Turn sales into a repeatable, learnable, and teachable process that is specific to your business. Often, salespeople are anxious to push forward to the Evaluation phase and don’t spend sufficient time on Business Justification—this creates problems for finally closing the deal. Don’t rush to create a proof of concept (POC) be- fore you have fully qualified and understood why someone should want your product. Otherwise, the POC may be a success, but will not lead to a sale. “Find a buyer who has a need that fits with your product vision and agrees to a ‘If you, then I’ scenario—‘If your product solves this problem for me, I will purchase.’” — Edward White, Interana Very often the time required for negotiation is seriously underestimated. Re- member that closing takes time, and will need continued senior involvement from your team to shepherd the agreement through all the stakeholders on the customer side. “There’s a lot of documentation that comes after the handshake. At big companies, the legal team is very disconnected from the business team.” — Ian Collins, Wysdom 31