Beta and Pilot Strategies For enterprise software companies

1. Rakesh Soni
Co-founder & CEO
LoginRadius Inc.
Twitter: OyeSoni
Linkedin: in/OyeSoni
Beta and Pilot Strategies
For enterprise software companies.

2. My Background →

3. ● an Engineer from Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT).
● founded a SaaS-based company
called LoginRadius. We offer
authentication and SSO API for
developers. I raised $17M from
Microsoft. Forrester ranked us #1
product in the category.
● And, I love helping entrepreneurs.
Follow: Twitter | Linkedin

4. ● Enterprise SaaS
● Cybersecurity space
● $100K to over $1M ARR
● Mostly inside sales
● Selling in US, Canada, Europe
● Targeting medium to large
enterprises (2k+ employees)
● 5 - 8 months sales cycle

5. How did we break into Enterprise
Accounts?

6. Beta / Pilot strategies →

7. It is f***ing hard.
There is no easy way around!

8. Why is it so difficult?
● Large enterprise is risk averse
○ Small vendor, unproven tech, risk if it failed
○ Leadership does not want to get fired
● They are not the most forward-thinking organizations
○ Still carrying legacy stuff
● Established vendors are selling bulky solutions to make
more money
○ Difficult to compete with them

9. Stage 01: Building the Foundation
Stage 02: Getting Beta /Pilot Customers
Stage 03: Running successful Beta / Pilot / POC
Your First Enterprise Customer

10. Stage 01: Building the Foundation →

11. The most critical stage,
because enterprise folks will
easily sense how strong or
weak your foundation is.

12. Your Foundation
Expertise Solutions Delivery
Can you demonstrate
the knowledge and
experience in your field?
Can you demonstrate that
you can solve their pain
with your technology and
services?
Do you have a team to
execute on this?
(Sales, Customer Service,
Experts)

13. Expertise
● Your key people have a track record in the field
● If not, your key people should be able to demonstrate
that they are experts during meetings with the enterprise
clients
● Have, at least, one solution engineer (or someone
assume that role)

14. Solutions
● A clear path to solve the pain
○ Define problem, target market
● Clearly demonstrate value proposition (if possible, ROI)
● You may have fully or partially developed technology /
services
● Package everything together nicely
● Make it enterprise-grade

15. Delivery
● You need a team to make buyer confident that you can
deliver
○ Lot of projects fail, and people get fired
● You need experienced pre-salespeople who understand how
large enterprises behave / work
○ Definitely, have someone with enterprise sales background.

16. Stage 02: Getting Beta /Pilot Customers →

17. 3-ways to Approach
1. Offer consulting services, build custom solutions, learn
and then, build the product
2. Develop the product with collaboration with the customer
3. Build the product first and then, sell
Not all three may be applicable to every idea.

18. Interest
generated
Beginning of
Contracting
Beginning of
Pilot / POC
Deal Closed
Enterprise
Funnel

19. My Top 10 Ways to
Get Beta / Pilot
Enterprise
Customers

20. Friends, Family and Your Professional Network
● Find out who works in your target companies
● Get introductions
● Get insights -- learn how they operate, who is right person, etc.
● Charge up your professional network, leverage the relationships
● Be active on social media (LinkedIn and Twitter)
○ Engage with more people in your target market

21. Your Investors, Board and Advisors
● Spend time with each of your investors to help them
understand your tech, keep them excited and keep asking
introductions
● Build an advisory board of people with strong network and
expertise in your space

22. Attend Industry events
● Get visibility for your startup
● Connect with relevant industry people
● Connect with the target customers

23. Target SMB and Mid-market First
● Build some proof points with SMB and mid-market customers
(if possible)
● Use these customers to target Enterprises

24. Invest in Inbound Marketing
● Inbound marketing will help you for years
● If your target market is looking for the solution, they will find
you, so leave good digital footprint to help them find you
● Put efforts in SEO, Content, Social, Press
● Do it from Day 1

25. Partner with other companies
● Definitely, with non-competing
● Focus more on service companies, who already has
relationships with your target customers

26. Hire a sales rep with existing relationships
● Many successful sales reps keep relationships with the
customers regardless of who they are working for
● Hire someone who already has relationships with your target
customers and confident to bring a few of them to table
● At this stage, you definitely need a “hunter”

27. Participate in RFPs / RFIs
● Set Google alerts for potential RFPs/RFIs
● Participate in the qualified ones
● Put together a great response

28. Cold email / calling
● Outbound lead generation still works
● Reach out to your target persona
○ Cold email
○ LinkedIn / Twitter
○ Cold calling
● Everyone in the company should do it

29. Customer acquisition is everyone’s
responsibility
● Ensure that everyone participates and contributes in
customer acquisition
● Don’t just rely on your sales & marketing group

30. Stage 03: Running Successful Pilot →

31. Treat them as Customers
● They are prospects but treat them customers
● Apply some of the “Customer Success” strategies
● Keep Sales, Solutions and CS people separate
○ Let them build relationships individually

32. Deeper understanding of Enterprise Sales
● Have, at least, one person who deeply understand enterprise
sales
● Discovery is the most important step in enterprise sales
○ Truly understand the customer: pain point, use case,
value adds, people, decision making, etc.
● Qualification is the second most important step
○ Clearly set your qualification criteria such as BANT
○ This will make you efficient and focused

33. Ensure founders are involved
● Do not leave this to non-founder team members
● Ensure founders are deeply involved throughout the
processes
● Founders are interacting with the customers

34. Be prepared for custom work / development
● Every enterprise customer requires something custom to
support their use case
● Be prepared to customize your solution
● They expect vendors to allow customization
● This will also help you learn more about your space
● Build your product keeping this in mind

35. Help them minimize liability
● Enterprise clients are risk averse. They have lot of checks
and processes to minimize that risk. Help them with that.
○ Information Security
○ People and Property Safety
○ Legal implications
● Prepare and keep information / document ready for that
● External certification and compliances help a lot

36. Demonstrate scalability
● Enterprises operate at a large scale
● They want to see that your solution can support their scale.
That is why they always ask if other companies of their size
or bigger are using your solution
● Figure out how you can demonstrate the scale
○ For example, for enterprise software, you can conduct
stress tests

37. Demonstrate scalability
● Enterprises operate at a large scale
● They want to see that your solution can support their scale.
That is why they always ask if other companies of their size
or bigger are using your solution
● Figure out how you can demonstrate the scale
○ For example, for enterprise software, you can conduct
stress tests

38. Don’t sell it cheap
● You can have pricing as a differentiation, but do not sell it
cheap
● Large enterprises have money. Though, they want lot of
discount and have structured negotiation process in place.
● This will make you look an inferior solution, and
● It will set a weaker financial foundation for your business

39. Accept legal redlines or use their contract
templates
● Enterprises have very complex legal approval processes, and
no one interfere with Legal Team
● Be prepared to accept redlines on your contract template
● Or use their contract template and offer redlines to them. This
will dramatically expedite the contracting step.
● Follow their procurement process

40. Congratulations!
You have your first enterprise client.

41. I’ve a question!
Connect online
I am happy to help!
Linkedin: /in/OyeSoni
Twitter: @OyeSoni
Thank you!