Rushing to engage procurement shifts the conversation prematurely to price. Instead, focus on building an overwhelmingly strong value case with your internal coach and the economic buyer. This empowers your supporters to champion the solution's value, neutralizing procurement's ability to commoditize your offering and focus solely on cost reduction.

The difficulty of enterprise procurement is a feature, not a bug. A champion will only expend the immense internal effort to push a deal through if your solution directly unblocks a critical, unavoidable project on their to-do list. Your vision alone is not enough to motivate them.

Engaging with procurement early commoditizes your solution and centers the conversation on price. Instead, sell value to the actual users and decision-makers first. By the time procurement is involved, the decision and price should already be negotiated, leaving them only to process the final transaction.

Salespeople with technical backgrounds often only engage with their direct counterparts. To justify price increases and avoid commoditization, they must proactively build relationships with higher-level decision-makers who appreciate broader business value, bypassing the purchasing department's focus on cost.

Instead of offering a 'free' product or service, which triggers suspicion and sends you to procurement, ask to speak with the person responsible for compliance. This reframes your role from a salesperson to a compliance expert, directing you to the correct decision-maker who understands the operational risks.

Don't dilute positioning to appeal to the entire buying committee. Focus on the value proposition for your internal champion. For other stakeholders like IT or security, your job is not to provide value but to handle their objections and prove you meet their requirements.

MSPs often avoid selling compliance services due to their complexity and perceived liability. However, 'human risk' is a required part of most frameworks and is far more tangible and easier to sell than technical controls. It acts as a wedge, allowing MSPs to enter the lucrative compliance market with a simpler, more relatable offering.

When selling a product like corporate gifts, avoid starting with purchasing. Instead, identify the end-users. If gifts are for employees, target HR. If they're for customers, target Sales and Marketing. This focuses your effort on the stakeholders who feel the need for the product directly, rather than those focused solely on cost.

Enterprise deals often stall in procurement or legal, not with the business champion. From the start of a POC, identify and build relationships with stakeholders in these departments. Parallelize legal paperwork with technical validation to prevent late-stage delays and shorten sales cycles.