Think! Inc. | 5600blue Partner, Carrie Welles, talks with Rosemary Coates in this audio file on the Women and Manufacturing (WAM) website.
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The current health and business environment is very likely to increase virtual negotiation. Are you ready? We'd like to share some pointers on how to proceed in the new world.
To start, a study of email, telephone and face-to-face negotiation (published in Harvard Business Review) notes the following:
No surprise but the best outcomes for both sides were reached face-to-face
On telephones, it was more win/loss where one party ended up with a significantly better outcome
Email negotiation had the highest level of impasse (50% vs 19% face to face)
Two huge issues related to negotiation and deal timing that commonly plague most sales organizations are waiting until the end of the quarter / quarter-end promotions; and waiting until 30-45 days out to plan for renewals. Sales professionals have actually trained buyers to ask/wait for discounted promotions! So now, what can we do to fix that?
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We’ve consulted on over 20,000 negotiations in over 45 countries for 16 years. The most common issue we see is:
“Very seasoned negotiators having a price conversation absent of the value conversation.”
What does this mean exactly? Imagine for a moment that you work at a high-end steak house and you encounter this scenario:
You are seated a table and are ready to order. You order the Filet Oscar, the house specialty, which is listed at $42 on the menu.
You continue that you would like to pay $16 for it because that is what you paid last night for dinner (you fail to mention it was a plate of tacos at the restaurant down the street).
Your server goes to find the manager to ask for an adjustment to the bill to give you the discount.
That is crazy, right?
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My friend and former colleague, Max Bazerman, negotiation professor at the Harvard Business School, once reported to me that:
“Opening offers have more impact on outcomes of a negotiation than all counter-offers combined!”Read More
Over ten years ago, after having spent more than 20 years a salesperson, VP sales and sales consultant, we secured our first contract to provide negotiation training for the procurement arm of a major US airline. I felt like the proverbial fox in the hen house!
As I was executing research to get ready for the assignment I stumbled on an article stating that this organization had just been awarded...
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A client asks us for a proposal. That’s a good thing, right? We do as they ask and provide a proposal. What’s next? We all know the first offer is likely not going to be the last. In fact, what many of us have done with that response is to give the client a price for products and services. The very natural inclination is for the customer to then begin the negotiations at this phase. We have DNA going back 1000 years saying that the buyer should never accept the first offer. We know what the conversation is going to be and where it’s headed, so how do we change that conversation and take control?
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Sellers are frequently faced with angry buyers who walk out of the room, don't return calls, declare the negotiation over, threaten and yell! Most want a list of tips and tricks to counter these tactics. Here is our list.
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In my last post, I reported my friend and colleague, Jim Dickie (https://www.salesmastery.com) recently surveyed sales leaders who stated their top barrier to achieving their 2018 revenue objectives was lack of coaching. That article focused on how to use virtual coach technology to address that issue. For this article, we will focus on the second issue for sales leaders:
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There is one thing that demands attention more than all others as it drives almost all negotiation behaviors on both sides of the table. It is the single most important item in negotiation.
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