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Sales Negotiators Need To Step Into The Other Side’s Shoes For A Bit

Friday, October 8th, 2010
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If you want to make good decisions, then you need to understand the other side

If you want to make good decisions, then you need to understand the other side

How are you going to help the other side of the table make a decision the next time you sit down to a sales negotiation? It turns out that in order to increase your chances of successfully reaching an agreement, you’re going to have to step into the shoes of the other side of the table and understand how they are seeing the world. Sound difficult? It’s not – I’ll show you how to do it.

Finding The Decision Maker

This is the key to your ability to successfully reach a deal with the other side of the table: you need to identify who the real decision maker is. Keep in mind that the person (or people) who are sitting across from you may not be the real decision-makers.

In my experience, the person who controls the budget that would be used to implement whatever agreement that you might reach is the real decision maker. Additionally, most firms only allow employees in a Director or higher level position to enter into binding legal agreements. Make sure you check people’s titles before the negotiation starts!

Roadblocks

Knowing who will ultimately make the decision about any deal that you reach is a good start. The next step is to take the time to understand how this person is currently seeing the world.

What you want to identify and understand are any roadblocks that they are currently facing. The reason for this is because the better that you understand what may prevent them from reaching an agreement with you, the easier it will be to address these issues during the sales negotiation.

It’s All About Family

No matter how many people are actually sitting across from you during a sales negotiation, there is a team supporting them behind the scenes. A team, just like a family, always has its own issues.

In order to understand what may hold up your ability to reach a deal with the other side, you are going to have to gain an understanding of how the different parts of the other side’s team work together. One good way to do this is to simply ask pointed questions of the other side. You just might be surprised how much they are willing to tell you.

The Power Of A Deal

One final item that you need to spend some time considering is just what the impact of reaching a deal will have on the other side of the table. Change can be scary and reaching a deal is clearly a major change.

Successfully reaching a deal will be a benefit to some and may turn out to be a setback to others. Some people may have wished to reach a deal with someone else, or perhaps the timing of a deal is going to be inconvenient.

Taking the time to understand who will benefit (and who won’t) from reaching a deal is important. This will give you an opportunity to make sure that you don’t get pushback that comes out of left field.

What All Of This Means For You

The reason that we engage in a sales negotiation is because we ultimately want to reach a deal with the other side of the table. It turns out that this goal can be hard to achieve if you don’t understand how the other side is seeing the world.

In order to get a better understanding of what issues may be blocking the other side from reaching a deal, you need to step into their shoes. This includes understanding who the decision maker is, what roadblocks they may be facing, how well their internal team works together, and just what will happen to their power dynamics if a deal is reached.

Role playing is never easy to do. However, in order to be a successful sales negotiator you are going to have to learn how to do this. Just be sure to give the other side their shoes back when you are done with them!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What is the best way to determine the impact that reaching a deal will have on the other side?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Every sales negotiation starts out in a particular way. Sometimes it’s good like when the other side lays out the issues and makes a concession to you right off the bat. Other times it’s bad. You know it’s going to be bad when the first words out of the other side’s mouth are “Give me your best and final offer”. What’s a sales negotiator to do now?

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Get Ready For The Hunt: How To Gather Information For Sales Negotiations

Friday, October 1st, 2010
Image CreditInformation Gathering Needs Hunters

Information Gathering Needs Hunters

Let’s go hunting, shall we? If you are getting ready to enter into a sales negotiation, then you need to make sure that you have collected all of the information about the deal and the other side of the table that you can. In order to do this, you’re going to have to get good at hunting for information. Let me act as your hunting guide…

You Can’t Know What You Don’t Know

Before you fire up your computer to Google the other side of the table or start to shell out the bucks to get “inside” information from someone who used to work there, stop. You’re missing the first step in this process.

The very first thing that you are going to want to do is to take a moment and determine what you need to know in order to make the sales negotiation successful. This means that you can’t just be working with some vague ideas about what you want, instead you’re going to have to take the time to actually write things down. It’s only by taking this extra step that you’ll be able to remember what you want to find out.

Location, Location, Location

Now that you have a firm grasp of just exactly what it is that you want to find out before the negotiations start, your next step is going to be to find out where you’ll have to go in order to get that data. This is where you’re gong to have to get creative.

If you’re not careful, you may end up picking the wrong places to go. This can be a big waste of both your time and money. The right way to go about doing this is to find someone who knows the answers to the questions that you are asking. Even if they can’t tell you what you need to know, based on their experience they should be able to at least point you in the right direction.

Playing Fetch

Things will get out of hand quickly if everyone on your negotiating team runs off to collect the information that you need. Instead, you’re going to want to pick the right person to do the job.

What you are going to be looking for is someone that you can trust to sort through a large amount of information quickly and get the answers that you need. The most important part of this task is going to be to pick someone who can do a complete job – someone who will get all of the answers that you are looking for. If you need to keep sending them back to get more, then that will just be a time wasting distraction.

Danger Zone Issues

When it comes to collecting the information that you may need in order to be successful in your next sales negotiation, you’ll quickly run into some potentially serious issues. We all want to have as much information as possible; however, it’s how we get it that counts.

There are a lot of legal and morally acceptable ways to collect the information that you’ll need to do well in your next negotiation. At the same time, there are a lot of shady and unscrupulous ways to collect information also. Clearly things like breaking into the other side of the table’s offices or computer network to find what you are looking for are just flat out wrong.

More often than not, things are not that clear cut. You are going to have to decide on where to draw the line. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have to inform the rest of your team so that everyone knows what they can (and cannot) do to get the best information possible.

What All Of This Means For You

In the world of sales negotiations, information is king. What this means for you is that before you start any negotiation, you are going to have to do your homework and collect as much information about the topic being negotiated as well as about the other side of the table as you can.

In order to get the information that you need, you are going to have to identify what you want, how you are going to get it, and who’s going to be in charge of doing your research. You’ll also have to deal with the delicate issue of just how far you are willing to go to learn what you need to know.

At the start of a negotiation, the outcome may have already been decided. Ultimately the side that knows the most about the topic being negotiated and the parties doing the negotiation stands the best chance of coming out ahead. Do your homework and this could be you!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What type of action do you think would be going too far to collect information for a sales negotiation?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How are you going to help the other side of the table make a decision the next time you sit down to a sales negotiation? It turns out that in order to increase your chances of successfully reaching an agreement, you’re going to have to step into the shoes of the other side of the table and understand how they are seeing the world. Sound difficult? It’s not – I’ll show you how to do it.

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Just Exactly When Does A Negotiation Start?

Friday, August 13th, 2010
Image Credit
You Can't Win The Race If You Don't Know Where To Start

You Can't Win The Race If You Don't Know Where To Start

While working with one of my sales negotiations students the other day I was asked a great question that I don’t often hear. The student had reported that she was feeling frustrated because she was working on a number of deals and when it came time to negotiate, the actual negotiations seemed to drag on forever. “Isn’t there a better way?” she asked. Turns out that there is…

Start Before You Start

If you want a sales negotiation to go quickly, then you need do everything possible to make the actual negotiation just a formality – work everything out before you sit down at the table. Sound impossible? It’s not.

A negotiation actually starts long before the first negotiation session. Chester Karrass, the godfather of negotiating, believes that it really starts when you first make contact with the other side of the table. What this means is that yes, a negotiation can extend over a very long time; however, that doesn’t mean that the actual process of negotiating needs to be lengthy.

The Power Of The Before Time

All too often, what sales negotiators don’t realize is that every moment of contact with the other side of the table is vitally important. When you are interacting with the other party and the negotiations have not formally started, this is exactly when the most valuable information can be learned.

If you are the one doing the buying in a sales negotiation, then this is the time that you can observe the salesperson on the other side. You make casual inquiries into such critical items as how they price their products, who has already bought the product, how the salespersons year is going, where they rank in their organization, etc.

This pre-negotiation time is just as valuable if you are trying to sell something in a sales negotiation. You can determine if this is the right person that you should be talking with, how much they have to spend as well as who really controls the money.

The Gift Of Gab

One of the most important things that you can use the early encounter time to do is to create a relationship with the other side. Ultimately, during any sales negotiation there will be a certain amount of tension on both sides of the table.

If you’ve been able to use your pre-negotiation contact time to develop a relationship with the other side of the table, then you’ll be able to quickly diffuse any stressful situations that pop up.

What All Of This Means For You

Novice sales negotiators don’t realize that a sales negotiation really starts long before either side sits down at the negotiating table. The process of reaching a deal really starts when the first contact is made.

Using the informal interaction time to explore where the other side of the table is coming from is a great way to use this opportunity. Taking the time to build a relationship with the other side will also pay dividends later on in the process.

Smart sales negotiators use all of the time that they have to move closer to reaching a successful agreement. They know that the time before negotiations start is very valuable and if used correctly, then they can make the outcome of the negotiations a foregone conclusion…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What do you think that your #1 goal should be when you first meet the other side?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In the world of negotiating, we all love the idea of getting to win-win. Walking away from our next sales negotiation with the feeling that not only did we get a great deal, but that we left the other side feeling the same way is every negotiator’s dream. It turns out that if this is how you want to have things turn out, then you’ve got to do some planning before the negotiations start in order to make it happen…

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No Negotiation Is An Island (So Don’t Get Voted Off!)

Friday, August 6th, 2010
Image CreditEach Negotiation Is Part Of Something Bigger, Make Sure You Know What It Is!

Each Negotiation Is Part Of Something Bigger, Make Sure You Know What It Is!

Raise your hand if you have tunnel vision! Is your hand up sales negotiator? Even if your hand isn’t up, I’m willing to bet that it should be. When we are preparing for our next sales negotiation it is all too easy to get caught up in the moment and forget about, hmm – what do they call it, oh yeah: the big picture.

Walking The Time Line

In order to keep the proper perspective while you are preparing for a negotiation, one of the most important things that you can do is to spend some time thinking about your products / projects.

Specifically, what you’re going to want to understand is just exactly what your short-term product or project needs are going to be. What are you hoping to get out of this negotiation and if you get it, then what are you going to do with it?

At the same time you need to think about what your longer term products / projects are. How does the negotiation that you are getting ready to enter into fit into your company’s long term plans. If they are going to be important to you farther down the road, then you’re going to want to make sure that you don’t burn your bridges during this negotiation.

Crossing The Bridge

Yes, you probably have goals and objectives for this upcoming negotiation. However, they are probably short-term in nature. Take a moment and think about where the company is trying to get to in the long-term.

Once you’ve figured this out, the next question to ask yourself is how is this negotiation going to help you get there? If it’s not going to help, they you really need to ask yourself why you are going to go through all of the time and effort to engage in the negotiation.

The Fear Of Commitment

When the negotiations start, you will find your negotiating options limited by the agreements and commitments that your firm has already entered into. Before you start to negotiate, you need to make sure that you fully understand all of these restrictions that you have.

Not only do you need to understand how your options are going to be restricted, you also need to make sure that you understand how this upcoming negotiation is going to work with your existing commitments. Most importantly, you need to ensure that you don’t find yourself in an awkward position if the negotiation is successful.

Promises Made Are Not Promises Kept

As long as you are going through the effort of working out a plan for your negotiation, you probably should take the time to do a little checking up on the other side of the table. Most negotiating books forget to cover this point, but it’s really the most important one out there.

No matter how good of a job that you do during the negotiation, it’s really not going to count for anything if the other side doesn’t follow through on the things that they agreed to. Things like this are actually pretty easy to check out and doing so just might make the need to negotiate go away…

What All Of This Means For You

As exciting as it is to get ready for your next negotiation, you always need to take the time to do some extra work. This consists of taking a step back and thinking about just exactly how the negotiation is going to fit into your company’s overall product / project strategy.

In order to understand where this negotiation fits in the big picture, you’re going to have to think about your product’s short-term and long-term plans. Existing commitments will have to be understood and the outcome of the negotiation will have to be contrasted to pre-existing agreements. Finally, you’ve got homework to do in order to make sure that the other side of the table really will follow through on the promises that they make.

Sales negotiations can take a long time to complete. While you are in the middle of one, it can be easy to lose your way and forget why you are doing this. Taking the time to study where this negotiation fits into the big picture before you start can be exactly what you need to turn a negotiation from an island into a mainland.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: How far into the future do you think you have to consider when evaluating an upcoming sales negotiation?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

While working with one of my sales negotiations students the other day I was asked a great question that I don’t often hear. The student had reported that she was feeling frustrated because she was working on a number of deals and when it came time to negotiate, the actual negotiations seemed to drag on forever. “Isn’t there a better way?” she asked. Turns out that there is…

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Remember: “Negotiation” Spelled Backwards Is “Change”

Friday, July 2nd, 2010
Image Credit Sorry -- There's No Way To Calculate How A Negotiation Will Go

Sorry -- There's No Way To Calculate How A Negotiation Will Go

So what’s the secret to conducting a successful negotiation? Is it taking enough time to plan? Is it picking the right place to hold the negotiations? Turns out that none of these are the right answer. Instead, if you want to be successful you need to do one simple thing: plan for everything to go wrong.

The Power Of A Good Plan (Not!)

Now I don’t want you to get me wrong here, but I’ve got some news for you that just might come as a surprise to you. Yes, it is important to plan out each of your negotiations. You want to take the time to do your homework, identify what the other side is really going to be looking for, and come up with a plan that you think is going to allow you to get what you want out of the negotiation.
Umm, this is where things get just a bit awkward – for you see, that plan is never going to work out. What none of us take into consideration (not like we can) is just exactly what the other side of the table is going to be doing during the negotiation. In a nutshell, they are going to be actively working against us. They are going to be trying to foil our every attempt to get an upper hand during the negotiation.
Ultimately what this means is that the carefully laid out plan that you had come up with before the negotiations started will very quickly turn into junk due to changes in circumstances. Dang it – why can’t the other side just do what you want them to do?

Your Defense Against Changes: Part 1

The fact that the other side of the table is going to be actively working against you really should come as no surprise to you. Hey, you’re basically doing the same thing to them! What you need here is a way to defend your carefully laid out plan against their crafty ways.
The concept of how you need to prepare to do battle to save your plan is actually pretty simple – the execution is another story. What you are going to want to do is to sit down with a colleague prior to the negotiation and do some role-playing.
You will, of course, want to play you. You’ll need your partner to play the other side of the table. What you want them to do is to frustrate your every move. You really want them to require you to do two things simultaneously: defend the positions that you are laying down and resist their clever arguments / positions.
You’re going to hate doing this. However, it really is the best way to discover where your arguments are weak and how you’re going to need to do a better job of resisting the other side’s proposals.

Your Defense Against Changes: Part 2

What’s a sales negotiator to do when the other side does something that makes their game plan completely moot? The worst thing that you can do is to continue to negotiate without a plan.
What you do need to do is to stop the proceedings. Call for a break. Ask for a timeout. Just do something to cause the negotiations to come to a halt. Give yourself some time to think about what’s just happened.
This is the time that you’re going to have use to come up with a new plan very quickly. The ability to adjust to changing negotiating circumstances and to adjust your strategy to meet the new reality is the mark of a great sales negotiator.

What All Of This Means For You

Planning is the right way to prepare for your next sales negotiation. However, professional negotiators will tell you that no matter how carefully you plan, you are going to discover that your plan will very quickly become out of date.
What you need to do is to work with a partner when you are preparing for a negotiation. That partner needs to attack your positions and offer their own positions that you need to find ways to push back against. It’s tough work but it will prepare you for the battle that lies ahead.
Remembering that you will need time during the negotiation to regroup and create new plans is critical. Remember, a sales negotiation is not a race to get to the end, but rather much more like a dance where how you conduct yourself during the negotiation will determine what your final score is.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that it is even worth it to create a plan if it’s just going to get tossed out the window early on?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

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