Enterprise Sales: How Blings Landed McDonald's in 9 Months | Blings

What It Covers

Josef Pietersiel explains how Blings landed McDonald's as their first enterprise customer in nine months while bootstrapping, developed a patented video personalization technology, and scaled to $1M ARR serving major brands with just 19 employees.

Key Questions Answered

• •POC Pricing Strategy: Always charge for proof of concepts, even $35,000, to ensure clients prioritize your project and begin vendor onboarding processes. Free POCs place you at the bottom of priority lists and prevent serious engagement from stakeholders.
• •Contract Structure Fix: Use 13-month agreements with a one-month exit clause instead of separate POC and commercial contracts. This eliminates renegotiation delays that can add months to enterprise sales cycles and streamlines the transition from testing to full deployment.
• •Event ROI Optimization: Concentrate annual event budgets on three major conferences with speaking slots and customer testimonials rather than attending ten events with small booths. Quality leads from prominent positioning outperform quantity from startup alley appearances significantly.
• •Sales Hiring Readiness: Only hire sales reps after establishing a repeatable playbook that a mediocre salesperson can execute successfully. Hiring talented reps before process documentation proves product-market fit, not sales capability, and leads to expensive failed hires.