How to succeed in enterprise sales when you lack brand recognition

A strong brand that is well known in the market can greatly improve your chances of getting your foot in the door as a salesperson.

However, this is a luxury that salespeople at smaller, newer startups rarely have.

I experienced this first hand in my career when I went from Yahoo! to Indeed… Yahoo! was a household name at the time. But Indeed was an unknown ‘new kid on the block’ with zero brand recognition (I was the first enterprise salesperson hired).

To be successful, I had to take a completely different approach to the one I used at Yahoo! to get my foot in the door (and be invited in) with enterprise buyers.

Here’s exactly what I did to achieve that and how you can too, step by step.

1. Prioritize prospecting efforts ruthlessly.

When you’re first getting started, the temptation (especially if you’ve been in the SMB space previously) is to “spread the net wide.”

However, while it may seem counterintuitive, this is the complete opposite of what works best. Being more thoughtful about who you’re trying to reach and why will get you much farther, faster.