Guides

How we approach improving your sales negotiation skills

We continue from Module 1, Improving your sales forecasting and closing deals quicker. Working with the Conversational Solution Sales Scorecard licence you will have received we continue strengthening your own and your team’s sales and negotiation skills. We focus on the human interactions and conversations required to close a solution sale.
Commonly referred to as sales negotiation, you are in fact in conversation because when you are conversing you are not in deadlock, you are negotiating.

When you converse you talk, ask questions, probe, discover, and trade information and knowledge preparing yourself to present and pitch your proposal.

Effective sales negotiation preparation and probing is no different to sales qualification, which is why it starts the moment you interact and converse with your audience.

Your scorecard is your honest inventory, consider it like a stock check keeping track of the knowledge assets and information value you have gained. Solution sales can extend for many months and keeping track of these assets is a challenge using a sales negotiation, which is why the scorecard in your possession is so valuable to your own, your team’s and business’s future success. It will guide you through the sales negotiation interactions with your audience to maximise your negotiated sales outcome and rewards while satisfying your clients’ needs.

Many refer to achieving a win-win outcome, reality is that outcome is unlikely because it infers both sides get equally rewarded. During this sales negotiation training we avoid these negotiation strategies and tactics because they are flawed. Each party will have different sets of values that change with time and in different situations.

Win-win sales negotiation tactics, where you achieve the greater Win and the other party walk away satisfied with their win must be your sales negotiation strategy and outcome objective. This requires you to place the other party centre stage helping them to achieve their own negotiation outcome objectives. At the same time you trade information less valuable to you for information that you consider of greater value. Using your Scorecard, you are guided to build your own knowledge inventory, business case and sales negotiation leverage to maximise your Win outcome.

We introduce you to sales negotiation techniques that require you to collaborate and build trusted relationships with the other party. This is the reason why we refer to the other party as the Client because you intend to continue doing business with them rather than performing a one-off sale to a customer. Building your business to business sales pipeline and unleashing your full business growth and revenue potential is completely reliant on you building clients rather than customers.
This sales and negotiation training is designed to help you and your team strengthen your solution sales engagements using your scorecard. You and your teams will be guided to develop powerful sales negotiating skills that move you away from horse trading to closing high value deals. These sales skills lie at the heart of solution selling because negotiation is selling.

Making incremental improvements in your sales and negotiating skills will ensure you maximise your time and resource investment to close higher value deals. The sales and negotiation skill acquired along with the Scorecard will guide you and your team how to create fair deals that can if managed correctly build upon themselves creating opportunities for future deals.

Knowing the characteristics of a fair Win-win negotiation will strengthen your sales pipeline funnel, unleash your business, sales and revenue potential.

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NEGOTIATION IS A HUMAN INTERACTION TRADING INFORMATION FOR ULTIMATE GAIN

SALES NEGOTIATION IS USING THAT KNOWLEDGE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT.

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Preparing for success

Whether you are a team leader, or you are pushing yourself to build momentum and achieve more, how you position and present yourself will directly impact your success.

You and your team need to know what your audience and clients needs and value most. Understanding their business needs and human wants is critical if you are to maximise your negotiated rewards. More deals are made because of human wants and emotional motivators are satisfied. More deals are also lost because these same human wants have not been satisfied.

Negotiating with the power of collaboration using your Scorecard keeping track of your knowledge inventory will become one of your own and your team’s most valued sales tools. I will show you why depersonalising sales negotiation and focusing on your audience’s business needs and human wants will give you, your team and your business the distinct competitive advantage.

Understanding sales and negotiation techniques is a key skill developing and maintaining an enviable solution sales pipeline, consistently achieving quota and commission targets, and unleashing your business growth.

This module is a key part of the Conversational Solution Sales Program intended to improve your solution sales success.

It connects and has a compounding impact increasing the strength and success putting into practice the other five modules included with this Program.
Having appreciated sales negotiation is a very human experience, it is important to manage both your own and if applicable the psychology of your team to get the outcome and Win you need. Understanding the sales negotiation tactics to help your clients get the outcome they need and the rewards they want will ensure you strengthen relationships and build your business to business sales pipeline.

It is the relationship and confidence your clients have in you and your team to help them achieve their goals that will drive your business and career growth. It is their trust in you and respect that you will manage a fair negotiation that keeps them loyal and committed to you and your business.

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Two parts to negotiating with the power of collaboration

 

During the sales and negotiation training we use a series of simulations that focus on improving two areas of your sales negotiating skills to better understand value and to increase the deal values secured:

 

1. Negotiation is a human experience. Increasing the value of what you are offering is dependent upon the other person’s interests that translate into their business needs and human wants. Having a structure and a framework upon which to trade information to acquire information and insights you value more must become the foundation to your sales negotiation tactics. Guidance provided during the sales negotiation skills training, using the Scorecard, we unravel to understand all the elements of a potential deal to prepare for a successful sales negotiation. We look at why and how to use the Conversational Solution Sales Scorecard tracking your knowledge inventory will increase your deal values, sales forecast accuracy and maximise the value of your negotiated sale.
2. Unleashing your business potential. Your time, your teams’, other supporting resources, and the information you give all have value. Yet many too often ignore the true value locked up in the information they are trading in order to close a deal quickly. These sales negotiation tactics fall short, worse still they place additional pressure and squeeze your downstream business processes supporting the sales value chain. Consequently, business profit and your business’s ability to unleash its full future growth potential is held back. During the sales and negotiation training we guide you to avoid these pitfalls. The second step to effective sales negotiation is investing your value where it will achieve maximum returns. We look at why aligning your negotiation with your ultimate competitive advantage and your sales value chain to serve your ideal clients will unleash your business growth.

Sales negotiation is not an event, it is a sales negotiation process requiring discipline and control. We put this to work applying the Scorecard and guidance asking the right questions that build your business case, sales leverage and sales pipeline. By positioning you and your team to negotiate from your strongest position we work through the sales negotiation skills training how to satisfy your clients’ needs and maximise your own to negotiate a fair deal all parties are happy with. Doing so builds relationship, long-term success, revenue and business growth.