Dear SaaStr: What Was Your Experience At Your First Big Enterprise Pitch?
Mine was terrible:
- My more technical co-founder didn’t show up to the meeting.
- The interactive demo didn’t work (a browser bug).
- They asked me about our LDAP integration. At the time, I had no idea what LDAP was. So I didn’t even know how to answer the question.
- I had a deck to use, but it was more a VC-pitch type deck and not enough about the product. They asked me to skip the deck.
This was a Fortune 50 prospect and 20+ folks were in the room for the meeting.
We lost the pilot. Even after the SVP before the meeting said he’d make it happen. I blew it that badly.
It was rough.
But I learned. I was never unprepared again. After that:
- I always had the right team at the meeting.
- I got better at demo-ing myself. Not relying on someone else to do the demo
- Most importantly, I had to hear the objections first to learn them. Then, you get better.
The next one like this — we closed.
