Josh, congratulations on describing your question well, and posting a link to your website. So many people here let us guess the details while missing the opportunity to promote their business a bit.
Now, to answer your question, having worked for companies that did large B2B deals, it's hard o to do what you're asking for. Larger companies, usually hire people that already have contacts and know the industry to work for them, and if they don't have any contacts for a specific company, they'll sometimes hire a consultant that does have these connections to get their foot in the door.
That's not to say that a persistent salesman can't do it, it's just an uphill battle.
But beyond that, even if you got your foot in the door and managed to meet some of the decision makers, you'd be disappointed.
- What reference customers do you have to show them that they want to adopt your solution. Do you have any deployments with hundreds of locations?
- Often there's no single decision maker. You talk to the marketing department and they buy your story and then they need to convince operations or some other departments, and there are politics and turf wars, which brings me to the next point
- Large companies tend to move slowly. Are you ready to wait 12 months from the time you do your first presentation till they sign on the dotted ling?
- Talking about signing the dotted line, are you ready to spend many thousands of dollars on lawyers to negotiate the contract? While contract negotiation is a good sign, remember that they might change their mind at the last minute.
At the end of the day, a startup that doesn't have significant investment has a hard time tackling this market. I think you have much better chance of targeting the small single and double restaurants, moving from there to small chains. If you're lucky, a high up in one of the chains will run into your system when going out to dinner, and contact you. Then, it's a completely different story, since they can stream line the process, and by then you have a track record.
