If you want to make 500K+ per year in tech sales, there’s only one way to do it…

CLOSE BIG DEALS!

And to close big deals, you need 3 key ingredients: 

I call these the 3 P’s:

1. Power
2. Pain
3. Process

Here’s a breakdown of each ingredient: 

Power: You need to be speaking directly to key decision makers, rather than having your “champion” sell on your behalf. Period. 

If I look at every large deal (500K+ ARR)  I closed in my career, I was engaged directly with the decision makers who could say yes to our solution and secure the budget to fund it. 

Every single deal. 

While the goal is to get to power early on in the sales process, this isn’t always possible. 

If you can’t get to power early, make sure that all key decision makers are included when it’s time to present your proposal. 

Ideally, meet with them long before you deliver a proposal to ensure the project is aligned with their top initiatives for the year and has their sponsorship. 

Otherwise when your champion sells up, they will be competing with other projects and priorities that are demanding their time, focus, and money. 

2. Pain

“Change occurs when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing.” 

-Tony Robbins

If the client isn’t experiencing pain, they won’t put in the effort needed to change. 

The client coming to you with a problem is not enough. 

It needs to be a BIG PROBLEM which is causing real pain throughout their organization. 

Examples of pain could be lower customer retention, reduced profitability, lower stock price, lower win rates, missed revenue targets, etc. 

If the problem isn’t big enough, your solution will be viewed as a “nice to have” rather than a “must have” and will be passed up for higher priority projects that address real pain. 

3. Process

This is a big one. 

If they aren’t willing to partner with you to go through a comprehensive discovery process to ensure you understand their business and can recommend the right solution for their needs,  it’s unlikely they will invest millions with you in a large deal. 

For me, the process which leads to big deals includes the following: 

1. Technical Discovery – understanding their current workflows, systems, and processes in detail so you can demonstrate how your solution will fit into their existing environment and deliver a custom demo.

2. Business Case development-  working with their team to put together a business case that they can use to sell to their CFO or Board. If you have a Business Value team, bring them in and let them work with the customer directly on this. The Business Case shouldl include the ROI, payback period, and monthly cost of inaction. 

3. Executive sponsorship – ensuring that this engagement has sponsorship from a Senior Executive so you can get access to the people, data, and information you need to complete discovery

If they invest their time and resources into a proper discovery, they are telling you that they’re serious about working with you. 

If they aren’t willing to share their data or insights, then you can’t properly scope out the licensing and implementation and they aren’t serious. 

Don’t sell the product, sell the discovery process. 

That’s where the sale is made. 

In today’s training video, I break down the three P’s in detail. 

PS – if you want to PREDICT whether your big deal will close, and identify any key gaps in the deal, I created a big deal scorecard. 

You can download it here: https://www.untapyoursalespotential.com/predict-selling-scorecard