Many infrastructure providers and vendors are moving upstream in terms of target segment, no longer relying on startup customers. There’s a substantial lift in revenue from 1-2 enterprise clients that outweighs the need to service various smaller customers that are struggling to scale transaction activity.

We previously shared a Go-to-Market (GTM) Playbook for revenue, sales, and strategy teams from B2B fintechs selling into enterprises and financial institutions.

Before launching a GTM effort for enterprise, it’s critical to put the properly planning in place — especially when it comes to identifying the best product-market fit (PMF. Lack of PMF will lead to unnecessary spend on sales & marketing and loss of efforts on better opportunities.

To set B2B fintechs for success with GTM enterprise planning, we’ll dive into the following (TL;DR):

• Sharpening your company’s product value structure first;

• Defining the ideal customer profile (ICP) in targeting enterprise prospects;

• Ensuring your company is able to handle the product needs & volume from these clients;

starting with product value foundation

The same formula that works for startup and growth-stage clients will not apply to enterprises and financial institutions.

B2B fintechs who have closed larger deals without an enhanced strategy may think they’re exempt from the above statement, but that’s not the case.

Enterprises will have nuanced needs, feature requests, and a higher demand for support. Commercials designed for startups do not include all this extra work — B2B fintechs are stuck providing value that they’re not getting paid for, which impacts the annual contract value (ACV) earned.

This is where defining your product value structure becomes so critical. To do so, make sure your team:

• Surveys existing clients and potential prospects to uncover all pain points (now and in the future);

• Gathers market research data as part of a wider view;

• Combines analysis from both to narrow down what areas can be solved by your company’s solution;

Out of this exercise, there should be a defining statement (or tagline) that communicates the value delivered. Here’s an example from Ramp (expense management solution for business clients) that’s easy to understand and concise:

Ramp is on a mission to help finance teams build healthier businesses. By reimagining technology for back office finance from the ground up, Ramp provides businesses of all sizes and at all stages with the essential tools to modernize finance operations and help their business thrive.

This foundational statement is one that all employees (from C-suite to customer-facing front lines) can rally around and apply to their day-to-day activities.

ICP for enterprise prospects

With the product value structure in place, the focus shifts to identifying the best type of enterprise buyer for your program.

This process should yield a type of client that gains the most value from purchasing your solution. Key questions to help narrow down ICP discovery:

• Specific pain points of target customers?

• How do these pain points connect to specific use cases?

• In what way does our product uniquely solve those pain points better than competitors?

• What are they key benefits that these prospects are looking for (e.g. higher revenue, lower costs, increased efficiency)? 

In B2B fintech, the best enterprise prospects tend to have some understanding of financial services + managing software solutions, are ready to expand their current offerings, need to solve daily operation concerns through automation, and be willing to own the relationship with the end-user (as opposed to referring them to a 3rd party for a new product).

On the other side, enterprises are looking for customized ways to better collect & manage data, launch novel features/services that lead to user experience gains, and improve the scale of existing user activity.

best-fit use cases for icp

Ultimately, generating value comes from solving critical use cases for enterprises and financial institutions.

Multiple options tend to exist, but there should be on key use case that stands out above the rest which will solve the most critical problem(s) facing these larger prospects. This mission-critical problem typically falls under the responsibility of one team. Determining what’s most important to this team (priorities), how they decide what solution to implement (decision criteria), and other stakeholders involved are key attributes to understand.

If some of these areas sound familiar from the GTM Playbook, you’re correct. This gathering of information resembles MEDDICC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion, Competition) — an enterprise sales framework for qualifying leads and closing deals.

In establishing the best-fit use case, B2B fintechs should focus on:

• Who is the business owner responsible for solving this problem?

• What 1st level & 2nd level capabilities should this solution have? 

• What level of support is expected?

• Who would approve the budget towards the solution to solve this problem (and what is the budget)?

• Are there other stakeholders involved as part of the decision process?

Depending on the pain points, multiple teams (product, ops, legal, finance, risk, tech) may be involved — each with different needs and way of evaluating a potential solution. It’s up to the fintech to identify which team has the most authority and capture their buy-in.

build out the FRAMEWORK to support your new gtm strategy

With the foundation set, ICP and use cases established, your team can now go to work in putting a strategy in motion.

The key question that B2B fintechs ask at this stage:

What’s needed (from product development, operations, support, etc.) to win business & ensure enterprise success?

The needs of your enterprise ICP need to be solved by your platform. If those capabilities aren’t there today, it’s time to add them to your product roadmap and sales efforts. Not everything can be built at once — company leaders will need to decide on the initial set of priorities for capturing early success with large prospects. One win can be sufficient social proof that your product solution is enterprise-ready.

To get the ball rolling quickly, teams should define a narrow target within the ICP who provides high potential for a win AND can champion your platform throughout their network of enterprises. Identify established prospects that are hungry for innovative, new solutions within your sector. Then go to work in ensuring that your company is solving their top 2-3 problems.

Top issues in launching new programs with enterprises hover in the following areas:

• Rich feature/product sets: Enterprises often request custom builds that add value to their particular client segment & program, but would be a one-off that isn’t repeatable for B2B fintechs. Identify critical themes in these requests and focus on extending your platform to cover these gaps OR provide enterprises with tools (self-service) to build off of your platform themselves.

• Platform stability: B2B fintechs can fall in the trap of ‘build-build-build’ mode in new features are coming out rapidly. Product leaders need to be honest about enterprise readiness and conduct rigorous testing to confirm performance doesn’t lag at a certain scale. There’s massive reputational risk in selling a solution that’s not ready to enterprises’

• Data security & privacy: Higher volumes of transactions and users lead to higher risk of breaches and non-compliance with privacy laws (national and global); being able to show how securely data is stored, access points, and ability to juggle privacy guidelines across jurisdictions is critical;

Having this clear path and specific enterprise to target avoids going too broad in launching a GTM strategy and wasting valuable time & resources. The enterprise sales cycle for active buyers takes 6+ months, which means nearly a year to realize revenue gains (if implementation & testing takes 3+ months).

Enterprise GTM requires a shift from inbound to outbound

Larger prospects (such as public companies and financial institutions) do not come through inbound channels (linked to marketing leads).

Tech-savvy startups & SMBs with fast buying processes and less management layers use these channels and make decisions within 30 - 90 days. They have a solid understanding of value props & benefits from the B2B fintech platform. These prospects know what they’re looking for and need a path that is timely & cost-effective.

Enterprises typically won’t use inbound channels. They tend to look for referrals & intros to providers as starting points in discussions. There’s often a early exploration stage before a formal buying process in which a wide net is cast of possible vendors.

High-profile clients don’t know the specifics of what they need either. Within an organization, there are different opinions of what’s most important. Multiple stakeholders are involved in evaluating potential solutions. It may be unclear who the decision maker is.

B2B fintechs must add an outbound function as part of their GTM enterprise strategy — this includes hiring & training staff that:

• Identify top verticals (and companies in those verticals) that align with ICP;

• Map out the organizational chart of a prospective company;

• Target the best candidates at these prospects that can be champions (advocates) for your team’s solution;

• Conducting a ‘pre-sale’ process for enterprises in early exploration in which target companies list out pressing needs, goals, and what they think they need from a vendor;

• Manage & run a lengthy, enterprise sales cycle that has moving parts and numerous players;

Top enterprise sales managers may only be managing 2-3 active prospects at a time, so there’s no need to hire for multiple roles at the beginning. B2B fintechs should focus on providing support to these teammates through marketing, advertising, website updates, and brand initiatives.  These activities would provide collateral for calls and content that helps keep prospects engaged.

MAKING THE GO-TO-MARKET MOVE IN 2024

Going upmarket is by no means a simple task.

Timing, readiness, and a solid strategy increase the likelihood of success in unlocking a higher threshold of revenue-generating clients.

Be aware that you’re not the only B2B fintech going through journey right now. The majority of companies know that they need stable revenue performance next year as the path to profitability. Enterprise customers can provide this.

This requires disengaging from the everyday back-and-forth and really understanding the wider opportunity in front of your team. It’s easy to continue with existing processes and customer relationships, but true growth requires a step back, gaining a clear perspective on what’s needed, then making the GTM move methodically with a robust framework and playbook for 2024. //

Interested in building an strategic enterprise initiative at your company?

At FinTechtris, we’ve advised on new GTM strategies for fintechs & non-fintechs (of all sizes) focused on enterprise prospects and pipeline growth.

If your company is interested in (i) building a new GTM strategy, (ii) evaluating its current initiatives, or (iii) how to improve your enterprise sales framework, click here to connect with us today —>