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Dear Quota Team
I got a new sales job a little over 3 months ago. I'm in the same industry but I'm selling to enterprise customers, whereas before I was selling to SMBs. Naturally, the deal sizes are much larger and the sales cycles are more complex and take a lot longer. In my old role, deals were usually around 1-3 weeks from first contact to a closed deal. In my new job, the sales cycles are more like 1-6 months, or, in some cases close to a year.
This is extremely stressful for me, as it feels like any of these deals that I'm counting on could fall apart at any moment. I'm also trying to adjust my strategy and not be too pushy and give the deals in my pipeline time to breathe. I'm pretty sure I lost a deal last month because I was a bit too eager in my follow up comms with the prospect and I scared them off. Any advice on how to keep my sanity and be patient while working deals with long sales cycles?
Anxious in Location withheld
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Dear Anxious,
We've all had the nerve-racking experience of getting no response after a few days (or weeks) when you need a deal to make your number. You should expect that enterprise prospects will be moving at a much slower pace than SMBs as they have more stakeholders that need to get aligned and more checks and balances in place. Remember, they're most likely not thinking about you, your company, or your product throughout the day — they have a million other things to do.
That being said, don't overlearn your lesson and be afraid to follow up. The key is to set the right expectations up front, on both ends. Open and clear communication is the key to a smooth (as smooth as possible, anyway) sales process. It might take a while to adjust to the slower flow of enterprise, but this shouldn’t be something that remains an ongoing problem. Focus on building out your pipeline so that losing one individual deal won't ruin your quarter. Good luck!
