Articles for complex B2B deals

Recent perspectives on complex B2B deals

• Megadeals are signed with existing customers. How much of your growth plan is aimed there?

  Megadeals are signed with existing customers. Yet most growth plans focus on new logos, while the biggest opportunity sits in the units, countries and functions of customers you already serve. Drawing on more than 20 years in client management and megadeals, David Klättborg explains why the next deal inside an account is harder than it looks, how to map the white space, and how to win the next unit with a Red Fiat.

• Most enterprise deals are lost before the RFP. Bain says 81% of buyers already favor a vendor when the process starts.

  Bain’s 2024 research found that 81% of B2B buyers favor a vendor they already know at the start of the buying process. In complex enterprise deals, that means the real contest often happens before the RFP, before the demo, and before your sales team enters the room. If the buying group does not know you, you may have already lost.

• Your biggest deals are not dying because of your pitch. They are dying because buyers are afraid to decide.

  Most CEOs mistake activity for progress. In complex B2B, deals move only when buyers can answer three internal questions: What are we buying, has this worked somewhere like us, and can we defend the decision if it goes wrong?

• You don't need more salespeople. You need deal orchestration.

  Fortune 500 companies surround their biggest deals with research, content, media, analytics, and executive coordination. Mid-sized challengers often try to win the same deals with a CRM and a few salespeople. That gap explains why so many “sales problems” are really orchestration problems.

• If your enterprise deals keep stalling at sign-off, you need a Red Fiat.

  Most deals inside large accounts do not die because the buyer says no. They die because nobody inside can say yes without escalating. The fix is not a better pitch. It is a smaller, smarter entry deal.

• The SaaS sales playbook that built Silicon Valley is quietly destroying complex B2B deals.

  SDRs, demos, and volume outbound helped build modern software. But in markets with only 50 to 200 real buyers, the same motion can burn the relationships companies need most.

• Your biggest enterprise deals are being lost in conversations your sales team never sees

  In complex B2B sales, CEOs often blame stalled deals on weak pipelines, slow reps, or bad timing. The real problem is that too many companies still depend on one rainmaker to influence an entire buying committee.

• Your biggest enterprise deals don’t move through a funnel. They move in a W.

  Scale-ups often respond to stalled enterprise deals by hiring more salespeople. But the companies that created categories, from Salesforce and Workday to Snowflake, Okta, HubSpot, and Slack, show that the real problem is usually not headcount. It is the shape of the sale.

• Why hiring more salespeople will not save your stalled enterprise deals

  After studying 400 complex B2B companies, I found the same pattern again and again. The biggest deals depended on two or three people with the judgment, credibility, and history to move buying groups. Most CEOs only see the dependency when growth stalls. Hiring more salespeople rarely fixes it. It usually makes the problem more expensive.