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| SALES HINTS... |
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Sales negotiations are won or lost long before you sit down at the negotiating table. It all comes down to planning – the better you prepare, the more likely you are to have a positive outcome in your negotiations. Sound elementary? Maybe. But ask yourself how you prepare to negotiate with a prospect, and think carefully about your answers. Most often you’ll find that you may know what to do in the negotiating meeting, but that you seldom have a thorough process for negotiation planning. For some reason, sales professionals are averse to planning. Yet successful negotiating depends on willingness to do just that – plan. Here are some suggestions to help you with your next negotiating session… 1: List the issues. Prepare a comprehensive list of variables that will affect your negotiation. You’ll find this list doesn’t vary much from negotiation to negotiation. The value in developing the list is that after a while you will find that you will see a pattern in the items that you negotiate. You will learn that negotiations are not random events. Rather they are actually quite repetitive. 2. Prioritise the issues. You should do this ahead of the meeting and in order of importance to you, and not to your prospect. This way, when the customer asks for something, you can ask for the single most important thing to you, in return. The key in any negotiation is not to give anything up, without getting something in return. 3. Establish a settlement range. This should be done for each significant item to be negotiated. There are four components a. What is your maximum Position – this is the most you can ask for, without losing credibility. b. What are you really asking for – these acknowledge that you’ll settle for less than your maximum; c. What is your least acceptable position – this is your bottom line. The absolute minimum you could accept and still close the deal; d. What is your deal breaker – the deal breaker is the point at which you will walk away, rather than do the deal. 4. Prepare your strategies and tactics. You need to do two things here. First, list the questions you are going to ask in the discovery phase of the negotiation. It is crucial that you ask the prospect good, open-ended questions to learn about their interests, and to prevent them from using some very powerful negotiating ploys. Second, determine which negotiating ploys you are going to use and how you will use them. If you plan at all, chances are you do half of step four (i.e. figuring out what negotiating ploys you’re going to use, and what the customer might do). While this certainly has some value, it won’t result in successful, win / win conclusions. By taking the time to work through all four steps of the process, you’ll consistently close more sales with more favorable terms.
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