BC Startup Sales Podcast – Team Selling Into The Enterprise with Dave Govan (Hitachi Vantara)

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Dave Govan, a VP of Sales at Hitachi Vantara, to discuss “Team Selling Into The Enterprise.” Hitachi Vantara is a $4 billion company headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and is owned by Hitachi, LTD an $80 billion conglomerate out of Japan. They provide an unprecedented range of solutions within data management to enterprises of all sizes. The company has been at the forefront of innovation within this space, leveraging decades of experience to enable their clients in tapping into the full potential of their data.

Dave Govan is a VP of Sales at Hitachi Vantara. Prior to this role, he held a number of leadership positions within the sales functions of businesses, including Oracle, Sailthru and Dynamic Yield. Dave has also advised a number of startups in various capacities. In addition, he also published the book Crisis in the Enterprise. Dave graduated from Rider University with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce.

Sales representatives often attempt to sell into large enterprises by themselves without much aid from other individuals in their sales organization or even other functions. Many times, they even keep such accounts secret until they think they can win the deal. Typically the gap exists due to cultural or educational issues within the salesforce where historically the sales team has not performed collectively. Ultimately this jeopardizes the company’s ability to manage such complex sales processes and secure these large enterprise accounts. This is where team selling into the enterprise comes in. Team selling is the practice of identifying the various stakeholders involved on the buyer’s side, better understanding what or who from the selling organization may be able to influence them in the right way, then involving those individuals from your own team within the sales process. For example, in certain instances, a head of product, engineering lead, or even CEO or a board member may be best suited to speak to their respective counterparts on the customer side, given their insightful perspective of the role and any considerations that come with it. Not only does this allow these team members to specify value adds of the product that sales representatives may not be able to otherwise articulate, but also this enables the selling team to show the importance it will give the account by involving key management from day one. Team selling into the enterprise is critical and most beneficial in cases where the total contract value is large and the sale is complex, comprising of multiple stakeholders and decision makers.

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