The modern seller’s guide to closing large deals

When it comes to high-value sales deals — the ones with six or seven figures on the line — you need to make sure every aspect of your sales process is fine-tuned for success. That’s where Amy Franko’s modern seller’s guide can help. As a founder and CEO of her own consulting company, as well as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Sales, Amy knows how to pinpoint gaps in sales organizations and improve processes. Watch her five-part Prezi Video series below to learn more. 

Why you should sell strategically

To kick off her video series, Amy explains the value of strategic selling, sales process, and sales methodology. She likens the typical sales process to a staircase, with steps that move from lead generated to closed deal. Meanwhile, the sales methodology is more like a chess match, consisting of the proper strategies, skills, tools, and more. Watch her video for more tips on building strategic selling acumen. 

Don’t neglect advisory intelligence

In her second Prezi video, Amy explores the concept of “advisory intelligence,” and the importance of understanding your client and their industry vertical. She points to five key categories you should stay current on: industry trends, organizational challenges, leadership vision, key initiatives, and fiscal-year goals. 

Develop your relationship ecosystems

Of course, knowing your client’s business won’t do much good if you can’t even get a conversation with them. That’s why it’s crucial to also develop your relationship ecosystems and know when to access them. Amy stresses that for complex and larger deals, there are multiple decision makers and influencers, which means sellers need to go outside their comfort zone and connect with people higher in the organization. 

At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that relationships alone don’t win deals, but work in tandem with other parts of her methodology. Watch her video for actionable tips to make good use of your relationship ecosystems. 

Make your proposals compelling

One of the mistakes that Amy sees many sales teams make is treating their proposal like a resume of their organization’s accomplishments. In part four of her Prezi Video series, Amy looks at how to make your sales pitch truly stand out, and how to make it feel more like a collaborative doc than a resume. 

To start, she suggests that you remove all references to your firm from the proposal — does it still stand out? If not, you’ll need to re-assess to make sure you’re hitting four key elements: outcomes, metrics, solutions, and value. Get more tips in her video. 

Earn the key commitments you need to win

In the final video of her series, Amy highlights the importance of key commitments. With larger deals, you’ll need to identify the commitments you’ll need, both internally and from the client, and then map them to your sales process. That’ll make it easier to discover the gaps you’ll need to fill, and will help you better qualify the opportunity early on. 

Sellers need to modernize the tried-and-true sales methods in order to succeed and close more six and seven-figure deals. In addition to Amy’s video series, you can also find more sales videos from experts on our Video Gallery. If you have your own tips to share, create a Prezi video and tag it with #sales for a chance to be featured.

Previously published on Prezi's blog by Michael Lee