Jen Abel, co-founder of JJellyfish and GM of enterprise sales at State Affairs, has mapped the enterprise sales cycle to 15 discrete steps. Most founders assume it is 5. That gap is why deals stall, pilots go nowhere, and procurement kills momentum at the finish line.
The original piece earns a full read because the process detail is genuinely operational, not theoretical. Abel names specific mechanics: the pincer model for booking the first meeting at the executive and N-minus-one level simultaneously, how to write a 2-to-3-sentence outreach message built around giving prospects informational alpha, how to structure a 2-to-3-day pilot with jointly defined success criteria, and exactly when to charge for a longer pilot versus giving it away. The standard 5-stage CRM pipeline, she argues, is a forecasting tool, not a sales process. Confusing the two is a structural mistake.
This is Abel's third appearance covering this territory, progressing from founder-led sales to the $1M-$10M playbook to this full-cycle breakdown. What comes next is the part most guides skip: redline negotiations, procurement navigation, and closing without losing the momentum you built across all 14 prior steps. Read the source for the sequencing. The order matters as much as the tactics.
[READ ORIGINAL →]