What are the Spending Authority Cut-Offs?

The #1 question to ask when selling to the enterprise is, “What are the spending authority cut-offs?” Nothing means more. 

Funny, in my experience, the 5K and 100K numbers are pretty accurate. 

I recently assisted in the purchase of business intelligence package. The CIO (my contact) had authority to spend up to $100K. Anything more had to go the board, and that “just wasn’t going to happen”. One vendor knew what to ask and bid $93K. The two others were much higher. Guess who (automatically) got the sale. The other 2 may have been better, but we’ll never know. They were effectively eliminated by rules they never asked about. 

At the low end, almost everyone has authority to spend up to $5K, even users. They bring in desktop software or SAAS under IT’s radar. There’s “huge” demand for solutions to their problems that fit under their spending limits.