Biggest Challenges Faced by a Business Solutions Architect at Avanade

I think the biggest challenge, at the end of the day, is that being in sales is really hard for anyone. You're not going to win every time.

You have to understand that as you go through each opportunity, build it, and come up with a solution, sometimes the client will say no, even if you have the best proposal. I often spend a lot of time crafting what I feel is the right solution, and the client might say it's not the right time or they've decided to do something else.

You have to be able to understand that in each of these life cycles you go through, you're going to face rejection. That's just the nature of the role and being in sales and in life. But you should really be celebrating your wins and taking the losses as opportunities to do better for the next one that comes around.

I think that would be my biggest challenge because I love winning. Every deal I shape, every deal I put my time and effort into, I want to win. I want to have the client sign the dotted line, start the project, and go. But I've found that it's not going to happen every single time.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality of your work. Sometimes it's political, sometimes there are external factors, sometimes they just don't have the money. At the end of the day, projects cost money. If they don't have the money, they can't do it.

So, just being open to the fact that you will go through rejection. I also feel like the biggest challenge I go through is that I often have to negotiate with clients, especially on monetary matters. As someone who has only been in this role for 10 years in my career, sometimes I'm up against folks with 30 or 40 years of negotiation skills, and I sometimes fall short.

Again, understanding and realizing where your gaps are and just moving on and doing better in the next one is the way I approach those situations.