Nothing beats the feeling of winning a big deal.
You spend hours and days making calls, sending out emails, giving demos, negotiating with people and finally cross the finish line and close a record-breaking deal! That definitely gives you a sense of achievement and feel that all your hard work has finally paid off and you celebrate it!
However, at this stage, you also reflect on the success and analyze which decision(s) helped you in success and which other decision(s) you could have made to make it even better. A perceptive hustler always tries to evaluate the whole success story and tries to derive lessons from each sale’s win that can be applied in the future to close more such winning deals!
Let me share a real story of our dynamic sales executive who scored a huge deal which not only brought in a lot of numbers but also helped our product wizards develop an unmapped feature in our product- Scalefusion.
Let’s call him Sam. Sam shared his exciting story of winning an enterprise SaaS deal which was one bumpy ride with lot of highs and lows. But a bunch of character traits and a lot of well-directed efforts got him through!
As per our lead assignment process, Sam was assigned a lead of a prominent UK-based cosmetic retailer.
They had a requirement for Kiosk Lockdown software for tablet-based POS in their stores. It was a new project for them as well, they were deploying the tablets as POS in their stores in UK for the very first time.
Sam started the sales process by giving a call, where he was introduced to John, who was the lead developer on the client end.
A learning curve is essential to growth – Tammy Bjelland
Sam quickly learned and understood client requirements and scheduled a product demo in accordance of solving the challenges the client was looking to tame.
After the demo, John was convinced with our product- Scalefusion and its capabilities and features. But for us, it was not a regular requirement, as they were going to deploy Google Pixel tablets which is not a partner of Scalefusion. Hence, it was challenging for us even though their potential requirement was for 1000+ devices across the globe.
However, Sam was determined from the very beginning to get this deal as he could foresee that it had a huge potential not only in the immediate time but as well as in the future. Hence, he took it head-on to crack this deal.
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.-Vince Lombardi
At this stage, Sam was also in talks with Olivia, client’s business analyst for this project.
In his first step forward after the demo, the client was convinced to test Scalefusion in a live environment at an event organized by them. The client went live with 40 devices for this pilot test and communicated to Sam that the success of this test will lead to a bigger deal.
Scalefusion has been deployed for a number of POS clientele worldwide, hence this was not a challenge for us, we were pretty confident and the test was successful in the live environment. The client was also satisfied with the integration, however, there were few challenges –
The first challenge was that the client app required four updates in a month which required a silent installation feature. It was difficult to provide, however, Sam suggested two alternatives- to root the devices or to make Scalefusion as the Device Owner (DO)
By this time, Sam had also started engaging with client Project Manager, Mike, who was not quite convinced to root the devices as well as unable to make MLP as Device Owner.
After a series of phone calls, Sam, at last, could make them understand that they need to go for either of the suggestions to get silent app installation.
Finally, though rooting was not easy, they conveyed that it is going to be difficult for 1000+ devices.
At this time, Sam tactfully handled the situation, trying to ensure that the deal didn’t slip out of our hands. He spoke with Lead Developer John and suggested that if they can make MLP as Device Owner, the problem would be solved upfront. Eventually, John was successful in setting up MLP as DO without rooting the device!
Perseverance and perspective until victory – Lincoln Diaz-Balart
This was not the end of the challenges though. Client’s concern was that their app updates should not run on the devices during the payment process. It should happen in the after-hours. This required scheduling of the app updates.
Sam took this as a client feature request and went to the product team for their feedback. The product team liked the business use-case, its impact on the business process and decided to build this feature and roll it for this client as well as for other customers.
At Scalefusion, all the client feature requests are built and implemented incrementally but this particular feature request was taken on priority as an exception. The team and Sam were not willing to lose this marquee client.
By now, Sam had developed a rapport of mutual trust with the client and assured them that their feature request had been accommodated in the upcoming release of Scalefusion. The client was impressed by quick responses & solutions and decided to go ahead with our solution.
This was a huge success for Sam as well as the company! To be able to convince the client the utility of Scalefusion and provide them with the features which were critical to their requirement was the fruit of perseverance.
This deal was critical in our company’s short history. We overcame some of the toughest processes and came out with successful integration. Moving forward, we learnt that building strong relationships with our prospects, delivering value early in the sales process and making sure they know that we are 100% committed to success is the key to us closing bigger and better deals.
Sam, of course is our star employee and top talent today!
Be a part of our awesome team at Scalefusion and next success story could be yours!
