Sales funnels in Megadeals

There are sales deals and then there are Megadeals

The type of contracts that are worth billions of dollars such as large construction projects, defense contracts or complex technical works. The guest to this One Minute Moment is Christopher Engman who is the author and founder of “Megadeals”, a Stockholm based consultancy aiding enterprises in their megadeal marketing and sales structures.

According to him even though the structure of a megadeal is different from buying a new dishwasher, there are also some similarities. 

To see the difference we first need to understand what a megadeal actually is. “One can call a deal a megadeal when there are 3 elements present,” explains Christopher.

1. Matrix organisation vs pyramid:
   In megadeals the buying organisation is not a conventional “pyramid” organisation, but is a so called matrix structure where various angles are involved

2. Cross functional:
   Megadeals are often highly complex issues and require the insight of people with different skillsets. That means you will be selling into different functions of the buying organisation than just a single one.  For example the acquisition of fighter jets requires the input of technicians, engineers, pilots, lawyers, controllers, politicians and much more.

3. Entire sales team vs single sales person:
   The deal requires an entire team of people with different backgrounds such as technical people, sales people and experts as compared to one salesperson managing the account to one particular client.

“When these three elements apply the sales process shifts to being a sales discipline to being an orchestration discipline with involvement from the different levels of both your own organisation and that of your potential customer.”

Despite these differences, and probably the size of the bill, there are still some things that don’t change from a regular sales journey. Brand awareness, for example, is also proven to be extremely important in a megadeal, but mainly at the bottom of the sales funnel as it aspires confidence and trust to the potential customer. 

“Having a strong brand continues to be important,” adds Engman, “although in a megadeal the people who should know you, probably already do. From that perspective it’s a lot more about generating that final trust in the late sales cycle than it is awareness.”

Share of Search in megadeals

When surrounded with the expertise of their colleagues, most members of a procurement team will still want to look up who they are dealing with and most likely one particular element about the company that is in line with their own field of expertise.

“For this we have something called a Defensive Search Strategy,” explains Christopher. “We carefully select search terms connected to a particular field and in relation to the deal we are working with. Once we see movement on those words we can understand there is an interest from the other side and start expanding with related searches so the procurement team discovers increasingly more about us.

The selection of the right keywords to track is important for multiple reasons.

• Firstly it could enable the correlation between share of search and market share to improve.

• Recent studies our company has conducted for a client in the ice-cream industry, has proven that using the right combination of words could improve the correlation between market share and share of search from 62% to 74%. When trying to push for maximum correlation, it might also not just be one word, but a compound of various words that provides the best overview. 

• The right search volumes on the right set of search terms can also provide significant insights into the consumers state of mind for the purchase journey, or even explain what future path they might be taking into consideration.

Looked at it through that lens, Share of Search can also be used as a trend observation tool. Something about which we will write more in one of the upcoming One Minute Moments.