Overview
You sell DOSS's modular ERP platform to mid-market companies ($50M-500M revenue) in consumer goods, food & beverage, manufacturing, and distribution. Your buyers are VP/Director-level ops and finance leaders who are frustrated with their current ERP or outgrowing QuickBooks. You're navigating 4-6 month enterprise sales cycles with multiple stakeholders while competing against both legacy vendors (NetSuite, SAP) and 'let's just keep what we have' inertia.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Full-cycle AE (prospect to close) |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound |
| Deal Complexity | Enterprise - multiple stakeholders, technical evaluation, change management concerns |
| Sales Cycle | 4-6 months (can stretch to 9+ months for larger deals) |
| Deal Size | $200K-500K ACV (multi-module implementations) |
| Quota (est.) | $1.2-1.5M/year |
Company Context
Stage: Series B (recent raise based on office expansion mention)
Size: 110 employees, scaling to support 200-seat office
Growth: Actively hiring across go-to-market after proving product-market fit in seed/Series A phase
Market Position: Challenger in a crowded ERP market - positioning as the 'adaptive' alternative to rigid legacy systems
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 30% Inbound - mostly content downloads and demo requests from companies researching ERP alternatives, quality varies significantly
- 60% Outbound - you're cold calling and emailing VP Ops, CFOs, and supply chain leaders at target companies showing signs of operational strain
- 10% Referrals/Partners - implementation partners and existing customer referrals
SDR/AE Structure: Likely dedicated SDRs given Series B stage, but expect to do significant self-sourcing for target accounts
SE Support: Shared Solutions Engineer pool - you'll need to fight for SE time on your deals
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: NetSuite (Oracle), SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics, Odoo, and a dozen other mid-market ERP vendors
How They Differentiate: 'No-code', 'modular', 'launch in months not years', 'doesn't force you to adapt to the system' - positioning against painful legacy ERP implementations
Common Objections:
- "We already have [NetSuite/SAP/legacy system] and it works well enough"
- "We're not ready for a full ERP replacement right now"
- "What if you get acquired or shut down?"
- "Our IT team doesn't have capacity for another implementation"
Win Themes: Speed to value, flexibility vs rigid legacy systems, modern UI/UX, fewer consulting hours needed
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Prospecting (30%) | Active Deals (45%) | Internal (25%)
Key Activities
- Outbound prospecting: You identify target companies (looking for signals like rapid growth, M&A activity, new facilities) and cold call/email VP Operations, CFOs, and Supply Chain Directors. Most ignore you. You're trying to find the 2-3 companies per quarter actively evaluating ERP changes.
- Discovery and scoping: When you get a meeting, you spend 2-3 calls understanding their current tech stack, pain points, and which DOSS modules they need. You're figuring out if this is a $150K deal or a $500K deal, and whether they have budget this year or next.
- Multi-threaded selling: You coordinate demos for ops teams, finance teams, IT/security reviews, and executive business case presentations. You're constantly chasing people for the next meeting and navigating internal politics about who owns the decision.
- Competitive displacement: You build business cases showing why DOSS's approach is better than their incumbent or other evaluations. You bring in customer references and negotiate SOWs with their implementation requirements.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most prospects aren't actively looking to replace their ERP - you're selling change management as much as software. Even when they hate their current system, switching is scary and expensive.
- Deals slip constantly. "We'll make a decision by Q3" becomes Q4, then next year. Budget freezes, champion leaves, priorities shift - your forecast accuracy will be terrible for months.
- You're fighting brand recognition. Buyers trust NetSuite and SAP because they're 'safe' choices. You'll lose deals to competitors with worse products but better market presence.
- The technical evaluation is complex - IT wants security reviews, ops wants to see their specific workflows, finance needs their exact reports. You need your SE, but they're spread across multiple deals.
- Long cycles mean you need 15-20 active opportunities to hit quota, but only 2-3 will close each quarter. The mental overhead of tracking all those deals is significant.
What Success Looks Like
- You close 6-8 deals per year at $200K-300K ACV
- You maintain 3-4x pipeline coverage (need $5M+ pipeline to hit $1.5M quota)
- You get 1-2 reference customers who advocate publicly and generate referrals
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- VP/Director of Operations (often the champion)
- CFO or Finance Director (budget holder and ROI validator)
- CIO/IT Director (technical gatekeeper)
- CEO/COO (signs off on deals over $250K)
What They Care About:
- Real-time visibility into inventory, orders, and financials across locations
- Reducing manual work and spreadsheet hell for their teams
- Implementation timeline and risk - can't afford 18-month failed projects
- Total cost of ownership - license cost plus implementation, customization, and ongoing maintenance
- Vendor stability - will DOSS be around in 5 years?
Requirements
- 3-5 years selling B2B software to mid-market or enterprise accounts ($100K+ ACV deals)
- Experience with complex, multi-stakeholder sales involving ops, finance, and IT buyers
- Comfortable with technical product conversations - you need to understand ERP concepts (inventory management, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay)
- Track record of hitting quota in a role with 4+ month sales cycles
- Ability to self-source pipeline through outbound prospecting, not just work inbound leads