When Is A Sale Over Your Kármán Line?
The Kármán line made a fair bit of news these past few days.
It’s the name given to the boundary between our planet’s atmosphere and outer space.
The issue floating through airwaves, is that different people have different measures.
Some go by the original 80km. Others a more modern re-calculation of 100km.
How much difference does 20km make?
Especially when it’s a pair of billionaires (Branson & Bezos; Unity vs New Shepard) ribbing each other over bragging rights.
*yawn*
We in solution sales though must cross our own Kármán line on a bid.
The point at which we have prevailed. The buyer has bought. We enjoy the zero-gravity of doing business together.
As with the bickering billioneros though, can we agree on the point at which we cross this treasured line?
Traditionally there are a number of markers.
Moving to Legal. Signing single supplier acceptance. Piloting. Playing golf with major shareholder. (That last one really was a 90s staple).
But beware the false ‘lines’. Such as the folly of pursuing receipt of a Letter of Intent.
When buyers introduce delivery, user and monitoring teams in depth – in a manner that is more relationship build than spec checking – an order can feel close.
Do you know what similar signs appear on the deals that you’ve won in the past? And how to encourage their re-occurrence on each and every future bid?
There is also an argument to say that it is not a relatively end-point that you must aim for, but how you take-off in the first place which has greater bearing on heights reached.
In which case, it seems advisable to set out knowing where your Karman is and how you are going to navigate to it and beyond.