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I was reading an interesting post that we could relate to on Jill Konrath’s blog Selling To Big Companies on one sales persons dilema of how he can justify to his sales manager that its worth going after fewer larger deals at bigger companies over more and regular deals at smaller accounts. Similarly we know of many smaller  business to business companies out there whose products and services are well suited to bigger companies but its a known fact that its a must to do your homework well before you attempt to sell into a bigger company. This additional groundwork  means more time, longer sales cycles and more risks as compared to the smaller companies where its comparitively easier to find a decision maker and get hold of them on a cold call. So to many companies this extra time and effort that goes into researching, intelligence gathering, account profiling, qualifying, locating business contacts and other pre-sales activities is a significant risk because shifting focus to these accounts can mean re-allocating bandwidth that was bringing in the smaller but more reliable sales. So do you have to give up the idea of big risk-big reward deals which can be found at the bigger companies?

One of the areas we have been able to successfully help some of our customers at smaller companies is by helping them with their pre-sales activities to help them take their focus off this and put it on the selling itself. By helping do the initial groundwork by doing account profiling where you have someone else do the initial research, identify multiple decision makers within these larger accounts, do some initial calls and have an understanding of their pain points and some intelligence before they attempt to sell. After having these targets accounts profiled and having a clear insight into these companies, you know which ones are worth pursuing and adjusting your sales approach, message and pitch becomes easier and much more focussed.

This way a company can have their pre sales preperation done without having to reshuffle or disturb the current flow too much to also take a shot at the bigger business opportunities and the bigger companies. The rewards could be well worth the risk.