Ask HN - What is the best way to reach out to Enterprise/SMB customers?

Here are my 2 cents:<p>When you have product/market fit -&#62; you'd do the 'traditional' thing - ie Gartner reviews, trade shows, marketing etc - All that requires big money - significant investment<p>The interesting part though is when you are in the early/seed stages - and that's the hard problem to solve for. You are iterating, trying different things - perhaps testing different verticals.<p>The way we've solved that at Kormox is doing it through 'insiders' - we'd build a spreadsheet of target companies (say 300, focused on a specific vertical), then identify who we'd want to talk to (say, Johnnh Smith, CIO) - then, identify internal people in the company that have nothing to do with the CIO but you have a good change in getting 10 minutes of their time. We particularly used alumni networks - e.g. Wharton, McKinsey, Stanford GSB, etc etc.<p>Then you reach out to those insiders asking for 10 minutes of their time - not to sell anything, rather to get their advice/pick their brain on how you can reach out to relevant person to get opinions on your startup (you can mention you think Johnny Smith would be the right person).<p>It has worked really well for us. Typically those insiders would do an intro - and Johnny Smith would be happy to meet with you in that way.<p>We've been able to do this at scale pretty successfully.

<i>Let's say we are working on an application for small businesses &#38; enterprises.</i><p>If that's what you're saying, then you've already failed. The fact that your application is for both SMB and enterprise customers means you lack customer-based focus and probably don't know who your customer is. Pick a smaller sub-set of customers and focus on that.

You've probably looked already but I think there is a lot of good advice on enterprise sales on the smart bear blog<p><a href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.asmartbear.com/</a><p>From what I know (mostly reading rather than personal experience) selling the Small business and selling to enterprise are very different and require different approaches. Ie, SEO and a landing page with pricing and sign up vs. a sales team, no pricing anywhere on your site and long sales cycles. You may need to pick whichever one you think you can be most successful with at first and concentrate on that.

If you have a product that fits on a Gartner "magic quadrant", figure out what analyst writes it and get real friendly with that person.<p>Otherwise, you need a way to sell to the Executive level folks (ie. sell like IBM and Oracle). If you operate in or have access to the social stratum of corporate bigwigs, use that. Otherwise, you can hire $$$ salesfolk who have that access, or target mid-level managers and play the procurement game.<p>If you are interested in government... Find a lobbyist with a clue.

It's hard to give a blanket answer.<p>Some organizations have had very good success with marketing channels such as SEO, cold calls and trade shows. I can also tell you stories of people who are very disappointed with the investments they've made in all of those channels.

Enterprise... try to get a positive review by Gartner or CIO Today. Expect sales cycles measured in months if not years. There's a reason not a lot of small startups sell to the enterprise, it's like trying to pick the apples at the top of the tree. You're just starting out, go for the low hanging fruit and establish some good customers/references.

Patio11 had a sort of talk on this recently, but I'll recap what I think is perhaps the most relevant to this situation:<p>Start with 'small enterprise'. If you have even one smallish company that you can get in the door in, use that as a resume booster for a slightly larger company, and keep parlaying that success, each time seeking a slightly bigger customer than the one you just landed.<p>As ams6110 mentioned, don't expect a short sales cycle, and factor that into the cost of your product. Also, the sales process if VERY high touch. If it's an expensive product, expect to have to schmooze clients with dinner and repeated meetings with growing audiences. Don't mistake progressive meetings and schmoozing for progress. Do understand the cost of buying dinners and hiring sales people to chase one big customer for 6 months at a time with the expectation of not landing the customer.<p>Simply put, it's elephant hunting. You have to be very patient, invest in very expensive tools, and will likely come home empty with each expedition. This is also why Enterprise software tends to be so expensive, in that it has to recoup all the costs from failed sales on every successful sale.<p>Lastly, expect to be nickeled and dimed (especially if you're talking federal enterprise), and don't expect to be paid promptly.