Selling Strategy

Selling strategy defines who your primary buyer is and the path they take to adopt your product. Knowing which approach your company follows determines how you design onboarding, feature visibility, and the overall product experience. Misalign your design to the selling strategy, and you risk alienating the people who hold the purse strings.

Top Down

A top down selling strategy is common in companies that sell to enterprises and the mid-market. Sales are made to high-level decision makers with budget authority. High or mid-level managers often act as champions for solutions, but lack the authority to actually make a purchasing decision. Low-level employees often have little say in what solution gets purchased and implemented, but their feedback can influence renewal decisions. Deals are often large, annual or multi-year contracts with long sales cycles.

Many designers shun the idea of working for a company that deploys a top down strategy, as it seems like stuffy, boring work. But there is a lot to love here. Companies with top down selling strategies often have very stable and predictable revenue. If you like solving big problems, some of the most complicated, hairiest, but also meaningful and impactful design problems live in this space.

Companies with Top-Down Selling Strategies

• Salesforce
• Snowflake
• Pendo
• CrowdStrike

Key dynamics

• Buyers and users of your product are two separate groups of people. Buyers may never log in to or use the product directly. They rely on demos, case studies, employee feedback, and proof of ROI.
• Procurement processes, compliance requirements, and integrations often carry as much weight as features or polish. Lacking the right integrations or not being compliant with an industry standard may disqualify you from consideration, regardless of how good your product is.
• Relationships are critical. A handful of customers may represent the majority of revenue, and losing a single large customer can send shockwaves through the entire company.

Design Implications

• Learn about your biggest customers. A few large customers may drive the majority of your revenue. Learn their world. Understand their workflows, compliance needs, procurement processes, and pain points.
• Generalize feature requests. Large customers or prospects may make a renewal or a sale contingent on getting a new feature implemented. In cases where you need to implement a new feature for a customer, avoid tailoring it exactly to their specifications. Rather, use the opportunity to design and deliver the feature for your larger customer base.
• Compliance is critical. The larger the organization, the more important compliance will be to them. This may include compliance to security standards, accessibility standards, and industry-level standards and regulations.