We recently had an early-stage tech founder tell us that a large enterprise was about to become its first client. They had received a verbal acknowledgment of a technical fit after a 60-day POC proving their capabilities against the account’s needs. They had agreed to a price of half what the account was currently spending. They were days away from receiving the order when something unpredictable happened. Their primary contact with the enterprise account left the company.

The tech founder saw this as horrible luck while telling us they were shopping for a part-time sales coach to be a “sales whisperer” in their ear when they were on the phone with prospective clients. It turns out that their primary contact had been their only contact. When we inquired about picking up the ball on that enterprise account “at the altar,” the tech founder replied that they were back at square one with that account.

From a coaching perspective, if we were to perform a deal review on this opportunity, we would surely cover the difference between selling to an individual and selling to an enterprise. An obvious mistake in selling to an enterprise is identifying someone who finds favor with your story and “placing all of your eggs in that basket.” To be clear, we use the word “obvious” here because of the number of times this scenario has occurred in the past. It is now so apparent to sales leaders that it appears in almost every best practice of sales cycle management for enterprise sales. Selling to an enterprise requires meeting and influencing multiple people in multiple roles in an organized, choreographed process.

Unfortunately, luck had nothing to do with our early-stage startup not winning that opportunity. Sales execution did. On another note, if a professional sales forecasting system had been in place, this deal would never have been “at the altar .” You cannot lose what you never had.