Selling to Big Companies addresses a specific, common problem: you have a product or service that large companies need, but you can’t get anyone to return your calls. Jill Konrath, who spent years selling technology to Fortune 500 companies, wrote the book for salespeople and founders who are trying to break into enterprise accounts where the buyer doesn’t know who you are and has no obvious reason to take your meeting.
Konrath’s approach starts with research. Before you contact anyone, you need to understand the company’s business problems well enough to frame your outreach around their situation, not your product. She provides specific templates for emails and voicemails that are short, relevant, and focused on a business outcome the recipient cares about. The core principle is that busy executives will respond to messages that are about their problems, and they will ignore messages that are about your solution.
The book covers how to identify the right person to contact (not always the obvious title), how to get past administrative gatekeepers (be direct and specific about the business reason for your call), how to handle the first meeting (listen more than you talk and focus on understanding their situation), and how to work through the complex decision-making structures inside large organizations.
For founders selling to enterprise customers for the first time, the book is directly applicable. Most first-time enterprise sellers make the mistake of leading with their product when they should be leading with the customer’s problem. Konrath’s message-crafting frameworks, which show you exactly how to write a cold email that a VP will actually open, are worth the price of the book alone.
The writing is practical and organized around specific situations. Each chapter addresses a distinct challenge in the enterprise sales process and provides concrete tools for handling it. Some of the technology references are dated (the book was originally published in 2005), but the human dynamics of selling to large organizations have not changed. Busy people still ignore generic pitches, and they still respond to messages that demonstrate you’ve done your homework about their business.
