Posts Tagged ‘talking’

Sales Negotiations – Hollywood Style

Friday, May 14th, 2010
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Even In Hollywood, Sales Negotiations Are Not Make-Believe

Even In Hollywood, Sales Negotiations Are Not Make-Believe

Can anyone remember what happened way back in November of 2007? That’s when all of the writers in Hollywood went on strike. After that the Screen Actors Guild walked out. Talk about a mess. Well guess what, in the first half of 2011 this could all happen again – those contracts are once again just about ready to come up for re-negotiation once again…!

What Went Wrong Last Time

There were a whole host of things that caused the last set of Hollywood negotiations to go wrong. For one thing, during the process the Screen Actors Guild ended up firing its chief negotiator, Doug Allen, due to internal disagreements.

On the movie making side of the table, things were not much better. The labor problems were used as an excuse to lower everyone’s pay and get out of deals that the studios no longer wanted to be in.

In a nutshell, both sides of the table ended up being unhappy. Clearly this is not the way to conduct a sales negotiation.

What Might Be Different This Time Around

You would think that all of the parties involved would have learned from last time and would be taking steps to make sure that history did not repeat itself. Of course, you’d only be partially correct.

Time marches on and this time around the negotiators who sit down across from each other at the table will be a different set of folks. That may help things just a bit.

Additionally, both sides are already starting to make noises about the upcoming negotiations. They are saying that they are committed to doing a lot of talking. That sure sounds like a hopeful sign, right?

However, be careful. There are a lot of minefields in this set of talks. The directors will be looking for ways to get higher residual payments for the use of their work. How to handle the ever-growing area of “new-media” will be a big bone of discussion (thanks a lot Apple iPad!). Once again, the role of writers in reality shows will come under fire as these shows continue to grow in popularity.

What All Of This Means For You

As professional sales negotiators the looming Hollywood negotiations offer us a unique opportunity to see multi-party sales negotiations played out in the public eye.

There will be a lot to watch and learn here. We should expect to see a lot of press leaks, public statements, and perhaps even some angry storming out.

In the end, we all know that they’ll reach a deal. However, it’s how they end up getting there that will provide the real learning experience…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Help For Technical Staff

Question For You: Do you think that the actors and writers should plan on stopping work or should they offer up the hope that a strike can be averted?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Hey, did you read any of those Harry Potter books (or at least see one of the movies?) The stories are fiction but it turns out that sales negotiators do have some real magic that they can use to get what they want during a negotiation…

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

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

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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