On thing he didn't mention (but surely must know -- this guy clearly has the enterprise scars) is the importance of the "coach" at the customer.
He well describes the team of people that need to be involved in actually sending you a PO and payment(s): someone from purchasing, someone in middle management, possibly someone from legal, and the hapless folks who actually have to use your product. You never get them all in one room, which is probably a good thing.
The coach is the person who will get the deal done: they know the product is needed, they know who needs to be convinced, they can make the case, and they will sherpa you around to the appropriate stakeholders so you can make your pitch. Typically they are middle management for the people who will use the product, but they can also end up being someone who reports to the CTO or whomever.
Another key thing is go in at the right level. You might get an intro to the CEO, and she may end up convinced that your product is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's unlikely to help: she'll come back from the week end and tell the GM of some division "hey, we should really be using that Foobartronix cloud solution!" and the GM will say "Wow, thanks, that's gonna make a huge difference to us" and then nothing will happen. You'll want to pitch the highest person responsible and no higher.
I once pitched our product the CEO of the Sony Computer Entertainment (Playstation). He was really interested and asked good questions and I assume forgot about us almost completely as soon as we had left the room. The importance of that meeting was that the other people who had decided to work with us (which happened in the blink of an eye...like 9 months) wanted him to know they'd found a good solution to a big problem. We were crucial, yet in an odd way irrelevant to that meeting.
There is also a link between the nature of the proposal and the internal coach/champion: If its an opaque technical change? You will probably need someone on the ground. If the proposal is a transformation that involves making existing functions obsolete? That will need C-level clout.
He well describes the team of people that need to be involved in actually sending you a PO and payment(s): someone from purchasing, someone in middle management, possibly someone from legal, and the hapless folks who actually have to use your product. You never get them all in one room, which is probably a good thing.
The coach is the person who will get the deal done: they know the product is needed, they know who needs to be convinced, they can make the case, and they will sherpa you around to the appropriate stakeholders so you can make your pitch. Typically they are middle management for the people who will use the product, but they can also end up being someone who reports to the CTO or whomever.
Another key thing is go in at the right level. You might get an intro to the CEO, and she may end up convinced that your product is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's unlikely to help: she'll come back from the week end and tell the GM of some division "hey, we should really be using that Foobartronix cloud solution!" and the GM will say "Wow, thanks, that's gonna make a huge difference to us" and then nothing will happen. You'll want to pitch the highest person responsible and no higher.
I once pitched our product the CEO of the Sony Computer Entertainment (Playstation). He was really interested and asked good questions and I assume forgot about us almost completely as soon as we had left the room. The importance of that meeting was that the other people who had decided to work with us (which happened in the blink of an eye...like 9 months) wanted him to know they'd found a good solution to a big problem. We were crucial, yet in an odd way irrelevant to that meeting.