Increase Deal Size
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Value-based selling. Knowing how enterprises like to buy. Experience structuring multi-year commitments. Financial selling skills. Negotiation skills. Thousands of sales cycles over the last 15 years. Hundreds of salespersons coached to increase deal size.
Increase Deal Size
What if we could make adjustments in our approach to new business that would significantly accelerate our growth? What if we could see the results within ninety (90) days?
We were asked to help a Series C enterprise software startup accelerate its growth through sales execution. The startup had recently received its next round of funding due to reaching its KPIs, five hundred (500) customers among them. The average deal size for their new business was less than $50,000. We began with a pipeline review and identified a $60,000 opportunity in a sales region struggling to make their numbers.
The opportunity was in the current quarter forecast, listed as Upside. Forty-five (45) days remained in the current quarter (Q3) when we engaged. When we asked for details about the deal amount in the forecast, we learned that the sale strategy was to close a pilot project, and $60,000 was an estimate. We sat down with the sales team and listened to the “story” of arriving at where we found ourselves at that very moment. We shared our thoughts on what might be possible and how the customer might view this project, which would not necessarily be evident to the team. We solicited their support to work with us to explore our hypothesis.
We executed a plan to level up our engagement with the account, the three-by-three strategy common in enterprise selling. We learned the following:
1) Our sponsor was one level higher than the sales team had reached.
2) The procurement team had not been engaged, had not seen our license agreement yet, and preferred better terms than pilot projects typically received.
3) Our sponsor had internal opponents against him bringing in new technology and a closing window from a time perspective.
There is much more to this story, as you might expect, but let’s fast-forward to the outcome.
- We closed a $2,000,000, 3-year subscription seventy-five (75) days after our engagement.
- Our sponsor ultimately wanted a more significant commitment to ensure that his project received priority and could not be easily canceled by his internal opponents.
- Our sponsor was already convinced that our technology worked after evaluating it for the prior six (6) months – he did not require a pilot project.
- Procurement preferred contracting with enterprise software suppliers with 3-year agreements, extracting more significant discounts and favorable terms.
We repeated this playbook with similar outcomes four more times over the next six months, with every transaction netting at least $2M to the startup.
Cardinal Initiatives gets you larger deals in a self-funding value proposition. We can help your existing team get more revenue with their existing pipeline, teaching and coaching them to ensure the improvement is permanent.
If you think we can help you, let’s get started!
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