Based upon my experience selling $200k to $3m solutions. You need to be competent in the technology niche that you wish to work in. You need to be interested

Based upon my experience selling $200k to $3m solutions. You need to be competent in the technology niche that you wish to work in. You need to be interested in understanding the problems people are trying to solve, including the business, cultural, political and legacy technology background for those problems. Having done that, you then architect the "solution" and present it. Typically the client wants to pay far less, wants it much sooner and throws in a bunch of new constraints. So you go back and re-architect, repeat. A fast sales cycle is 6-9 months some can be multiple years and the technology moves along as they dither. It helps to have client-side experience before crossing over to the vendor-side.