Enterprise vs SMB Sales Different Mindsets, Different Games

Two sales worlds demand two different versions of you. We unpack the exact mindset shifts, tactics and relationship moves that make the difference between stalled deals and steady revenue when you’re selling to complex enterprises versus fast‑moving SMEs.

We start by drawing a clear line between long, multi‑stakeholder enterprise pursuits and the quick, pain‑driven decisions common in small businesses. You’ll hear how to map an organisation, find a coach, handle blockers, and align proposals to strategic initiatives, compliance needs and risk reduction. We share practical ways to build trust over time: phased discovery, tailored demos for each role, scenario‑based ROI, reference calls, and when to partner to meet strict requirements without over‑promising.

Then we flip to SMEs, where the competition might be a new delivery van, not a rival vendor. Learn to run punchy demos, present simple pricing with limited options, and frame near‑term ROI that lands this month, not next year. We talk about using ethical urgency, under‑promising and over‑delivering, and staying present after the sale to earn referrals others miss. Along the way, we explore the emotional component of single‑decider deals versus the objective, systems‑driven logic of major accounts.

Finally, we help you choose your lane: hunter, farmer, or a flexible blend. If you thrive on speed, focus on SME metrics like call volume, demo‑to‑close rate and cycle length. If you play the long game, qualify enterprise opportunities ruthlessly, secure stakeholder access early and measure progress by proof points, not hope. Subscribe for more real‑world sales strategy, share this with a teammate who straddles both worlds, and leave a review with your top takeaway—what will you change in your next sales cycle?

Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:13 Welcome And Mindset Framing
• 1:37 Defining Enterprise Vs SME
• 2:38 Enterprise Reality: Long Cycles And Stakeholders
• 3:25 Mapping Accounts And Surviving No Revenue
• 4:20 SME Dynamics: Speed, Budget Trade‑Offs
• 6:15 Selling Pain Relief To SMEs
• 7:35 Enterprise Decisions Tied To Strategy
• 9:36 Stakeholders, Roles, And Politics
• 12:26 One Decider Vs Many: Emotion And Logic
• 14:07 Tactics For Fast SME Wins
• 16:08 Enterprise Process: Discovery To Compliance
• 18:30 Don’t Cross The Approaches
• 19:41 Relationship Building That Works
• 22:47 Rapid Rapport For SMEs
• 24:23 Skills: Hunter Vs Farmer
• 26:50 Summary, Metrics, And Qualification
• 29:43 Closing And Subscribe

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Hello and welcome to another podcast. Now, in this one, I'm going to talk about mindset, and I'm sorry if I'm a bit echoey, but it's uh where I am on this particular recording. I've spoken a lot about selling is about solving people's pain, and that's very true, but not for everybody. And this is where I want to look at two, not only different types of client, but it's almost two different universes, and that's the difference between what I'll I'll refer to as enterprise clients, which might also be known as major accounts, but more complex clients, and small to medium businesses or small to medium enterprises, not to confuse the um uh the terminology. So SME is a term I'm familiar with in Australia, and that could be anything from a one-man band to um a small company. So the point about this is that the approach you need to take when dealing with both company, both types of company, and you may well have both in your portfolio, are in fact very different, and that's what we'll dive into in this podcast. So before I go into it, please remember to like and subscribe, and um, we'll get stuck in. So let's look at the how the accounts look when you're approaching them. So, starting with major accounts, enterprises, typically you're looking at relatively long sales cycles, so they might be from anything from six months to maybe two years or even more. If you're dealing with government, it could well be that kind of um time. The next thing is you've got a much more complex organizational structure, which means that there are likely to be several people in different roles that you need to be across and meet with and make sure that what you're proposing meets their requirements and they may have differing requirements. You're likely to have more than one decision maker, so there may well be different layers. So, again, you need to understand who is responsible for what and how you present, how you uh negotiate, how you deal with each of these people. This sounds like hard work, but on the upside, you could well be talking about really significant deals that might run for several years. So these could be the kind of um orders, the kind of transactions that repeat over a number of years. So they give you a very steady uh income, a very steady revenue flow. And those, of course, are great once you've got them, but it can be an awful lot of work to get them in the first place. They're likely to be high scrutiny, and there may well be things like legal reviews, security assessments, that kind of thing. So essentially with enterprise, the rewards are definitely there, but you need to be prepared for things to take a while to turn into revenue that will feed your business, and you're likely to have to have a really develop a really good understanding of how the account is set up. So I dealt with um a major account some years ago now, and they had locations. So I was in the UK, they had locations in London, down in the southwest of England, in Belfast, and I would visit all of those areas, and one of the very first things I did was start to work out an organizational map, not only of who would be my end users, it was an engineering company, and I was selling equipment to test, production test. So I needed to know who my end users were, but also work back to understand who the influencers were, who handled the finance, when budgets were available, that kind of thing. And it took me a few months just to get that map together. And of course, the important thing is while you're doing that, it may well be that you've got no revenue coming in at all. So, this is one of the things you need to really be across. The other universe, if you like, the SME, the small to medium enterprise, the small to medium business, is pretty much the opposite. So you're likely, you may well be talking very fast turnaround, you might measure it in days, weeks, I've even done it in hours. You are likely to have maybe a single decision maker, maybe two, but the decision-making process is very limited. So you can get a decision very quickly. Budget might be limited, but they might be flexible. And this is something I picked up very early in my sales career. So I was selling technical equipment, but it got pointed out to me that my competition may well be other competitors who are selling similar goods, but it could also be that that company needed a new van or a new delivery vehicle or some new office furniture. So the point is these companies are running generally on much lower budgets, and the competition for money is not just the obvious competition, but it can be other things that the organization needs in order to work on a day-to-day basis. So you really need to understand that side of it and have that as part of your mental approach when you're dealing with these companies. One of the advantages, one of the things I like is that if you do a if you get into product demonstrations, that kind of thing, you can close a deal very quickly with that. Um, you're not likely to make so much money per sale, but you are likely to be selling in a much higher volume. So whereas with the large accounts, once you've got revenue coming in, it's really good. The smaller accounts may well be what you need to have available as you're starting to build up your presence in larger accounts so that you have money coming in. Now, something I talk about a lot is pain. And just sticking with small to medium businesses, small to medium enterprises, quite often what you were trying to do is solve a pain, solve pain a pain problem, instant pain relief. That's what we're doing. We're understanding what the pain points are, and we may well go through that process of even increasing the pain. So that uh we would do that to make the point that if they don't do anything right now, that pain will get much worse. Whereas if they take an action now, the initial there might be initial an initial pain, probably financial. It's like tearing off um a stick in plaster. There's that initial pain, but then it's gone. And then you're into that area where you're no longer having to deal with the pain that's taken them to this point where they're talking to you. So the kind of questions that you need to be asking, or they will ask, um, is will they save me time or money next month? This is the kind of timescale they're looking at. They're looking at pretty immediately pretty immediate returns. Now, they might not get the whole return on investment straight away, but they want to see that investment being returned as soon as possible. So these are the kind of things to think of when you're working with small companies. When you go to enterprise, so these much larger businesses. So, again, to be clear on what we're looking at, these could be Fortune 500, there might be government, there might be major hospitals, for example, or health systems, universities, global manufacturers, but these much larger accounts, quite often the decision-making process is likely to be tied into strategic initiatives. So, in other words, where they're taking the business in their three to five-year plan, for example, they might be realigning themselves in the market. Um, it could be something to do with how their IT systems are working, their security, do they need to be compliant with something? But there are these kind of questions, and all of them come back to your solution needs to be ticking boxes that tie in with that roadmap that they're working on. So, this is not the same kind of strategy that you would use with a small business where you're basically solving the problem that's creating pain. Here, with enterprise, you're likely to be much more strategic. So the decisions might be based on alignment with how that company is moving. It might be aligned with risk reduction. There may well be financial aspects, so they want to reduce costs in one area, but you need to understand the bigger picture and exactly where your solution fits in that bigger picture. Whereas with the smaller business, your solution, excuse me, your solution might be the solution, and that's that. It's very simple. So the kind of thing to talk about is that with smaller businesses, you're solving headaches, you're solving problems. With larger businesses, you're fulfilling a strategy, you're enabling them to implement a strategy that they have uh made a decision to go with. So the next thing to look at is the decision-making complexity. So who's involved? So we're sort of with the larger businesses right now, so let's stay there. How many stakeholders, how many people have an interest or a stake in your proposal and the impact that will have on their wider business? You're like you could be talking anything from, let's say, three people to a dozen, it might be more, but you need to understand who the key people are and also how you get to them. Because with all selling, you need to be let's call it pitching, or at least having a discussion with each stakeholder and talking about what their concerns are. How do you help them to do their job effectively? And different stakeholders may well have different requirements that they need to meet in order to do their job. And this is why you will have multiple stakeholders. They are likely to have different responsibilities. So some might be fiscal, some might be to do with production, some might be more customer-oriented, but there are likely to be various interests, and you need to make sure that for each person you talk to them about what concerns them. What you're going to find when you start meeting stakeholders is you're going to have different roles. And in the um consultative selling course, I dive into these in a lot more detail. But just to give you an idea, you may well have a champion or a coach, somebody who can help you to sort of navigate the issues within that company, who's doing what to whom, that kind of thing. You might have people who actually want to block that might be real blockers. They may not add much, but they can definitely stop your proposal going through. So you need to understand who they are and make sure you get them on side. You'll definitely have influencers. They may not make a decision, but they will influence the decision maker. You'll like need to have procurement. So you may well need to make sure the rules of how things are acquired are met, and you may need to demonstrate some flexibility there to meet their requirements from a fiscal standpoint. There might be legal issues, there might be IT issues. So you've got all of these different areas that you need to sit across. So this is why these sales can take a while. There may also be some internal politics, and this is where having a coach, someone who can give you the inside information on a particular business, that they these people become really valuable because uh some people will block simply because it's somebody else's idea. You get into this kind of nonsense, but unfortunately, this is how it'll work. So enterprise can be very complicated, and you really need to understand how everybody interacts with everybody else. The breath of fresh air is when you get that smaller businesses, often you've got one stakeholder, and they may well be the end user, the influencer, the economic decision maker. Um, they might well be doing everything. So what you're gonna do with them is most definitely ticking the objective boxes, as in meeting budget, hitting what whatever targets they have, but their decisions will also have an element of emotion to them, and they may well be based on their intuition. So there's that layer that you will have in small to medium enterprises, and that's likely to be stronger the fewer people are actually involved in the the decision, and you won't get that emotional aspect in the enterprise. Here you're really down to facts and figures. Um with the small business, probably no politics, unless you're really unlucky. So again, what you're doing in the small business, you're convincing a person. So this is where I talk a lot in the sales uh in the um person-to-person selling environment, the face-to-face selling. You're dealing with a person, so there's an emotional aspect, you're reading them. These uh aspects of the sale are much more important. In the enterprise situation, you're working within a system, so you have to align with the system and make sure that you tick all of the boxes and you play the game as it's determined by that system. Okay, so what are the kind of sales tactics that you need to use? So we'll go back to small to medium enterprises. What do you want to do? Short, punchy demos. You need to keep it to the point, but really have those conversations with the person you're demonstrating to to make sure you understand what they're looking for, and that's where you focus. Be very clear on the return on investment, keep it really short. That could be it might be as little as one or two sentences, but it needs to be a very short conversation just to understand so that they can understand and appreciate how your offer is going to really help them. And remember, you're selling them the transformation in this case. Your pricing needs to be really clear, and I recommend having an option, and I go into this in more detail in the course, but it's best to have a choice of two prices. Your onboarding style can be very fast, so this is where you will try to get them to make a decision quickly, where you're building up the pain of taking no action. So you're basically creating reasons for them to order today, do it right now, or at the very least in a few days. Some people need a few days because of the personality type. Um, but you definitely need to keep them in that in that emotional space where they're much more likely to buy. So the emphasis when you get to small to medium businesses is keep it simple, keep it fast, and be aware of affordability. When you go to larger businesses, so the enterprise um environment, you're probably gonna have some sort of discovery uh conversation, and there may be more than one. So you're building up in one sense it's trust, but it's trust from the perspective of objective items they can tick off. So it's basically a checklist. You need to demonstrate that you are the right kind of company to deliver this particular solution. And in my own experience, what I've had to do in some cases is actually work with another company because on my own, I can't meet all of the requirements. So the so what I'm thinking of here is actually government, where there were certain requirements about security, um, access to information, um, all this kind of thing. There were really strict rules in certain areas because the information was very sensitive. I didn't have that in the business I was in, so I had to create relationships with um other businesses that could deliver that, and we would do a dual bid. So these are the kind of things you might need to get into and start looking at when you're dealing with larger companies. So it's not only about understanding the business that you're selling to, but also recognizing that there may be aspects of what they are asking for that it just isn't viable for you to deliver. Uh so, for example, in the case I'm talking about, I would have needed to build um a physically secure area uh to very strict requirements, it would have cost a few hundred thousand dollars to actually do that. And that was not viable in the in the business I was working in. It was just too much of an expense for us. So the trick here is to just think outside the box a little bit. If you're going after business that you have a good chance of getting, if you don't have a good chance of getting it, you shouldn't be going after it. But if you've got a good chance of getting it, but you can't deliver on everything, there may be some aspects where you can bring in a third party and work with them so that together you can tick all of the boxes for this prospective client. So it's about thinking a little bit a bit outside the box. So you'll have your discovery conversations. You may well have to do customized demonstrations tailored to different aspects of whatever the client is trying to do. You may well need to come up with business cases and return on investment modeling. So this is where it gets more complicated. And you may have to show different return on investment scenarios, which might vary by time, it might vary by implementations of different solution options you have. I'm kind of keeping this general because I don't know what you sell. I'm trying to give this uh relevant. You might need to set up reference calls so that other people that you've sold to who are willing to provide you with a reference are available for this prospective customer to uh get their experience of you so that they have an objective um opinion of you. You may have security issues, as we've already discussed, compliance, and these are all things to be aware of. And it's really good to get an idea of this as early as you can because then you can begin to plan how you're going to approach this sale who you need to talk to, get in as many conversations as early as you can so that you're very clear. So the reason for looking at these two things is that when you're looking at a small business, you don't want to approach that business in the way that you would a large business, an enterprise business. You it just overcomplicates, it makes things much more complicated than they need to be, and you'll probably turn the buyer off. On the other hand, an enterprise will not respond in the same way as a small business. So you need to go through the strategy, you need to go through ticking all of their boxes, as I said earlier, playing the game to their rules. So, what's the role of relationships? Well, uh, with enterprise, again, you're looking at building trust over months, it can even be years. And the way to do that is um, again, I've gone into that a lot more detail on the course, but very simple just make sure you have regular meetings as you need to. I like to do face-to-face meetings uh at least every so often. I don't like to do too many remote uh meetings. When you're face to face, there's much more opportunity to um develop rapport with people and really read what's going on in the room. If you can have coffee, that's great too. It's particularly helpful if you've got a coach, someone coaching you through the business. And um my experience is to try and get people outside of their office, if you can, to a local coffee shop, because often people will be more open with you if their colleagues aren't around. Whereas if you're speaking to them in their office, let's say it's one of these um open plan offices, if you're having the meeting with them at their desk, so their colleagues can over here, what's going on, and I've certainly had to do quite a lot of those, they're likely to be a lot more guarded in what they say to you. Whereas if you can get them outside and cup coffee somewhere, they're likely to be a lot more open. And this is really useful to you. You clearly want to have them as open with you as possible. The more people you can get on side, the better. If you can get people who will recommend your solution internally, that's really helpful. As long as you're not into one of these personality things where one person will block simply because another person wants to go that way. And unfortunately, this does happen. It's very childish, but there you go. And what you're doing in Enterprise is essentially engaging over several channels. So you will have face-to-face meetings, you'll have emails, you might have to run internal events, so you might do like a kind of showcase event so that people can come along, ask questions, maybe there's presentations there, all this kind of thing. You might even run workshops. So think about the best way to approach a business. I've run free workshops when I was dealing with um, this was Australian Defense. Uh, I would run a workshop in generally, it's sometimes a neutral location. That was ideal, but sometimes it would be on site somewhere. And we would just talk maybe for an hour or so, get people together, do two or three presentations, but talk about a particular solution, maybe have someone available from a manufacturer because I was working as a representative in that in uh in Australia for these overseas companies. But be creative. Think about how you can get the word out there, make sure people get value from them. Uh, don't make them just a sales pitch. Make sure we would do technical presentations that were um actually quite effective, and it started to get us known as a as a business. This was uh uh fairly early on when I first took over running that particular business. So that's enterprise. So relationships are really important, and you want to be working with people at different levels. When we come to the small to medium enterprises, you you really want to build quick rapport because it might be over in a day. Um, as I've said, I've been able to convert in hours. So in those situations, you've really got to have the right rapport, you've got to build trust straight away, you've got to be really focused on the client. They've got to feel that you're listening to them, that you care about the outcome for them, but it happens much faster. It is a transaction, but it's likely to be much more personal. You've got that emotional aspect that I've just spoken about. And probably go for the shortest route. So don't overdo the relationship part of it. You don't want to slow things down. And really, the best way to build a relationship in my experience with these kinds of situations is to keep it really focused on the client. Make sure they feel that you are listening to them, that you are genuinely there to help them. Make sure you underpromise and over-deliver. So, what I mean by that is don't promise things you can't deliver. If you're going to do anything, tell them it will happen. We should be able to do it three to four days and then deliver in two to three. Do it faster. You know, be the reliable person or the one who um who comes in fast. And then nurture them and stay with them after delivery. Even if it's something that doesn't need a lot of post-sales activity, just work out some emails, maybe just to see how they're going. If you're in the area, see if you can pop in for a cup of coffee, just see how it's all going. All of this stuff is great because, in my experience, a lot of companies that do quick sales tend to just leave the client and be focused on the next one. And this is also true for a lot of salespeople. These are the true hunter salespeople, whereas, in fact, you need to have an aspect of the farmer so that you can keep those relationships going. Now, that client may or may not buy again from you, depends on what you're selling, but they may well know somebody who may buy from you. So that you they may well give you a referral that you're unaware of. And the first you know about it is when somebody approached you and said, uh, you know, here you do this. Could you come do us a demo? Because we look for something, they're great. So that's why you really want to manage and look after your small to medium enterprises as well. Okay, so moving on, I'll keep this uh keep this moving because I'm getting a bit long now. What are the things that you need in terms of um skills? So, really, with the enterprise stuff, it's patience. You've got to be be very methodical, uh, be prepared for the longer haul, and be comfortable if things are a little bit ambiguous. If you are dealing with smaller businesses, probably, as I've said, a bit more of a so that with the enterprise it'd be more of a farmer, um, where you're building the relationship slowly with the small to medium enterprises, you'll want more of the hunter in you because you've got to move on, be able to establish rapport very quickly and uh do a demo, whatever it might be, but close the sale quickly, move on to the next one. So this will depend a lot on your psychology and it may and the kind of person you are, and you may well be naturally suited to one or the other. Most of us um tend to be more happy in one of those situations more than the other. Some people can switch between two, both of them, it's great. Uh, but be aware of what you're um what you're comfortable with. Now, I'm gonna really um wind this up here. There is more I could talk about, but I hope this has given you some food for thought. The reason I want to I wanted to do this podcast is I focused a lot on probably the smaller business. So how you sell face to face with someone, where you're picking up emotion, you are building that emotional need, you're there to solve a problem. It's a pain point. I probably spent a lot less time with you if you are someone who has to deal with enterprise. And there's a couple of things really. One is to just be clear that the the approach to the two types of business are quite different. Uh, because the so each business needs a particular approach from the salesperson in order for them to be really effective with that type of business. The second thing is that you may well be uncomfortable in a certain type of sales. So that's okay. Uh, most people are, but be clear about what kind of relationship. Are you uh somebody who likes to build relationships over time with a smaller number of clients, but the sort of clients where you keep getting repeat orders from them, or maybe you are more suited to something that's longer term, where the important thing is stability. A lot of these companies, the bigger ones, want stability with the salesperson they're dealing with, and particularly certain personality types, definitely want that. Um, other businesses where you're looking at a lot of smaller companies, they can live with different salespeople dealing with them. It's not so much of a problem, uh, but you definitely need to be conscious of that. So just to summarize, I guess, the two areas require a different style of selling. How you would go about selling is quite different, and this means that your expectations need to be realistic when you are dealing with each type of client. So if you are in the small to medium enterprise area, it means it in terms of numbers, and this is much more of a numbers game, and you really need to be on top of your metrics, so your call rates, your conversion rates, all that kind of thing. In that sort of environment, those numbers are absolutely vital because there's no you won't know what you're doing, you won't be able to forecast accurately. You you really need to have those numbers down to know if you're going to hit target, if you even have a viable business. So the small to medium enterprise area is much more about hitting the numbers. With the major accounts, with the enterprise sales, this is understanding how competitive you are and being really objective early on about your chances because you are going to be investing a lot of time and money. It might be most of your time and money goes into developing these accounts. So you need to have a very good chance of making a sale. And I would say that's probably the most important qualification question you can ask yourself about going after these sales because they are definitely long term and they will take up a lot of time. Okay, I'm going to wind it up there. Um, I hope you found that useful. Please remember to like and subscribe if you feel I've uh earned a like and subscribe. And I'll speak to you in the next podcast. So bye for now.