Enterprise GTM Real Talk — Tactics from Wall Street IT on navigating large orgs, calling BS on fake buyers, and nailing your POC

We recently had the pleasure of hosting an Enterprise GTM-themed dinner with 12 early stage enterprise startup founders and two Bank of America IT executives.

The purpose of the dinner was to have some real talk on all things selling into Wall Street. The conversation was engaging, and the tactical tips flowed along with the wine and whiskey, so a good time was had by all.

Here are some key takeaways:

The Challenge of the Decentralized Stack

Five years ago, lower down the stack used to be more centralized. Storage, networking, and all business support was typically run out of a single department. Finding the right match for sales was relatively straightforward.

Nowadays, if you’re not selling directly to a Line of Business executive, it’s much harder to locate potential clients. Business Units have their own CTOs and CIOs, and it can be difficult to manage all their relationships with one another, especially if their roles overlap.

For instance, at Bank of America, 90,000 people work in Technology.

Finding More Than One Stakeholder

Companies are constantly reorganizing, and employees are always leaving (the joys of the enterprise, amirite?). To handle the churn, you’ll need to find more than one stakeholder.

A smart way of doing this: once you find someone, ask them who else you should meet. It’s not just about networking. If they won’t introduce you to others, that’s a huge red flag. This may indicate that they may not have the authority to evaluate solutions, let alone have budget to spend.

But you can go into these meetings prepared: banks like Bank of America have a Technology Partnership Development team focused on providing transparency into whether an individual is in thinking/learning mode or actually has a budget. One part of their role is they can assist in knowing who is just grinning at you and who has real budget. So, if you meet someone at a conference, lean on these teams to say if they’re real, or call BS.

“You need to know who is just grinning at you and who has real budget.”

If they say they’re not interested, ask them why. You want to know whether the reason is Bank of America-specific, or will apply to all of Wall Street.

And make sure to learn from this. Don’t write off an experience or discard information just because it didn’t lead anywhere immediately. Use it to adjust.

Get Business and IT to the Table and Talking

If you’re selling anything non-infrastructure related, you need Business and IT at the table together, because IT alone does not have budget.

Once there, ask questions like, “Who else is part of the decision?” Don’t be afraid to poke around for potential stakeholders — in order to truly understand the opportunity, you have to learn this information.

When you make your pitch, if people don’t react, you’re toast. Be engaging, ask questions throughout. And don’t make assumptions about what someone knows.

Make The Most of Your Intro Calls

If the intro call is with a big group, contact your champion in advance to get context.

Ask about priorities and budget. Find out who will be the bear and bull in the room. Who’s likely to be on board? Who needs to be convinced?

Ask about the current state of development. You want to learn who the current vendor(s) is, if there will be an RFP soon, how mature their organization is.

If there’s silence on the intro call, that means that people aren’t interested. But you can create interest by asking smart, targeted questions.

Two tips:

1. Don’t leave 30 seconds at the end for next steps. If you have an hour, stop at 50 minutes and spend the remaining time walking through any next steps so that you have a clear direction of what happens next.

2. If your product doesn’t do something, say so. If it’s on the roadmap, say so. Whatever the case, be honest, because that builds trust, which is key to developing a relationship.

Introductions are where you start to build trust, which is especially critical for early stage companies. People often think that Wall Street banks won’t do deals with companies that aren’t Series B or C funded. That’s totally false, and for instance Bank of America shared a recent deal they did with a pre-Series A company that closed in just a 6 month sales cycle. While not common, it’s not impossible, and the key besides aligning to a current priority is to build trust. Trust offsets the early stage risk of your company and helps people make a bet on you and your product. After all, it’s people who make purchasing decisions.

If a company says, “We love what you’re doing, but come back in two quarters,” this can still indicate real interest.

Enterprises have different priorities and that doesn’t mean that your pitch isn’t relevant to them. It could just mean that it’s not a fit right now, and in turn you should ask when the project is budgeted for and when they want to have success by. And then be sure to follow-up.

Never Do A Free POC!

POCs (Proof of Concepts) cost time, money, and even morale. Unless a POC is insanely cheap, doing it for free will hurt your business.

Ahead of a POC, there are a few questions you’ll want to answer:

· Are you cannon fodder for a company to prove that it’s “innovative”? Avoid innovation titles, because 95% of the time they don’t have budget.

· What about outcomes? They need to be crystal clear. If you can’t get clear directive on success criteria, walk away.

· What technology will be used? You need to make sure that you’re not sabotaged by running on the wrong hardware.

· What will the process be like? Death by endless PowerPoint meetings is a terrible way to go out.

Bottom line: POCs never follow a straight line. Companies rarely define next steps up front, so you need to ask. If you don’t win, demand to know why. This is critical for succeeding in future POCs.

Don’t Get Stuck When Finalizing Contracts

Contracts are always tough, but one key point that came up at dinner is being realistic in how you as a startup can drive a deal to a close.

Don’t leave things to your lawyer. This will not only lead to huge legal bills, but I’ve seen too many deals get derailed or be put severely at risk without the founder making thoughtful business decisions in order to work within the broader risks and controls of the Wall Street bank.

A great example is around indemnification.

Unlimited indemnification and liability will always be required. Don’t let your lawyers set you down a dark path that ultimately leads to the bank going with another vendor. While anecdotal, it was shared that no one at dinner had seen this clause lead to a startup blowing up, with the worst case being a few hundred thousand dollars that a company had to pay related to a patent troll.

I hope that you find these takeaways useful! We love nerding out all on things enterprise go-to-market, so if you have any tips of your own to share, please share on twitter to @fendien.