Welcome back to another video from the Zendog Labs team!

We are a team of ex-founders and ex-VCs that help start-ups create demand and unlock growth opportunities. Slow growth is the number 1 killer of start-ups, and we are here to help.

In this video, we go through Neil Rackham’s B2B Buying Process. Neil developed his thesis on how modern buyers buy in his book Major Account Sales Strategy. The B2B Buying Process he designed in this book is based on decades of research, where Neil and his company mined data on the performance of hundreds of sales reps from leading institutions around the world.

- 00:00 – Introduction

- 01:37 – Back when we were in enterprise SaaS

- 03:31 – Comment, like, subscribe!

- 03:59 – The B2B Buying Process

- 04:39 – Account entry strategy

- 09:08 – Recognition of needs

- 12:25 – Evaluation of options

- 14:09 – Resolution of concerns

- 15:42 – Implementation

- 18:18 – Negotiation

- 19:30 – Setting up your CRM

- 20:35 – Outro

Reading the Major Account Sales Strategy and finding the B2B Buying Process was a pivotal moment for our careers. Years ago, we were helping an enterprise SaaS start-up go from 0 to 1. Back then, however, we had no idea how enterprise sales works. We were left on our own because no one else at the company knew more than us. Even the C-level. The B2B Buying Process finally gave us the mental model to recognize how complex B2B sales is and what needs to happen to successfully close deals worth hundreds of thousands or even millions. Today, we use the B2B Buying Process to both grow Zendog Labs and to help our clients win trajectory-changing deals for their start-ups.

How valuable would it be for your start-up to win 5 or 10 more deals next quarter? We bet it would be life-changing, so make sure to watch our video all the way to the end. Originally, the B2B Buying Process had 4 phases:

1) Recognition of needs

2) Evaluation of options

3) Resolution of concerns

4) Implementation

We added two additional phases to the B2B Buying Process: the account entry phase and the negotiation phase. Getting your foot in the door with big companies as a no-name start-up is incredibly hard. However, account entry is probably a task that fell into your lap, too, because your growth team is not fully built out yet. We like to use the Bullseye Framework to identify tactics that help us get into accounts. Check out our video on the Bullseye Framework and combine it with this video for an end-to-end perspective of getting into, establishing yourself, and successfully selling to major accounts. While not mentioned on the slide we present, we also talk about the negotiation phase. The negotiation phase is when you start discussing discounts. To be clear, we do want you to talk about your standard pricing early, ideally on your website, but do not hand out discounts before having fully understood the needs of your lead and established the value your product offers. The negotiation phase only comes after resolving concerns and before implementing your solution.