Posts Tagged ‘salesman’

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Shut-Up Is What Sales Negotiators Need To Learn To Do!

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

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Sales Negotiators Need To Learn To Just Keep Their Mouth Shut!Negotiation is all about power. The trick to walking away from a sales negotiation feeling satisfied about what you were able to achieve is to make sure that you walk IN to the negotiation with more negotiating power than the other side has. Sounds easy doesn’t it? I’ve been amazed  over and over again to see sales negotiators just give away their negotiating power to the other side time after time. They just don’t realize that they are doing it. Let’s see if we can put a stop to this…

How Do Sales Negotiators Lose Power?

Negotiating power can be a be a funny thing. You can have a lot of it and not even know it. Likewise, you can give it away and not be aware that you are doing so. There are a lot of ways to lose power but the #1 way is for you to run your mouth too much. Ultimately negotiating power is all about having more information. Whichever side of the table has more information about the other side has the power. Information can be used against you, so you want to hold on to it as tightly as possible.

How To Hold On To Power During A Sales Negotiation

If only it was as easy as keeping your mouth shut! Nope, there are actually a number of things that you can do in order to ensure that you keep the upper hand when it comes to negotiating power during you next sales negotiation:

  • Don’t Talk Business: In the small talk that occurs before the start of any sales negotiation, don’t talk about business. You might be able to not give away any secrets, but maybe you’ll make a mistake. Stick to weather, sports, family – anything but business.
  • Let The Other Side Do The Talking: Even better than you talking is getting the other side to talk, and talk, and talk. Just as you can leak power to the other side, the more they talk the better the odds that they will say something that will give you more negotiating power.
  • Keep Your Timeline A Secret: At the end of a fiscal quarter, negotiating with a salesperson who has already met his / her quota is completely different from negotiating with one who hasn’t. If you are this salesperson, don’t let the other side know where you stand – also don’t mention if business has been slow, or if you’ve got product piling up all over the place.
  • Don’t Start With Discounts: All too often salespeople will start a sales negotiation that they are anxious to close by offering a discount or some other enticement to the other side right off the bat. Don’t do this – although it might have worked in some other negotiation, if you start this way then the other side won’t see the value in your offer and you will have lost power even before the negotiations have begun.
  • Tell Everyone On Your Team To Shut-Up!: Even if this discussion sinks in to your brain, you can still lose power by comments that the engineers, procurement staff, and even the lawyers on your team make. Take the time BEFORE the sales negotiation begins to huddle with your team and explain to them that the more they talk, the more negotiating power they will be giving away to the other side.

Final Thoughts

Things that we can’t see are hard for most of us to get our hands around. Power in a sales negotiation is one of these things – it can be hard to tell how much of it you have and if you’ve lost some of it. Remembering to keep your mouth closed and working with your team to make sure that they do the same thing will allow you to close better deals and close them quicker.

Questions For You

Have you ever been in a sales negotiation when the other side revealed something that gave you power? Have you ever made a slip and given power to the other side because of something that you said? Has your team ever said something that weakened your position? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking. Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Negotiator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

People are either honest or they aren’t right? Umm, well not exactly. Look, in a sales negotiation everything is not as it seems. I hate to use strong words like “lying” or anything like that, but let’s just say that a healthy dose of skepticism is often a sales negotiator’s best friend…

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C’est La Vie – French Lessons For Sales Negotiators

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Sales Negotiations With The French Requires Understanding Of Two Key Differences

Sales Negotiations With The French Requires Understanding Of Two Key Differences

So what is your view of the the French? Is your view of this magnificent county and its people shaped by those Inspector Clouseau movies that you used to watch while you were growing up? If it was, then it’s time to get over it and move on – they negotiate much differently than you do.

As with all things in sales negotiations, there is no right or wrong as long as you are able to eventually reach a successful conclusion to your sales negotiations. The trick when dealing with the French is to realize that they approach negotiations differently than either Americans or British do.

There are two key characteristics that every sales negotiator needs to know when dealing with French negotiators. The first is HOW they approach sales negotiations, and the second is HOW they view concessions.

In all honesty, we Americans always seem to be in a rush when we enter in to a negotiation – we work from the bottom up. We pick the first point, try to hammer out an agreement, and then move on to the next point. The French have a completely different approach – if I had to use a 50 cent word I’d call it a more “holistic” approach.

The French prefer to work on a sales negotiation from the top down. They’ll try to reach agreement on the basis of some broad principles first, and spend time working out the details. While they are working out the details, they will constantly refer back to the central agreement on the broad principles. Since you start from a point of agreement, it always seems like the rest of the work is just sorting out the details and that an agreement will eventually be reached.

When it comes to concessions, the French have a very strong sense of quid-pro-quo: they always want to get something in return. Unlike Americans, the French have no problems tying strings to their concessions – you are going to have to give something up if you want to get them to give in on a point.

There you have it, it is possible to reach a successful sales negotiation deal when the other side of the table is French. You just have to remember that their approach to the negotiation and to concessions will be different than yours and you are going to have to change to make the deal work out.

Have you ever had a chance to participate in a sales negotiation when the other side of the table was French? Did they seem to be approaching the negotiation in a top-down fashion? Did you end up giving up something every time they made a concession? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Chinese Guide To Sales Negotiation

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Sales Negotiators Need To Learn How To Negotiate With The Chinese

Sales Negotiators Need To Learn How To Negotiate With The Chinese

Pity the poor American salesperson who goes out into the world of business and tries to negotiate. Sure, he/she is probably well equipped to negotiate with his / her American born-and-breed peers. I mean, after all, we share the same vocabulary, culture, and were brought up pretty much the same way. However, what happens when we encounter someone from a different (dare I say foreign?) culture? Like say, China…?

The world is constantly becoming a smaller and smaller place. Current economic conditions not withstanding, this is only going to speed up over time. That means that somehow we need to find a way to quickly come up to speed on how to deal with sales negotiators who come from different cultures. They think and act completely differently than we do and we are the ones who need to learn to adjust in order to make our sales negotiations successful.

Dr. Charles Karrass has spent a lot of time studying not only negotiations but also how cross-cultural negations do or don’t work. When it comes to dealing with folks from China, he’s got some suggestions for us:

  • Get Some Quanxi: Quanxi is the Chinese term for the construction of close family relations, or a joined network of relationships with the emphasis on the individual and informal groups rather than formal organizations. Building guanxi means building relationships. In sales negotiations, this means that by entering into a negotiated relationship, you are actually taking on a lot of responsibility. If things change during the contract, the other side can ask for changes and you are expected to be accommodating.
  • Watch Those Words: In negotiations with Chinese, what a word means is critically important. All too often, what a word means to you may not be what it means to the other side. Both before and during a negotiation, it would be worth your while to take the time to carefully define key words and make sure that both of you are using it the same way.
  • Persistence Pays: All too often in Western culture, we take a “no” as really meaning “no”. To a Chinese negotiator, your “no” just means “no for now” and they will feel free to revisit it over and over again to see if you’ve changed your mind. Many western negotiators have commented on this by saying that Chinese negotiators appear to grind away until they end up getting most of what they want. Chinese negotiators have both consistency and persistence – be prepared!

Yes, a sales negotiator can successfully conduct business with Chinese negotiators. However, you need to be aware that they view the world differently than you do and YOU are the one that is going to have to adjust in order to have these negotiations turn out successfully.

Have you ever had an opportunity to negotiate a business deal with a Chinese negotiator? Did they keep coming back over and over again to issues that you thought were already closed? Were there any misunderstandings over vocabulary words? Did you end up building a quanxi relationship? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Should Sales Negotiators Be In Long Term Relationships?

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Do Buyers Or Sellers Get More Out Of A Long-Term Relationship?

Do Buyers Or Sellers Get More Out Of A Long-Term Relationship?

Who wouldn’t want to be in a long term relationship? I mean we wanted our parents to be in one, we want to be in one, movies always end by having the hero walk off into the sunset and into a long term relationship, right? It turns out (as with so many things in life), when it comes to sales negotiations it depends on what side of the table that you’re sitting on as to if you should want to be in a long term relationship…

Let’s be straight here, getting ourselves into a long term relationship makes life sooo much easier. There are all sorts of benefits like reliability, friendship, and even peace of mind. However, it has been shown that over time these types of relationships start to favor one party over the other. Here’s what can happen:

  • You can lose your objectivity
  • You can become compliant
  • You can lose your company’s secrecy
  • You can become too dependent on the other side

If you are a seller, then getting into a long term relationship can be a very good thing. Generally speaking, long term relationships favor the seller over the buyer. Here’s why:

  • More often than not, product specifications change over time.
  • Changes in product specifications tend to increase the seller’s margin.
  • The seller can tailor standard offerings into special products and charge more for them.
  • The seller has fuller access to the buyer’s organization – the reverse is not true.

Sure seems like the seller has an unfair advantage doesn’t it? Buyers should take heart, there are actually a number of things that a buyer can do to even the score:

  • Change buyers every few years just to shake things up.
  • Expand the number of competitors vying to be your supplier.
  • Have another group evaluate each long term relationship every so often.

Long term relationships do have their advantages; however, just as with your love life, you need to step back every so often and make sure that this relationship is the right for you right now.

Are you currently in a (business) long term relationship? Are you the buyer or the seller? Do you think that this relationship is still a good one to be involved in? How can you double check this? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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A Sales Negotiator’s Friend: The Telephone

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
A Telephone Is A Two-Edged Blade For Sales Negotiators

A Telephone Is A Two-Edged Blade For Sales Negotiators

What’s your mental picture of a typical sales negotiation? When you close your eyes do you see a lushly carpeted board room with a large oval table in the center and padded leather chairs all around it? If so, then in most cases you are sadly mistaken.

An amazing number of sales negotiations occur over the telephone. Everyone has one and in fact in this day and age of mobile phones we all seem to have more than one phone. Given that by using the phone you can reach someone directly at almost any time, phones have become an important tool in negotiating sales.

However, as with any tool, a phone can be a danger to any negotiator’s hope of success. Using a phone to negotiate can be quick and easy, but that’s actually part of the problem. I’m not telling you to not use the phone, I’m just saying that you need to watch out when you do. Here are some of the things that can go wrong when you use the phone to negotiate a sale:

  1. Deal / No Deal: Because you can’t look the other side in the eye when you are negotiating with them on the phone, it’s entirely possible that you may conclude the call thinking that you have a deal when you really don’t.
  2. Can You Hear Me Now?: What you think that you are saying is not necessarily what the other side is hearing. However, since you are on a phone, there is no way for you to realize that they have gotten the wrong message.
  3. What Did You Say?: Often when we are negotiating on the phone, we are out and about. Although we may reach agreement, it won’t count until such time as we write it down. That may be hours later and what we write down may be different from what we agreed to.

Once again, the phone is a powerful sales negotiation tool; however, you have to be careful how you use it in order to make sure that you don’t get burned.

Have you ever used the phone as part of a sales negotiation? Did you have any communications problems? Were the problems on your side or on the other side? When did you first realize that there was a problem? How did you finally resolve this problem? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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