The described enterprise sales process sounds a bit odd to me. I come from the perspective of existing codebase that is tailored to the specific customer processes/org structure etc. so maybe it's different for a completely blue ocean type of product.

It's usually initial contact + demo or feature talk of sorts. The next step is some small project with customer specific data which is billed. They get a quote and either do it or don't. Scale up, SLA etc. follow after that (basic outline of what's possible is usually given in the initial contact). Alternatively this small project can be some consulting package but it's always billed.

The type of sales at your company is the top down approach where you already have a solution. There's a lot of enterprise sales where the solution doesn't fully exist or requires extensive customization that it's the blue ocean demo that sells the product, the product doesn't exist until the deal is signed.