Enterprise Sales: Creating A Formula That Works With Alexine Mudawar
Alexine Mudawar, CEO, Women In Sales
With a decade of enterprise sales experience under her belt, Alexine Mudawar has transitioned into the role of CEO at Women In Sales. The industry leader and LinkedIn Top Sales Voice talks about her career experiences and shares advice for professionals looking to break into enterprise sales.
Let's start by describing your specialization in enterprise sales.
I'm a CEO now, and probably selling more than ever, but actually using a lot of my enterprise selling skills to apply to what I'm doing today as well.
“So I think some of the biggest differences between what I would consider enterprise versus more transactional sales is, the most obvious being you're dealing with much longer sales cycles.”
Mudawar describes having deals that took one to two years to close. In other cases, some deals will close as early as within a couple of months. With the timelines comes the importance of maintaining prospect relationships long-term and the importance of maintaining control over the deal cycle.
With the deal cycle in mind, Mudawar suggests:
Organizing your resources
Keeping really, really well-documented notes
Always having next steps
Constantly sharing updates (because you're usually working with a larger buying committee)
What are ways to stay engaged with prospects over time to continue the relationship?
Referencing one of her most recent deals that consisted of an over eight-month sales cycle:
“In between the stages we always had a next step on the book. So sometimes that would look like three months from today, we have our next call, which is a huge gap of time, a lot can be lost, then you could forget a lot of things. So what I did in between was actually collaborate and correspond with a team via social media.”
Mudawar interacted with the prospect’s online content, followed along with company initiatives t and ultimately embeded herself into what the company did to advance the buying process. She suggests building up your knowledge and your expertise on your prospect so that by the time you get to that next conversation, you're more well-equipped to talk to them.
Saying, “It shows that you took the time, that you're doing your research, that you care, and that you are gonna be a trusted resource, a trusted advisor through that sales journey long-term.”
What is a bad prospect, and how can sales professionals identify them so they don’t waste their time or efforts?
“The honest answer is you're probably not going to know what a bad, prospect is until you start to come across them. Until you get some years under your belt.”
Mudwar says early in her career, she tried taking any deal with anyone. Some indicators of a bad prospect might include immediately asking for discounts or trying to devalue the product or service you are selling.
“That's usually an early indicator that, hey, we don't have mutual alignment. They're really just looking at pricing. They're not so much looking at like the value I'm bringing. And this feels like it's leaning really one-sided. And so I may want to take a step back.”
Identifying the behavior and acknowledging it can quickly reveal their true intentions and save both you and the prospect time.
Mudawar also pays close attention to the way prospects treat her team.
“Like you're gonna have to sign a couple of bad customers to see what a bad customer looks like and to actually feel how painful it is to go through that process. And you'll realize when you go through a couple of those, how little that commission check really impacts you when you think about the long-term of how negative that customer was to your overall well-being.”
Is a CEO still a seller? If so, name some ways that a CEO is still a seller.
“I am in full sales mode. I don't think I've ever been so busy with meetings and owning my own business. And I've never realized how much a CEO is a seller until these last few months.”
From bookkeeping to daily outreach, her work keeps her busy but Mudawar finds it rewarding. Now that she is selling her own business and service, Mudawar says wins feel so much bigger and relevant.
Why is it important for an organization like Women in Sales to exist?
“I've been in tech sales for 10 years. And when I looked around my team 10 years ago, it was always me and a couple of women on the team…What didn't change was really the number of women on the team. We still have such a significant shortfall of women being represented and all folks, like diversity across the board in sales is just not where it needs to be today. And so I think there's just such an opportunity to change that.”
Mudawar references data on the better performance of diverse teams.
“For my organization, for Women In Sales, there are a few key pieces:
How do we get women introduced into this field and help them understand that this is a potential career path?
How do we keep them engaged in these roles and ultimately promoted?”
The sales executive says, “The other piece is just how do we connect these folks so they can have conversations with one another because it can feel really, really alienating to be the only woman or one of the only women on a team.”
“The last part I would say to this too is I also wanted to create an organization where men could still participate and show up to the conversations as well. So I wanted to keep men engaged because we know that men are in the majority of those leadership roles today. So if we talk just amongst ourselves, we're losing this really critical element of getting this information out there further. So we actually do have a lot of men in leadership roles today who are part of the community.”
Mudawar was recently recognized as one of the Top 18 Influencers You Should Know and was also named as one of the 2023 Influential Women in Sales — two events her father is sure to document alongside the other screenshots of past accolades she says he collects in a folder.
What actions did you take to get to your place of success?
Mudawar says she become very active on LinkedIn years ago and become somewhat notorious for documenting all she learned, taking pictures of events, and sharing key takeaways. Mudawar desired something that would help her long-term.
She also messaged top speakers, influencers, and top authors in sales with personalized notes and connection requests to build her personal network. The personalized messages got responses, and Mudawar even found that people were rooting for her.
Mudawar says, “The biggest piece was just showing up and being in places where other people were. I went to a lot of networking events solo. And a lot of times I was the only woman at the networking event. And I would just march up and go talk to a group of guys who are in a circle. But like, that's all I knew how to do originally. So I just tried really hard to put myself out there, even though it was super uncomfortable, even though I didn't feel like I had a place necessarily. And as I continued to build those connections, and as I continued to kind of support and lift up other people around me, they started to do the same back.”
Once Mudawar started sharing more tactical content, the momentum on LinkedIn really grew.
“I think the first step is showing up and the next step is just trusting that you know what you're talking about and you should start talking about it more so you can elevate your own voice and then try to lift other people up as you go too.”
What advice would you give to someone that's looking to break into enterprise sales, and what overall advice do you want to give somebody who's growing their career?
“Experiment a little with different types of sales to figure out what they like because transactional sales, enterprise sales, mid-market, you know, there's so many different types of sales and industries and it's really hard to know when you're coming in which one is going to be most interesting.”
Mudawar says communities and LinkedIn are all good places to start to get exposure and see what's resonating with you. She recommends that people who are just starting out get active on social.
Even if you don't want to post, just comment on other people's stuff. Follow what they're talking about.
Look for other people who post about enterprise sales, if that's something you think you're interested in and see what they're talking about.
Start absorbing information via podcasts or webinars to see what people are talking about and see what's resonating with you.
“I think we need to be okay with letting people take what pathways they want.”
Mudawar adds, “It's very rare that you're gonna go to your first company and hit the nail on the head and be like, ‘Okay, this is the company I'm retiring with’. Like, this is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. Often we bounce around a couple of times and we try different industries and we try different types of sales until we figure out one that feels the best for us. Or until we break off and do our own thing.”
AB test and figure out what works for you.
Expose yourself to as much content and other voices as you can.
Go into “sponge mode” by absorbing as much knowledge as possible.
Where are the best places to connect with you?
You’re welcome to connect with Alexine Mudawar on LinkedIn where there is also a LinkedIn page for Women In sales and a new Instagram account. Muduwar is very active in the Women In Sales Slack community. You can join the community and become of a member of Women in Sales for free.
Enjoy the full conversation at the link below.
