Rocket Fuel: Negotiation - don't drop your pants!
Hi everybody, Julie here from the Sales Ace, bringing you part 3 of my sales tips on negotiations. And this week, we're going to talk about what we can do during the negotiation to really ensure that we're handling this right for us.
Hi everybody, Julie here from the Sales Ace, bringing you part 3 of my sales tips on negotiations. And this week, we're going to talk about what we can do during the negotiation to really ensure that we're handling this right for us.
In an ideal world, what we want to get to is a win-win situation. And the first thing I'm going to say to you in thinking about this is don't drop your pants! That's point one on this, because if somebody says to you you're going to have to negotiate, again sometimes in the panic mode, you go “Yes. Okay. What do you want?” And that's it - game over.
So here's what I do. Somebody says to me “ooh, Julie, you're going to have to negotiate”, my first thing to say is why? I want to get an understanding of why.
And during that conversation, I'll then put on the table and reiterate the benefits of actually working with me. In other words, what it is I'm doing to help resolve their needs, wants, issues, and problems.
Now if that doesn't help and they really want this negotiation to happen, I will again, ask them: “Well, what are you looking for? What do you want?” and say “leave it with me - I'm going to go away and think about it.”
Because this is the thing in negotiation: you don't have to answer there and then.
Stepping out of the meeting, coming back to them after a meeting, calling somebody back... These are all things that will give you a bit of time and a bit of breathing space. I like to call it just pushing like a massive big red pause button on the whole thing and just stepping away.
And for that, I'll then go back and look at all the things I've spoken to you about planning, long, short-term and medium-term goals. These are things that I will really revisit. Is there a revenue shortfall that this piece of business (if I can put something on the table to bring it in quickly) will help to close it down? Is there a skill set that you’re learning by doing a piece of negotiation that you wouldn't have done before?
So this is why in the planning I asked you about being very aware of what your goals are. And also I think about what free things, what low-value things I can put on the table. So, once I've considered all that, I'll go back and present what my offerings are.
Now I'm prepared then for the client to say, “leave it with me. I'll come back to you,” and this is what can happen sometimes: things go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards until you get to a point where both parties are happy with the outcome and we can go forward. I think it's really important to say that what we want to do is achieve a win-win.
Now, we don't always achieve a win-win and sometimes you can't offer the client what they want, and it is okay to say thank you very much and walk away.
You end it in a professional way, but at the end of the day, this is why I got you to think about what is the lowest that you can go because you don't want to damage your business: you need to be making some profit from this.
And if you'd like any more help and support on this, do let me know. My email address is Julie@thesalesace.co.uk and I hope this series of videos has been useful. See you soon!
