If you’re wondering if sales negotiating strategies mimic Wall Street, let me share with you this phrase often spoken regarding stock trades:
Dumb money trades in the morning; smart money trades in the afternoon.
The idea is stock traders who aren’t savvy will place a buy or sell order based on the news of the morning. Smart traders on the other hand will wait to see how the dumb traders respond to the news and they’ll then make their moves in the afternoon.
The same thing can be said about negotiating strategies.
People who throw too much on the table too early are in my mind the dumb negotiators, whereas the ones who hold back and let the other party go first are the smart negotiators.
Information is what drives stock trades, and it’s information that also drives a sales negotiation.
Your role in a negotiation is to use information as your tool to get the other party to put onto the table things they might not otherwise put on the table if they didn’t have the information.
The same is done in reverse. The key is information.
This is the reason why I believe you can’t allow yourself to negotiate with anyone until you know what it is they’re looking for and what their key needs are.
Knowing what they want as outcomes is what is going to help you position yourself properly.
One of the best ways to use information is by wrapping it in the element of time.
Time is a powerful tool, and knowing the timeline the other person is working within can help you make the “smart trade.” Ask questions early in the process regarding time and then ask more questions to verify what you’ve heard.
The sooner you do this, the better the position you’ll be in.
When the other party begins to believe time is working against them, they’ll be far more likely to make the “dumb trade” — thus leaving you in an advantageous position.
The option is yours. Do you want to be a morning or afternoon trader?
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
