Enterprise sales success now depends on how much value you can show
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Enterprise technology companies are seeing a shift in sales with customers expecting them to demonstrate clear value for investments with competition and macroeconomic uncertainty rising on adoption of AI, according to multiple executives ET spoke to.In addition, with AI changing transforming businesses, large customers are expecting more from technology providers, from focused to large-scale solutions to help with the accelerating technological change, they added.Anand Subbaraman, CEO, Icertis, an end-to-end contract lifecycle management company, said most of their sales are now becoming more proof-of-concept centric than request-for-proposals (RFP) they had seen earlier.AI is becoming the single largest catalyst of change for companies even amid challenging macroeconomic uncertainty. A March 2025 report from McKinsey highlighted that enterprises are starting to make organisational changes to generate value from generative AI. This is led by companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue compared to smaller organisations.As a result, while enterprises continue to invest in AI, they expect more bang for the buck from enterprise technology. According to a report from Mordor Intelligence, a market research platform, the global enterprise AI market stood at $97 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $229 billion, growing at a CAGR of 18.9%.Srikanth Velamakanni, group chief executive, Fractal Analytics, told ET in an earlier interaction, that the way of selling is changing. He said that there is no point doing RFPs because, even AI can do this, and the whole point is demonstrating value.Customers are no longer looking at the PowerPoints and expect firms to show them with their data how a product or solution is working for them. '(You need to) Show it as quickly as possible, establish relevance because if you have done it for healthcare and tell them you can do the same for financial services, it does not work,' he said.This means that it is not just enough for companies to show how a product is working but they need to demonstrate how this solution is specifically helping them. Another industry executive, on the condition of anonymity, said, 'Say you are going to a bank that wants to cross sell products like personal loans to newly married couples, which they are not doing successfully. You show them how you are solving this particular problem on their own website, and how you will implement it. That is where the enterprise sales are going now.''The expectation the clients have is that with so much AI and information available, come and talk to me about things that matter to me,' the executive said.'Any macroeconomic uncertainty will lead to freezing and we are now in high macroeconomic uncertainty. But on the other hand, the urgency in AI is very high. So, the net result is that they are actually moving faster,' said Velamakanni.Icertis' Subbaraman said they are seeing growth in markets and specific industries, while some of their industries saw an impact such as the public sector markets in the US due to DOGE. 'That was a slowdown which we are coming out of now. We are seeing tariff affected industries in Europe like the automotive sector being a little slower. AI is actually a tailwind,' he said.In its DRHP filing in June, Capillary Technologies highlighted that by adopting Gen AI, its customers may develop in-house capabilities that could impact the extent to which customers rely on us and reduce their need for our services. The company also highlighted rising challenges in retaining enterprise customers. The firm lost three customers in FY23, and one each in FY24 and FY25. In the case of large enterprise customers, it is facing competition from firms that offer similar services targeting enterprise customers as they cut costs, restructuring and develop products in-house.Responding to questions about the impact of AI on IT and enterprises, Peter Bendor-Samuel, executive chairman, Everest Group, said that pricing has started to significantly decline and this is driven largely by firms taking an aggressive stance with using AI. 'There is less discretionary spending, and while some of this is due to the economic uncertainty some of it is being driven by firms pivoting to new AI tools and AI services.'
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