Prospecting Enterprise Accounts: The Top 5 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner
Bonus: 2 things I'm testing with enterprise prospecting
Read time: 3 min
In my first year of enterprise prospecting, I did everything wrong.
I was treating my accounts like they were SMBs, sending the same messaging to all my prospects, and not doing a lot of research.
Fast forward to now, and I've developed a repeatable, effective process for creating a pipeline with enterprise accounts.
It's become something that I can use across different companies.
I wish I knew back then what I know now about enterprise prospecting.
So, without further ado, let me share with you my top five revelations:
Prospecting Enterprise Accounts: The Top 5 Things I Wish I Knew Sooner
1. The mindset shift
Start viewing each enterprise as a unique entity with its own needs and challenges.
Here's a mind-blowing fact: you can book more than one meeting with an enterprise.
Think about it: multiple teams, different geographical locations, various business units, central and decentralized decision-making.
One enterprise account can equal 300 opportunities!
Are you a sales or SDR leader? Then consider how you might incentivize your team to uncover these opportunities within an account.
2. The Art of Account Research
Take the time to really understand the specific pain points, goals, and decision-making processes of each account:
# of Employees and # of potential users (size of the data team)
How do they make money?
Leadership team
Competitors and similar customers
Any history with your company
Bottom-up
Annual reports/10k/Earning calls
Tech stack: I want to know which data warehouse or BI tool they use, to know if we can integrate with them
It's a simple equation really: the more you know about them, the better you can tailor your messaging.
3. Understanding the Impact
C-level/VP (above the power line, ATL) care about big-picture impact
Directors, managers, and individual contributors (below the power line, BTL) are focused on the day-to-day grind.
Above the powerline (ATL)
C-level and VP care about the impact on the business, and have a long-term vision.
Messaging example for Chief Data Officer for Castor:
Improve the decision-making process
Make the business trust the data
Help the data team to be seen as a profit center, not a cost center
Data democratization
Below the power line (BTL)
Directors, managers, and individual contributors care about the day-to-day.
Example for a data engineering manager:
Ramp up quicker their hiring by giving them a place where to find all KPIs definition and datasets
Improve the team's productivity by finding the datasets they need in min, not hours
A data engineer:
Less manual work when running impact analysis
Do my job quicker with a central tool to find all the datasets and the context I need to build my data pipelines
Less manual documentation
Make sure your messaging resonates with the right person.
4. Your point of view
Now you've researched the account and understand their business. It's time to create your messaging:
Where can you help based on research?
What problem can you solve?
What goals can you help them achieve?
What's the compelling reason to change?
Why now?
Don't forget to include a relevant customer story.
5. Top-down vs bottom-up approach
What are the top-down and bottom-up approaches?
Top-down: you start your outreach with VP/C-level, then go down if you don’t get any replies.
Bottom-up: you start your outreach with individual contributors, then leverage the info to talk to managers and directors.
I use both to book meetings.
The top-down approach can give “quick” results and referrals, while the bottom-up helps me create a specific messaging for the account, leading to better-quality opportunities.
Bonus
I want to end with a bonus for you: two things I'm currently experimenting with.
These two tests, I hope, will drive more conversations that convert into demos.
I promise to keep you in the loop with how they go:
Account-based prospecting
I’m customizing my approach, sequences and messages to fit each individual account.
For example, if I find an interview of a prospect at an account, I leverage what they said if it's relevant to the problems I solve.
How I use ChatGPT in my outreach
I’m starting to see real value in this tool.
I create an Impact Matrix (how my product helps each persona, the pains it solves, and its impact) and then ask ChatGPT to find relevant talk points related to the problems my product solves.
The catch?
It sometimes lacks context.
But as long as you're aware of this and cross-check, it can be a handy aid.
Remember: success in enterprise prospecting doesn't happen overnight.
It’s a journey of understanding, learning, and constant evolution.
That's all for this Sunday.
Quick Reminder: If you like my emails please do “add to address book” or reply.
See you next week.
Happy prospecting ✌️
Elric
As soon as you're ready, I can help you in 2 different ways:
Check the previous SDR Game newsletter I sent, here's the link.
Check my podcast, where I interview top-performing SDRs, you can watch the episodes on Spotify, and YouTube.