While I'm not familiar with how to sell to corporations here are some things that can prevent a company from doing business with you (I've worked for several large companies and it's been interesting to watch some of the smaller vendors screw up in interesting ways).
1. Some large companies won't deal with you if you aren't profitable or at least well funded. A big concern is what happens if you go out of business. Be prepared to answer that question.
2. Some big companies deal with really big data sets, make sure your application can handle it. For example some companies deal with numbers bigger than 32bit integers. Make sure you can handle that.
3. Make sure there are no memory leaks in your application. I've seen more than one vendor saying that their product requires daily reboots. That's usually a sign of crappy code and business with decent IT staffs can tell.
4. Sometimes being cheaper than the competition is a bad thing. Make sure to have some pricey versions and support plans for companies that feel better when they spend more money.
5. Depending on the companies you sell to and the types of products you build you'll get questions about security compliance of your application / service with things like SAS-70, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. This is particularly important if you keep sensitive data and your client is a public company. Some big companies request a right to audit in order to do business with you (which means they have the right to come over to your business and check things out whenever they want). Be prepared to deal with all this mess.
Comments
While I'm not familiar with how to sell to corporations here are some things that can prevent a company from doing business with you (I've worked for several large companies and it's been interesting to watch some of the smaller vendors screw up in interesting ways).
1. Some large companies won't deal with you if you aren't profitable or at least well funded. A big concern is what happens if you go out of business. Be prepared to answer that question.
2. Some big companies deal with really big data sets, make sure your application can handle it. For example some companies deal with numbers bigger than 32bit integers. Make sure you can handle that.
3. Make sure there are no memory leaks in your application. I've seen more than one vendor saying that their product requires daily reboots. That's usually a sign of crappy code and business with decent IT staffs can tell.
4. Sometimes being cheaper than the competition is a bad thing. Make sure to have some pricey versions and support plans for companies that feel better when they spend more money.
5. Depending on the companies you sell to and the types of products you build you'll get questions about security compliance of your application / service with things like SAS-70, Sarbanes Oxley, etc. This is particularly important if you keep sensitive data and your client is a public company. Some big companies request a right to audit in order to do business with you (which means they have the right to come over to your business and check things out whenever they want). Be prepared to deal with all this mess.
Hope that helps.