To compete in today’s economy, companies must start gearing up to focus on growing, protecting, and retaining enterprise accounts digitally. The revenue generated by the Forbes Global 2000 drives half of the world’s GDP, or $41 trillion. Let that sink in. That is an average of $2 billion per company. What if I told you the top 100 companies drive 28 percent of the $41 trillion, or that the top 500 drive 60 percent?

 

The Largest Untapped Source of Revenue Growth

If you add the top private companies and government, less than 5,000 business or government entities drive 80 percent of all global economic output. It is estimated that there are 2 million businesses with over $50 million in revenue globally and 2,000 of them — or .1 percent — drive 50 percent of the global economy.

Isn’t that amazing? Why aren’t we all focused on mastering growth with the global 2000 that are driving the 80 percent? This is the most unexploited and least explored natural revenue growth resource on earth. Most businesses are very poorly penetrated in these enterprise accounts. Sure, due to the size of these companies everyone has some sales to them but often it’s a very small percentage of what these companies actually spend in almost any category.

Global GDP generated by top 2000 enterprise companies

The Paradigm Shift from Responding to Demand to Creating Demand

The ramifications of digital transformation for sales were already massively disruptive. In an article from Harvard Business Review, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella remarked that as the pandemic affected every aspect of life and work, “We saw two years of digital transformation in two months.”

Now that the new normal is starting to set in, acquiring new customers isn’t the same as it used to be. The demand for traditional products and services is forever changed as every company needs to innovate to create demand with their customers in new ways.  

Why Enterprise Accounts Are Worth the Investment

Given the dramatic acceleration of digital transformation based on the recent pandemic, it has become imperative that businesses have a focus on global enterprise accounts. Learning to master cross selling and growth, let alone retention, is now vital. And where are you going to spend your time doing that…on scores of small accounts with relatively small contract sizes, or targeted enterprise accounts that drive 80 percent of the economic activity globally?  

Enterprise accounts provide an endless growth opportunity as they are each markets in and of themselves. Aligning your value communication and commercial system to focus on enterprise accounts as part of your portfolio is a critical success factor for any business.  

Stay tuned for more insights from our Economy of Enterprise Accounts series.

Economy of Enterprise Accounts Series Go-to-Customer Strategy