Business Predictability

Obviously we'd all like a predictable business, but right now while we've consistently hit our number over the last 8 Qtrs, 6 of those have been propped up by large enterprise deals and without them, we'd be well off quota.


I'm sensing this is becoming more of the norm and nothing wrong with a great enterprise deal, but all it sometimes takes is a change of CIO, politics or C-Suite changes to put these deals at risk of slipping or tanking completely, leaving us in the shit.


Would you rather have that consistent run rate business as your base business, or gamble on Ent. reps for a less predictable business, but bigger rewards?


Every 6 months we talk as a business about our run rate but as soon as these large deals come in its quickly forgotten. I honestly believe long term this is going to create more problems than it solves.

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4
Savagedoge
Tycoon
0
Account Executive
I do not have much experience in dealing with enterprises. But in my experience, even closing smaller deals with a higher runrate has its own challenges. With smaller companies, priorities keep shifting up and down. While I'm in SaaS, I'm working with annual contracts mostly and it all boils down how sticky your product is, how much value is the customer getting out of it. So customer success plays a huge role in this scenario. 
LordBusiness
Politicker
0
Chief Revenue Officer
In previous years, our story was the same.  We had really solid growth, and were crushing our numbers. BUT, we had a single customer as 29% of our total revenue.  It always felt like we were waiting for the sky to fall out below us.  In 2019, we pivoted our sales model, and invested in what we call our "commercial team"  - who work logo's outside of our target enterprise customers.  Since then, we've been consistently able to drive 50-60% of our business from scale and new logos, and our customer concentration is no more than 15% any quarter. 
NorthernSalesGuru
Politicker
0
Manager, Outbound Sales
I’d don’t recommend banking on enterprise reps for supporting run rate.

Enterprise is a critical part of organizational growth in B2B. That said, the process can be dangerous and costly.

I’ve swayed towards changing structure of enterprise quotas to better align with reality and also, placing mutual emphasis on other revenue generation streams.
softwarebro
Politicker
0
Sales Director
reoccurring revenue should be more important to the business as it creates a higher valuation for your company. Is there a way to structure enterprise deals to be term vs lump sum?
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