What have you learned about negotiating all the time, not just at closing stages?

Hello Sales Reset Community

This week's big idea has been that you should always be negotiating, not waiting to negotiate only in the closing stages of opportunities.

This is your end-of-week newsletter to help you reflect on what you’ve practised and improved.

In your first newsletter at the start of the week, we introduced a crucial skill of all effective negotiations: “If you give me some of what I want, I’ll give you some of what you want.”

We looked at some examples of how this works in practice:

• Prospecting: “If you give me some of your time, I’ll give you some valuable insight and market knowledge.”

• Discovery: “If you give me sufficient background about your unique situation, I’ll outline the most significant aspects of our products and services that might improve key areas of your performance.”

• Presentation: “If you bring additional stakeholders to the presentation, I’ll bring my expert colleagues so they can give you greater insight”.

• Proposals: “If you collaborate with me in co-creating proposals, I’ll ensure all the needs of your key stakeholders are included in our proposals”.

• Maintaining Momentum At Every Stage: “If you’re prepared to schedule another meeting, I’ll write up everything we’ve reviewed so you can share our discussions with your colleagues more easily.”

The vital ingredients of the best Win-Win negotiations

In your mid-week newsletter, we examined what happens when people initially hear about “Win-Win Negotiations”. They typically react by asking how that works.

Surely, if one of the people negotiating wins, the other side must lose - Duh!

No, there’s a structured way to achieve Win-Win Negotiations.

Here’s how it works:

1. Low cost to you, high value to them: Create a list of all the things you could exchange in a negotiation that would cost you little but have high value to your customers.

   • For example, you can offer to introduce colleagues who are subject matter experts to review your customer’s unique situation and make recommendations.

2. Low cost to them, high value to you: Create a list of things that don’t cost your customer a lot but are high value to you.

   • For example, you could propose that your customer commits to purchasing from you for repeat orders for an agreed period instead of placing a single order.

3. Exchange for Win-Win: Exchange these carefully identified and valued elements in a structured conversation.

   • “If you give me some of what I want, I’ll give you some of what you want.”

With care and practice, you can lead Win-Win Negotiations at every stage of your selling!

End of Week Reflection Questions

Here are some questions to help you reflect on what you have learned and practised this week.

• Negotiating all the time: How did you get on with remembering to negotiate all the time?

• Creating Lists: Have you tried making lists of “Low cost to you, high value to them” and “Low cost to them, high value to you”?

• Best Example: What was the best example this week when you specifically remembered to negotiate at an earlier stage of your selling?

• Maintaining Progress: How will you remember to negotiate all the time in the days and weeks ahead instead of leaving it to the end of your selling process?

We hope you have a great weekend!

The Sales Reset Team

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