Managing the ‘big sale’ can be a stressful proposition, no matter how much experience managing sales you’ve developed over the years. Oftentimes larger sales differ from their lesser cousins in key ways; perhaps more importantly, everyone involved perceives the sale as different. As perception can have more impact on managing sales than reality, understanding both sides of the equation becomes very important. In this article, we’ll cover three tips that should give you insight into managing sales big and small, with an emphasis on handling that one career making or -breaking deal on the horizon.

Understand the Sale

Knowledge is power-managing sales, at any level. Only by understanding what a major deal means for both companies and the people involved can you hope to maintain any reasonable control over the sales process. Major sales can make or break a company-the very nature of a sale changes at a certain ‘size’. A sale that your company can fulfill with its current production levels versus one that requires expansion can change your company on all levels.

Sell the right software to the right company, and dozens of people may be promoted-or be made redundant. Understanding what your sale can do to both companies is core to managing sales at that size; don’t leave that knowledge, that understand, to other people, or you might find your major career-making deal stalling because you didn’t notice something that needed your attention.

Balance the Tension

Stress is natural when managing sales of any size, but being overwhelmed becomes a real threat when you’re talking about the kind of deal that makes or breaks a company. Unfortunately, the solution is not simply ‘relax and treat it like any other deal’–try that and you might let precious details slip past. Major deals require a major commitment and focus.

Rather, you need to keep yourself in a state of medium tension-like a professional athlete ‘in the zone’. A major sale deserves the extra focus and should feel like extra weight on your shoulders. Consciously reaching that level of tension can be tricky, but you need to learn to do it when managing sales if you want to be a real expert.

Delegate When Needed

Some large deals have too many moving parts and too much information to parse for any one person to adequately manage. Understanding when the situation necessitates assistance and knowing how to apply that assistance can make or break big deals. When managing sales, you should focus on getting the win-not solely on getting the credit for the win.

Better to be the individual who made a big deal happen with the help of a few other people than to be the individual who bit off too much and caused a breakthrough deal to collapse.

The best use of extra manpower will probably be in data parsing; use others to get the understanding of the sale that we mentioned in the first tip, when needed.