My Sales Team Needs Negotiation Skills – Key Insights
By Michael J Griffin
Many sales managers have approached me over the years to conduct negotiation skill training for their salespeople to be more successful in conducting negotiations with ever more knowledgeable, demanding customers. Based on my experience and on-line research, I have found these are the major reasons for salespeople failing to negotiate successfully.
Salesperson did not employ B2B selling skills uncover and satisfy sufficient customer needs before moving to negotiating
Salesperson did not adequately prepare to negotiate
Failed to navigate the negotiation discussion following a negotiation “roadmap”
Lack of empathy to connect to the negotiator
Fear of Failure ending up with less than ideal outcomes
By a wide margin the first reason is the most prevalent: Salespeople do not sell and satisfy customer needs first before negotiating. To minimize this from happening, sales managers must emphasize and coach on the continual sharpening of B2B selling skills.
The second way to ensure more successful negotiations is to make sure salespeople can say “yes” to the 4 criteria that signals a salesperson can move from selling to negotiating.
Salespeople should only begin to move from selling to negotiating only after these four criteria have been met. The four criteria are:
Gain a conditional commitment from the customer.
Uncover needs to propose all deliverables, terms and conditions, and price.
Attempt to resolve each customer concern with selling skills.
Confirm that all customer concerns have been expressed.
Salespeople who sell successfully first have a much easier and more collaborative negotiation with their customers. Excellent selling skills leads to better negotiation.
Failing to prepare properly kills many negotiations. Many salespeople are overly optimistic going into a negotiation while their customers are usually prepared to meet financial, procurement and organisational policies and procedures. Effective negotiators prepare to negotiate by using a robust negotiation planner. This allows a sales manager to coach the salesperson before the negotiation and the planner then becomes a “road map” during the negotiation that gives the discussion structure to conduct the negotiation. We don’t take a holiday without a plan do we? Successful sales plan for their negotiation discussions.
Negotiating is not a debate or a “us versus them” discussion. Being too forceful, too rigid can scuttle a negotiation. (of course, the customer might be!) The goal of a negotiation discussion is to create a collaborative, consultative session where differences are discussed with respect and creativity to come to a win – win outcome for both the customer and salesperson. Both sides should be happy with how they were treated and the final agreement. This means during the negotiation we should empathize with customer concerns, positions, and feelings. Doing so from the heart builds customer trust leading to more collaborative discussions. Sales coaches usually need to teach and coach salespeople how to effectively show empathy that shows care and respect for the customer.
Fear of failure is found in all salespeople. The antidote to turn fear into reasonable confidence by coaching salespeople to be experts in B2B selling skills, ensuring they always meet the “4 criteria” before negotiating. Secondly, sales managers must set up regular meetings to review and coach the salesperson on their negotiation planner so they are prepared to have a collaborative negotiation. Doing just these two activities can reduce fear and poor negotiation outcomes by your sales people.
ELAvate has recently upgraded their sales negotiation workshop based on recent research and past skills that have consistently lead to successful negotiations. Call or email me if you wish to review our ELAvate Negotiation Skills workshop and our robust Negotiation Planner. I am happy to share with you at no obligation.
Michael J Griffin
CEO Founder of ELAvate
+65 -91194008
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com