Selling to SMBs? Use this enterprise sales tactic to succeed!

People often assume that I'm some kind of all-knowing sales oracle, and that I never make mistakes. Nothing could be further from the truth—and today, I want to share a major strategic mistake we made at Close.io in 2017 (and the lessons it taught us). We all know that there are multiple stakeholders involved when selling to large organizations. But SMBs? You don't really need to worry too much about stakeholders, do you? Well, we almost lost our focus in 2017 and listened to the wrong stakeholders. It almost could have derailed our product roadmap, increase our churn rates, and just make us a lot less competitive product in the CRM space. Fortunately, thanks to monitoring our NPS responses we realized what was about to happen early enough, so we could turn things around and get back on track.  But it was a close call, and it shows you that you can never get too complacent, that you always have to stay on your toes (or risk going astray). Whether you're working in sales, on the product side, or you're a founder, here's a big lesson about running a successful business. Check out my latest video on the Close.io blog, where I share Close.io's main screwup of 2017, and how we fixed it. Go get'em! Steli PS: There's practical advice for founders and product people in here, as well as actionable tips for sales reps to close more deals when selling SaaS to SMBs. And I get very real. This is the kind of thing founders typically don't share publicly, or only years after the fact, when it makes for a compelling turn in the narrative of their success story. But I wanted to share the realities of startup life with you—you're always operating in unknown territories, and you will make mistakes along the way. (Let me know if you find it valuable and want me to keep sharing more of these "deep startup truths".)

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