular pain points or initiatives, then it clearly is adding value. But that approach is nascent at best.

We’ve asked almost a hundred Sales Reps and Sales VPs about value based selling. A fascinating, even surprising, trend emerged during our conversations: 1. Almost everyone of them said, yes value based selling is clearly a better, if not the best, way to sell complex, expensive, enterprise solutions. 2. By the same token almost all of them admitted some version of “we suck at it though.” Why is that? Many times the solution applied to this challenge is training. But if a new approach doesn’t include a process, or method, or tool that is Easy and Fast, while still being Effective, most folks simply won’t do it.

We think there is a better way . . .