I’ve watched too many sales negotiations be nothing more than an exercise in futility for one simple reason.
The salesperson entering the negotiation was ready to concede anything to get the sale.
If you think this isn’t you, that’s fine. You’re entitled to your belief, but I’ll bet my description does actually fit you.
Why? Simple — far too many times we as salespeople will go into a sales negotiation thinking, “What it is going to take to close the sale?”
The problem is what we’re thinking is usually far less price-wise than what the customer is thinking.
We wind up with what I’ll call “pre-negotiation mindset” for any number of reasons, but mostly because we simply fail to believe enough in what it is we’re selling and our own sales/negotiating skills.
We believe we have to win the sale, but too often “winning” comes at a cost that translates into a huge amount of lost profit.
It is important to go into every negotiation with a strategy and a set of parameters you will adhere to. You can’t simply put these parameters on the table when the customer isn’t even expecting them. When you do this, you’re not giving any value to your own skills or any value to what you’re providing the customer.
Getting around this problem can be difficult, because it comes down to your own mindset.
It’s easy to say you’re not going to cave when there’s nothing on the line, but it’s another deal to not do it when you find yourself dealing with a customer.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind. Nobody gets everything. Warren Buffet hasn’t made money on every deal he’s made, a baseball player doesn’t get a hit every time they are at the plate, and a salesperson doesn’t make a sale with every potential customer.
Don’t ever forget that one profitable deal is going to be worth far more than 10 unprofitable deals.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about how you can increase your negotiation skills both with new customers and with customers you’ve had for a long time.
In the end, it’s not the number of sales you make, but the amount of profit you protect.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
One Response
Thank you for the effort you put into your blog. I am working in the area of software sales. In my field at least, the common view among sales staff and sales managers is that sales should be closed at any price since sales staff are commissioned on revenues and not profits. With some of our competitors gross margins are 86% and so some salesmen open with a 30% discount.