Own the Deal® applies to enterprise selling through three critical adjustments: develop champions across the organization, multithread your conversations concurrently, and connect each opportunity to the buyer’s timeline. Large accounts give you more places to find support, funding, and demand. They also give you more places to miss something important.
You don’t need to forget everything you know about selling because the customer has thousands of employees. You still need to earn attention, develop interest, build desire, and help the buyer act. Those fundamentals travel well.
What changes is the size of the organization around your opportunity. The person who can help you may sit outside the department you’re calling. A project that lacks funding in one business unit may be a priority somewhere else. An engineer you’ve never met may have enormous influence over whether your trial happens.
I learned that last one in a room full of people who assumed I knew someone named Rocky.
I didn’t. And we were about to begin a 45-day trial.
In a smaller account, the people who will use your product may be relatively easy to identify. You can meet them, understand their needs, and establish who needs to participate in the decision.
Enterprise accounts require a wider view. You may need several champions because you’re working across different business units, technical teams, or locations. Each can help you understand a part of the company that would otherwise remain invisible.
Your champion should be able to help you find alternative budgets, resources, decision makers, and groups of potential users. That reach matters when the original team runs out of money, lacks people to evaluate the product, or cannot make your project a priority.
A champion’s enthusiasm is useful. Their ability to help other people get involved makes that enthusiasm valuable to the opportunity.
When I think about Own the Deal®, I think about taking responsibility for understanding those relationships. I cannot assume that the names I’ve collected represent everyone who matters.
Years ago, I was selling a technical product that replaced memory-storage hardware. I had worked diligently through the relevant engineering organization, from individual engineers up to the vice president.
I knew the team. I understood their requirements. I had done a good job within a very limited section of a much larger company.
At the time, I was new to enterprise selling. I approached the account the way I’d approached smaller opportunities, working up and down the part of the org chart directly connected to my product.
Then came the kickoff for an intensive 45-day trial. The manager had assembled his engineers. Before we even got through introductions, he looked around the room and asked, “Where’s Rocky?”
A couple of engineers looked around, too. They expected him to be there.
I finally asked, “Who’s Rocky?”
That was an uncomfortable question to ask in a meeting I was supposed to be running. The manager explained that Rocky was someone they consulted before evaluating significant new technology. His judgment carried weight across the organization.
Rocky worked on another team. He was outside the vertical slice of the company I had spent my time exploring. Everyone trusted his opinion about bringing new products into their infrastructure.
I had prepared for a technical evaluation without identifying a person whose technical approval mattered.
That mistake belonged to me. The customer had no reason to know how narrow my view of their organization had become.
A useful champion helps you discover the people you don’t know to ask about.
You can ask, “Who do people here consult before introducing a product like this?” That opens a different conversation from asking who reports to the person you already know.
Explore who has evaluated similar products, who understands the existing infrastructure, and whose opinion other teams trust. Find out whether another department has the same problem or would benefit from participating in the evaluation.
You’re looking for people who can help build support among actual users. I want to return to the people with buying authority with evidence that the organization wants what we’re proposing.
Champions can help you find those users and understand what matters to them. That work gets much harder if your entire account strategy depends on one enthusiastic contact.
Multithreading means developing relationships with multiple people involved in an account. In enterprise selling, the timing of those conversations matters as much as the number of contacts.
You need to work CONCURRENTLY.
A consecutive approach looks like this: you finish your conversation with Larry, then start working with Sheila. Once Sheila is satisfied, you move to Bob. Each conversation waits for the previous one to conclude.
In a large organization, that approach can leave you discovering essential people and requirements far too late.
Concurrent conversations overlap. While you’re learning about the technical evaluation, you’re also exploring another team’s requirements, understanding the business priority, and finding out who else needs to participate.
You don’t need to complete one relationship before beginning the next.
My mistake with Rocky came from concentrating on one vertical section of the organization. I had relationships at different levels, but those relationships all sat within the same narrow area.
More contacts inside one department would not necessarily have solved that problem. I needed conversations to the left and right of the group I knew.
Someone elsewhere in the company could have explained Rocky’s role before the kickoff. I could have understood his concerns, involved him appropriately, and prepared for the evaluation with a more complete picture.
Enterprise multithreading should help you discover different perspectives while there is still time to use them. One team may identify an integration issue. Another may describe a use case you hadn’t considered. A third may reveal an existing initiative that could support the purchase.
Those conversations give you more ways to develop the opportunity.
For example, while one team prepares a trial, another conversation might establish who will review the results. A third might clarify whether the necessary people are available during the proposed evaluation window. You can then address those important dependencies before the trial starts, rather than discovering them when everyone expects a decision. Each conversation helps you prepare for the others.
Concurrent work still requires preparation. Contacting everyone you can find with the same generic message will create activity without necessarily creating understanding.
Give each conversation a purpose. Know what you need to learn, why that person is relevant, and how their perspective connects to the opportunity.
Keep your champions informed as you expand your relationships. Use what you learn in one conversation to improve the next. If two teams describe competing priorities, investigate the difference instead of quietly choosing the answer you prefer.
Own the Deal® requires you to understand how those conversations fit together. You’re responsible for recognizing dependencies, identifying gaps, and helping the right people participate at the right time.
That responsibility grows with the account. So does the cost of leaving it to chance.
Timeline is the qualification I pay the most attention to. Budget matters. Need matters. Authority matters. I also need to understand why the customer would act now.
A company can have a real problem and enough money to solve it while giving its attention to something else entirely.
I often think of people as the stars of their own comic books. Each issue has something happening right now: a challenge, a deadline, or a problem the main character needs to resolve.
My job is to understand the current issue.
If I’m selling something relevant to a future issue, the buyer may be interested later. If I’m talking about a problem they’ve already moved past, I may struggle to get their attention at all.
Enterprise accounts have many stories happening at once. Different business units, regions, and teams are dealing with different priorities. (My childhood comic-book habit finally became useful at work.)
One department’s lack of urgency doesn’t tell you everything about the account.
The project you’re discussing may be too early for that team. Another group may be facing a deadline that makes the same capability relevant immediately.
Ask what is happening inside each part of the business. Explore the initiatives already underway, the resources assigned to them, and the dates that matter. Understand what would happen if a project slipped.
Keep each timeline attached to a specific opportunity. A deadline in one department doesn’t automatically create urgency in another.
Your champions and concurrent conversations help you find the places where demand, resources, and timing come together. That is where you can focus your effort intelligently.
Enterprise growth doesn’t always begin by turning a $50,000 opportunity into a $250,000 proposal.
Sometimes it begins with a $50,000 opportunity and a question about where else the same problem exists. Another team may need a similar solution. Then another.
Suppose you complete several comparable purchases across an account. You now have evidence of broader demand, multiple groups using the product, and relationships that extend beyond the original department.
That can create a reason to discuss a larger agreement with operations or finance. You can explore whether a coordinated purchase would serve the organization better than continuing to buy separately.
The size of that agreement depends on the actual need and scope. The important point is that the conversation grows from demand you’ve established.
Champions help you find additional audiences. Multithreading helps you develop those relationships. Timelines help you identify where a purchase can move forward.
There is one more mistake worth watching, especially when you inherit an enterprise account.
The departing rep gives you the history. You review the notes, meet the contacts, and learn about previous purchases. That information is valuable, and you should use it.
But it represents the part of the account that rep explored.
Even a successful predecessor may have worked with only a handful of teams inside a much larger organization. Their records can be accurate and still leave entire areas of opportunity untouched.
If you assume the handoff contains the whole story, you may spend your time extending relationships in familiar places while missing new demand elsewhere.
A competitor approaching the account without that history may explore more broadly. They may discover the team, initiative, or internal advocate your company has never reached.
Treat the handoff as a starting point. Continue prospecting inside the account as soon as you take responsibility for it. Test what is still current, ask who else should be involved, and investigate the departments absent from your notes.
This is where Own the Deal® becomes an ongoing discipline. Build champions who expand your access. Run conversations across the organization concurrently. Qualify the timeline of each opportunity instead of assigning one story to the whole company.
Your understanding of the account should keep expanding as you work it. That gives you a better chance of finding both the next opportunity and the person everyone expects to be in the room.
Happy Selling!®, Jeff