The Secret to Landing Big Corporate Clients

most of the times you are labeled as a
marketer but to go and close large
corporate accounts like I remember you
had these back 10 years ago which means
you're definitely wearing a Salesman hat
as well is it something that you Embrace
fully like do you consider yourself a
salesperson
don't really consider myself a
salesperson and people have Enterprise
sales
wrong in many cases because it's nothing
like selling to consumers or it's
nothing like selling low ticket items
it's very very different and it's not
really it's classified as sales but it's
not really selling and it's usually not
one person selling it's a team that's
selling how did you make the decision
I'd be loving to like go back to when
you started getting your first large
corporate clients like what what
happened who was it or if that's
available to disclose and like how did
that process go
it is available to disclose but I don't
know who my first corporate client was
because we've had so many of them over
the years so there's two ways to look at
it there's big logos and there's dollar
amounts so when I first started off we
were closing big Brands they just
weren't paying big dollar amounts and
then over time you upsell them into more
and more money but like we worked with a
lot of big brands from like Cisco to
Adobe to Microsoft and literally the
list goes on and on CS CNN ESPN
pricewaterhousecooper Accord hotels
Hewlett-Packard Panasonic Phillips like
literally we worked with so many big
Brands they all kind of blend in after a
while not because the companies are the
same it's just it's hard to remember all
the logos there's too many of them talk
to me about that because you said that
you went and tried to go and get the
logo so why is it so important when you
get started in saying selling to
businesses to go and work with these
organizations where a logo will be you
know a great social proof yeah it's not
necessarily the logo it's they want case
studies and they want to know that
you've worked with other big Brands but
what I meant with the earlier statement
was there's the logos and then there's
dollar amounts typically just because
you work with big companies it doesn't
mean they pay you a lot of money and
when I first started off we're closing
the Enterprise deals and they start you
off small and then you got to upsell and
get yourself more money by cross-selling
you know selling more services
uh you're selling the same services to
multiple divisions within that company
selling it based on Regens because
sometimes they need help in other
countries which offers more money but
you can sell these contracts into
multi-million dollar deals and in some
cases you know deals that are even eight
figures the hard part with it is is it
takes a long time to a build a
relationship B to sell them
and C to get a big enough dollar amount
where it's really meaningful just
because you're working with a company
like Microsoft doesn't mean they're
gonna just instantly sign a contract for
10 million bucks sure and a lot of these
big Brands you can get million dollar
contracts two million even bigger to
start off with but a lot of the big
corporations start you off small
whatever that may be it could be a few
hundred grand it could be a few million
dollars this small depends on the
corporate size and then you got to work
your way up and then sell them on more
and more and then eventually build a
bigger
um
base right uh it's land and expand land
and expand and so when you went and
landed dl9 I know there's a huge amount
of variability per deal but I'd be
curious to know when you say it takes a
long time to kind of get your first
contract versus getting the contract up
sold or to a decent size what are your
usual time frames that you have at the
back of your head around making a deal
successful
takes roughly six plus months to get one
of these big contracts could be quicker
but let's average it out six months I'm
giving you rough numbers
and it'll take another year for the
dollar amounts to be more meaningful
that's interesting so when you first got
into making these types of sales like
did you feel like it was necessary and I
I don't know what was the structure but
had you raised funds to be able to
sustain the operation since this deal
cycle would take a long time and I'd
also be curious to know like what was
the problem that you were planning to to
solve in these organizations that you
felt like they're they're going to say
yes to this the reason it just takes a
long time is there's just a lot of
different layers you go to divisions and
bosses and their bosses and then
procurement and legal it just takes a
really long time to get it and the
reason we ended up doing it is
the churn is lower there's a lot of
money in it and if you do really well
you can again land and expand and just
get more and more and more but I kind of
fell into it as well because my
background
is more Enterprise than consumer I was
never really a consumer entrepreneur
I find the majority go for the consumer
entrepreneur because it feels less
intimidating I mean going and learning
how to sell to a corporate like all
these layers everything you spoke about
the longer deal cycle I mean you're
going to spend some time without having
any of the cash coming in because you
have let's say six months before closing
your first deal oh and then when they
pay you a lot of them are not 16 at 90
some even try to get in at 120 so then
it really adds up so so how do you end
up you know supporting because I was
asking if you had raised some money to
support the initial funds like if you're
gonna go Enterprise do you need to make
sure you have at least a substantial
amount of financial backing because it
will take time before you get in uh or
just don't spend as much money and do it
yourself so then that way you have more
time before you
you know get that check in
cut back on your burn either you need
cash or you just cut back on your burn
um I also wanted to know like when you
went to these because the first times
you went to these organizations and you
went to sell well I I have a feeling
this was maybe kiss metrics that you
were selling was that the first
Enterprise product a long long time ago
I used to sell Consulting Services under
a different Ad Agency my my first real
business was called ACS it was a
marketing agency we were tiny a few
million a year in Revenue but that's
when we started off years and years ago
we were working on selling to
Enterprises keep in mind 20 plus years
ago contract sizes were much smaller but
that's how we started off and it just
took a while
um
and got used to Enterprise selling back
then and just kept going
okay so this is what I find fascinating
is you're like you know you you've
started this agency you're doing
advertising uh like digital marketing
and advertising is the core service 20
years ago were companies very receptive
to going into that and spending or was
this like a such a new field they didn't
even know what was going on now they're
really receptive to it and so I I'd be
curious why do you think they would
choose to work with it with you when you
were starting off because a lot of
people have that start point they're
like I don't know why somebody would
choose me when there's big organizations
out there that are so much more
established than me why would they
choose me it was much new back then too
right there were tons of big
organizations doing the same thing
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