Much will depend on the type of businesses you’re going after. If you’re targeting government agencies and/or financial services organizations, you’ll find that their requirements will be a lot steeper than your average software company.
In large enterprises, the sales cycle time can also be quite long, but to make up for it, the deal sizes can be quite large. It’s worth working with them for several months if it means a million dollar deal.
The best advice I have as someone who has sold to enterprise customers for years now is this: understand your target customers. That is, not just the companies themselves, but the actual people you’ll be selling your software to. So before you start building, you’d do well to talk to your target customers to see what exactly it is that they need (and see if it meshes with what you had in mind) and also find out what hurdles they have in place to buy software. If you know the requirements in advance, you won’t be surprised in the sales process.
One book I’d recommend if you haven’t read it is the Mom Test. It’ll give you good guidance on asking the right questions to get feedback from your target customers.
In large enterprises, the sales cycle time can also be quite long, but to make up for it, the deal sizes can be quite large. It’s worth working with them for several months if it means a million dollar deal.
The best advice I have as someone who has sold to enterprise customers for years now is this: understand your target customers. That is, not just the companies themselves, but the actual people you’ll be selling your software to. So before you start building, you’d do well to talk to your target customers to see what exactly it is that they need (and see if it meshes with what you had in mind) and also find out what hurdles they have in place to buy software. If you know the requirements in advance, you won’t be surprised in the sales process.
One book I’d recommend if you haven’t read it is the Mom Test. It’ll give you good guidance on asking the right questions to get feedback from your target customers.