Overview of Enterprise Sales With No Product: Landing a Big Four Customer
In this episode of the SaaS Podcast, Omer Khan speaks with Christian Lund, co-founder of Templify, about how the company sold its first major enterprise deal before it even had a product. Christian explains how Templify used deep domain expertise, thought leadership, and a highly deliberate enterprise sales strategy to land a Big Four accounting firm as an early customer. The conversation also covers how Templify transitioned from an on-prem business to cloud, how they later repositioned again for AI, and why disqualification is often more valuable than persuasion in enterprise sales.
Templify’s Background and Business
Templify is an enterprise document automation platform that helps large organizations reduce the manual work involved in creating business documents.
- Customer focus: Large enterprises with complex document workflows
- Company scale: Around 200 employees
- Revenue: Eight-figure ARR
- Origin: Spun out of a previous company, Omnidocs, which solved a similar problem on-prem
Christian describes Templify as a mature enterprise business, but one that was effectively rebuilt from scratch twice: first for the cloud era, and then again for the AI era.
How Templify Started Before It Had a Product
One of the central stories in the interview is how Templify sold early enterprise deals with almost no software built.
The cloud shift created the opportunity
Around 2012–2014, the team saw cloud computing change how enterprise software would be bought and delivered. Rather than simply move their old product to the cloud, they decided to rebuild from the ground up.
They sold expertise, not software
Their early pitch was based on:
- Their long experience with document automation
- A strong understanding of how enterprise document workflows were changing
- Thought leadership about the future of business document creation
Christian says their first major customer, a Big Four accounting firm, bought into the vision before there was a full product.
Their unfair advantage
The team had an existing network from Omnidocs, which gave them access to enterprise decision-makers they otherwise would not have reached.
Enterprise Sales Strategy: “Yes, If”
Christian’s biggest lesson on enterprise sales is that you should not automatically accept small pilots that don’t fit your strategy.
Why they avoided tiny POCs
Large enterprises often proposed starting with a 10-person pilot. Templify resisted the default “let’s test it with a small team” motion because they believed that approach would:
- Waste time on too many small experiments
- Lead to low-value engagements
- Prevent them from landing a broad, sticky foothold inside the enterprise
Their approach
Instead of saying no outright, they used a conditional yes:
“We didn’t say no. We said yes, if.”
That meant:
- Agreeing on exactly what the proof of concept was meant to prove
- Defining success criteria up front
- Making sure the next step after a successful POC was clear
- Only proceeding when timing, intent, budget, and rollout potential were all aligned
Why this mattered
By defining the criteria themselves, Templify often influenced how the customer framed the evaluation process. That increased their odds of winning and kept the team from getting trapped in endless, low-conversion pilots.
“Every Enterprise Customer Is Its Own Market”
Christian explains that each large enterprise is effectively its own market because:
- Different teams have different document needs
- Enterprise security and rollout requirements are substantial regardless of deal size
- Once you get in, you have a major expansion opportunity across the whole company
Their landing strategy
Templify preferred to:
- Land wide — deploy across as many employees as possible
- Go deep later — expand into more specialized use cases afterward
This created:
- More value for the customer
- More stickiness
- A stronger strategic position inside the account
What They Learned About Disqualification
After establishing the company and product, Templify shifted from thought leadership-led selling to a more selective sales motion.
The key principle
Christian says sales is not about convincing everyone. It’s about finding the right buyers who already believe the world is changing.
Who they wanted
They looked for customers who:
- Recognized that cloud or AI represented a real shift
- Understood their current process would not last forever
- Were open to change and willing to adapt
Who they avoided
They disqualified prospects that were:
- Defending the old way of doing things
- Looking for a minor upgrade rather than transformation
- Too focused on preserving the status quo
The AI Reset: Rebuilding Again for a New Technology Wave
Templify is now going through a second major transformation, this time around AI.
Their view of AI
Christian believes AI is not just a feature add-on. It changes the underlying platform and the way the product must be designed.
What they changed
They spent roughly two and a half years rebuilding Templify’s technology foundation to support AI-native workflows.
The mistake they made
Their biggest misstep was in messaging:
- They were too far ahead too early
- Their thought leadership around AI was ahead of where the market was ready to go
- The message landed poorly because many buyers were still focused on immediate, individual productivity use cases
Lesson learned
Christian says you can be ahead of the market, but not too far ahead. If your messaging is too advanced, you lose the conversation before it starts.
Key Takeaways
- Sell vision before product when the market is undergoing a major technology shift.
- Use conditional commitments instead of blindly accepting small POCs.
- Define success criteria up front so you control the evaluation process.
- Disqualify aggressively rather than trying to convince everyone.
- Land wide in enterprise accounts to maximize stickiness and expansion potential.
- Rebuild when the platform shifts; don’t just bolt new technology onto an old architecture.
- Messaging must match market readiness or you risk alienating buyers.
Notable Quotes
- “We didn’t say no. We said yes, if.”
- “Best practice is worst case.” — advice Christian says has stayed with him for years
- “Sales has nothing to do with convincing people.” — his view that sales should be about alignment, not persuasion
Lightning Round Highlights
Best business advice
- “Best practice is worst case.”
Book recommendation
- Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan
- Christian likes it because it captures both the promise and the difficulty of entrepreneurship.
Best money spent in business
- Investing in people and building a tight, family-like team early on
Favorite productivity habit
- Using AI tools, especially Claude and Gemini, to boost output and reduce friction
Biggest passion outside work
- His family
Final Thought
Christian Lund’s story is a strong example of enterprise sales done differently: lead with expertise, qualify hard, and only chase customers who are ready for the change you’re building toward. His experience also shows how successful companies often have to reinvent themselves when the technology wave changes — first cloud, now AI.