Enterprise SaaS Sales With No Product: Landing a Big Four Customer

About this episode

Christian Lund shares his experience of closing a major client without a product by selling a point of view and defining proof criteria upfront.

Two founders. Two engineers. No product. Christian Lund closed one of the Big Four accounting firms as Templafy's first customer before the software existed, by selling a point of view instead of a demo. When that customer asked to start with ten people, he didn't say no. He said "yes, if." Christian breaks down his approach to selling to enterprise without a product, why he answered every ten-person pilot request with "yes, if," and how fixing the proof criteria upfront turned trials into company-wide deals. He also explains why disqualifying prospects beats trying to convince them. Templafy now runs at eight figures in revenue with a couple of hundred employees. Christian and his co-founder spun it out of an on-premise document business, raised their first funding round close to twelve months before the product existed, and are now rebuilding the company again for the AI shift. This episode is brought to you by: 🤖 Hobbes → Don't book a demo. Take one. 🔑 Key Lessons 🏢 Sell your point of view before you sell product: During a technology shift, large enterprises buy people who understand the transition. Templafy won a Big Four firm on domain expertise alone, then co-created the…

People in this episode

Host: Omer Khan

Guest: Christian Lund

Topics covered

• enterprise sales
• startup strategy
• product development
• customer acquisition
• proof of concept
• AI shift

Keywords

• enterprise sales
• Big Four
• Templafy
• proof of concept
• startup funding
• AI transition

Sponsors

Hobbes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Templafy, Big Four

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