This deal took me 5 months to close and it is the biggest one of my career as I am writing this.
The best part about it is the payment terms. This 5 year contract will be paid entirely within 30 days because I had enough brain to ask the client for it.
It's the story of a deal we were excluded from despite the CEO best effort to close it that I looped back in through sheer (polite) badgering of the Head of program who was the competitor champion.
I ended up getting a foot in, then the rest and after 10 hours of pitching the whole leadership one by one I managed to diffuse the rumors spread by the competitor (a giant on the market) and plant seeds of doubts about missing features on their side.
The client just got fined and shamed by the regulator for the exact problem we were solving so when my colleague said we can do it for 50K, I asked (insisted) we ask for more money and helped the deal ballon to 234K implementation.
Now we were coming in at a little over a million and I learned from my champ we were better commercially, technically and in the attitude.
Then the CEO of the company, a billionaire in flip flops living in Bermuda, summoned the CEO on a call to grill him about the implementation. I prepped him and he aced it so the big boss put his thumb up.
After 1 month and a half to do 3-4 months of due d and contractual, I squeezed them on the terms after learning of their sense of urgency + that the next best alternative would cost them 4.7M at least in extra dineros.
Long story short, they signed. The business of my employer doubled.
85 comments