How Can Startups Sell to Enterprises in 2024?
A data-driven analysis of how startups are selling to enterprises.
Virtually every startup the Salesforce Ventures team talks to wants to break into enterprise sales. These contracts can be extremely lucrative for a startup and serve as a powerful validation of the product—which, in turn, can attract additional enterprise customers. This virtuous cycle has helped countless startups hit their growth goals, achieve scale, and realize meaningful outcomes.
However, enterprise sales are much easier said than done. A successful enterprise sales motion requires a large upfront investment, discipline, patience, and continuous iteration. Founders often don’t know where to get started.
As a leader in enterprise technology, Salesforce Ventures believes it’s part of our value-add to understand how startups can sell to enterprises, and share our findings with the broader startup ecosystem. This spring we surveyed 180+ startup sales leaders about their enterprise go-to-market (GTM) motion and synthesized their responses into a 50-page report detailing every aspect of the modern enterprise sales motion.
This report is a valuable asset for any founder or sales leader angling to break into enterprise sales.
A few key findings:
Enterprise annual contract values (ACVs) are growing
Respondents to our survey on average reported a 19% increase in ACV of their enterprise clients compared to 12 months ago.
Enterprise sales reps are in demand
The headcount of enterprise sales reps at the startups surveyed has grown by an average of 18% compared to 12 months ago.
Sales teams are becoming more efficient
60% of respondents observed an increase in sales team productivity compared to 12 months ago, aided at least in part by AI-powered automation.
With enterprises generally expanding IT budgets after a prolonged period of contraction, now is a great time for startups to re-evaluate their enterprise GTM motion to capitalize on these more favorable market conditions and set themselves up for sustainable growth.
The Salesforce Ventures Enterprise GTM Report is a great asset for any founder or sales leader seeking to refine their approach and win new business.
To download the report, click here.
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