5 hidden reasons why winners win & 95% of startups fail.
What are Top-Down sales?
Why do Top-Down sales win?
1) You speak directly to key decision-makers.
– When you win over a CXO or key Sr. key executive(s), their influence drives you deep & wider into the account’s organization.
2) ACV and multi-year larger deals are the norms.
– CXOs do things big with big budgets and wield that power throughout the company.
– It gives the sales team an opportunity to pitch cross-departmental solutions & increase deal sizes without needing more upper-management approval.
3) SaaS contracts have stronger & guided upsell & cross-sell paths.
– Selling to the top avoids considerable sales time for renewal, upsell & cross-sell events. You have a decision-maker who is on your side.
4) Implementation can be faster with direction from the top.
– Teams implementing your solution/service become invested when the direction comes from the above.
5) Pipelines grow larger with a referral from C-Level Executives
This one speaks for itself.
What is Bottom-up selling?
You gather as many leads as possible and let your product experience and demos make them into advocates at their companies.
It’s the “cast a wide net” theory to capture multiple leads, invite them to use your product or service, and encourage them to introduce your platform to their companies.
It’s the proverbial one-to-many sales & marketing approach.
Benefits of Bottom-up selling
1) You cast a wider net to achieve more immediate results (“but this method has failed since 1994”)
2) You can nurture brand advocates within a company (“but advocates do not close or buy”)
3) You and your audience speak the same language (“but they have no power to buy “)
4) Leads to smaller deals (“which are too costly to sell”).
5) You waste using your team’s bandwidth on “non-paying users.”
6) There are limits to how you scale adoption (“hurts startups”)
7) High risk of churn when main contact leaves (“adds months”)
8) Always longer sales cycles (“which are 5X more expensive”)
The clear winner: Top-Down with one caveat, 75% Top & 25% Bottom strategies.
Excerpts from: https://rachelandreago.com/top-down-vs-bottom-up-sales/
https://rachelandreago.com/top-down-vs-bottom-up-sales/
Please CONNECT or FOLLOW me. We’re happy to share 100’s of blogs & best practices on selling.
Top-down sales are where outbound, sales, demand marketing, and strategic marketing use highly personalized, ABM-style targeting to,
access, nurture, & engage Sr. executives or C-Level.
It’s in the #1 most successful sales book ever published, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.
Top-Down needs a concerted effort between Sales & Marketing.
It begins by identifying ideal customer profiles (ICPs) to target & access power levels or “key decision-makers.”
Sales & Marketing runs due diligence to conscript the most high-value, high-potential enterprise accounts.