AMA: Yext Director Enterprise Sales, Fabio Maglieri on Enterprise Sales

Pre-Stage Identify potential low-hanging fruits by approaching competitors of your top customer success stories. Approach top customer success stories of your competitors and prove that you can do better. Lead Management Qualify Use proven sales methodologies like MEDDPIC to fact-check the potential of your opportunities. Challenge Question the potential of your opportunities by using the knowledge you have gained over the industry and company. Leverage your peers and colleagues to examine the opportunity. Challenge the prospect early stage to understand if it have potential for being a real champion.

Good question, timing is crucial to respect execs short span of attention. You and your champion should feel comfortable answering following questions before approaching execs: Why do anything? Why do it now? Identify relevant pain linked to strategic initiative Describe outcome if they do nothing Discover impact that your solution has backed by solid value assessment challenged with your champion (champion should feel comfortable enough to present the value to the execs themself) Create compelling story why limited budget and resources should be allocated to your solution specifically Try to find out specific agenda of exec and how to help them achieving it Why buy from you? Show references that resonate (same industry, same use case) Demonstrate superiority to the competition Goal of exec aligment Get management attention and approval that your solution adds value Get buy-in Budget approval Identification and elimination of potential road-blockers

A vision why the rep and myself should invest time in pursuing the opportunity. This could be either helping to get a quick win or develop a big deal. Focus is crucial to tackle the dilemma of unlimited potential opportunities in enterprise sales. Better work on less well qualified opportunities than dancing on to many parties.

There should be a well-defined process on when to involve internal resources. But of course sales is a dynamic process and you should allow alternations. Depending on the sales stage and maturity of the opportunity you should be able to qualify more precisely. If you lack information create events that answer questions and involve internal experts that can help you and your prospect answering the questions in a way that helps you to progess the opportunity.

It should all begin by understanding the motifs of the person you are talking to. First,you need to anwer the most important question: "What's in it for them?". It might be that personal goals may not be the same as company goals. But there are general aspects that may help you handle objections. Costs: Generate reliable business cases (either generic based on previous projects or backed by prospect's numbers) that justify investment Time: Describe what the outcome of doing nothing would be. Resources: Discover ways of leveraging partners.

Good question as it is important to understand specific industry challenges to tailor made your solution to your customer. The more compelling your story is the more likely you will stand out of the plethora of outbound messages customers receive daily. First of all be aware of the overall economical situation and the effects on the industry your prospect works in. Second dig deep into industry researches of consultancies and agencies to understand the specific trends and how you can help. Third it is all about researching the specific challenges of the prospect via interviews, reports and presentations.

In this case, I can only talk about tools that reps are using and not about the tools other departments use to support sales. I might not tell a secret, but sellers are somehow lazy when it comes to use and administrate tools. Therefore I try to minimize the amount of tools and see which of them really add value to closing deals. The easier they are to manage and the better they give recommendations on the next best action the better. Either is helps sellers to better identify sales-ready opportunities, closing deals faster and having a proper forecasting accuracy.

Define what "right" means at every stage of the deal cycle. Who is to involve internally and what is a seller capable of covering without support. The more precise the sales process is designed the clearer it is for every function within the company when to take actions. Externally you need to know what persona you need at what stage to get the information you need to move the deal forward. In this case it is crucial to have a real champion that will help you to gain access to the right personas at the right time. If you have no champion, find and develop one, because it will get tough without one.

Evaluate the readiness of the opportunity by adhering to your sales methodology. Evaluate general potential of prospects by understanding your solutions fit to the strategy and challenges of the prospect. Define how many time you want to invest in short-term and long-term prospects and follow this as a guidance on how to invest your time.

Create excitementy by telling stories that customers can relate to. Use real-life examples and link them to customers' challenges. Make them wanna change the current situation by describing the implications of doing nothing and paint a picture of a better life with your solution. Be optimistic and ambitious, but do not lie. Break down the process of achieving the desired outcome into SMART steps. Use your internal resources to make it reality.

Generally matching the value proposition of the solution with real existing business issues of the prospects is extremely satisfying. Engaging with customers and realizing that you are honestly solving their challenges. Make use of digital tools to reduce redundant manual tasks and use your solution's capabilities to ease the life of your customers and helping them to achieve their personal targets.