In recent years, many industries have seen their companies return to their roots. As such, more and more businesses are re-focusing their efforts on their largest clients, most notably those boasting Fortune 50 status.
Lots of companies who have adopted this approach have enjoyed an upturn in revenue. This is no surprise; after all, Fortune 50 enterprises are in a league above all others. Doing business with just one of these enterprises often results in a steady income for your company.
Let’s take a closer look at why a company should put greater focus on its large enterprise customers.
A Case Study
Aspect is one recent example of a company that’s shifted its efforts to some of its decade-old relationships. As a leading provider of call centre solutions, they decided to re-invest in their cloud-based solutions. These are better suited to the needs of their Fortune 50 customers, and as such, they’ve seen growth.
Their strategy was to focus on the demands of their enterprise clients — namely, predictive outbound and workforce optimisation.
How Can Businesses Mirror Aspect’s Efforts to Better Sell to Fortune 50 Customers?
Selling to small businesses is very different from selling to larger enterprises. When selling to Fortune 50 customers, the key lies in developing good working relationships and appealing to the right contacts.
When you pitch to a small business, you tend to focus on one person. With a Fortune 50 company, it’s not as simple. Titles are less critical than functions, so it’s vital to identify the key responsibilities of your contact and get introduced to other stakeholders. That way, you’re more likely to give your sales pitch to people who actually have the power to approve these sorts of purchases.
It’s also crucial to anticipate the buying process of the company you’re trying to sell to. Larger businesses often have more complex structures for approving purchases. So, it stands to reason that companies that ask the right questions and provide information that makes the buying process easier are more likely to secure the deal.
As the sales cycles of Fortune 50 companies are much longer than smaller businesses, service providers should aim to build their credibility to prove they present little risk. It’s imperative you show what you’re offering is of high value, so do what you can to draw the attention to the benefits of your service before making your pitch.
And finally, you’ll need to tailor your services to meet the needs of your enterprise-level clients. Offering solutions that work on-premise as well as cloud-based is an excellent way of doing this. Say, for instance, that like Aspect, you’re also in the B2B comms industry. This anticipates the need to keep some of their data on-site where they can secure their sensitive information appropriately, all the while still offering a cloud-based solution that makes it easier for companies to scale their comms solution, recover data and make use of cost-efficient and near-on unlimited storage.
The Bottom Line
For companies with a history of working with large enterprises, returning to these roots presents a significant opportunity for growth. By anticipating their needs, sales processes and responsibilities of the critical players inside of Fortune 50 companies, B2B service providers are more likely to secure themselves a higher baseline income.