All right, here's what to do. First, have a very specific goal laid out for yourself. What are you willing to negotiate down to? What are you willing to trade? Second, understand the difference between a tradeoff and a concession. Here's an example, this is a concession. Yes, I'll give you a 25% discount, whereas this is a tradeoff. I'll give you a 25% discount in exchange for 12 months up front on your contract. That way you both win. Third, we've mentioned it before but it's worth saying again. Do a lot of preparation for the meeting. Review all your notes and know their their GPCT by memory. Practice, practice objection handling with your manager. Role play a negotiation scenario with a coworker. Number four, practice active listening. This can't be said enough. You can't practice empathy, build a relationship and learn about their challenges if you aren't listening to your prospect. Number five, use silence to your advantage. I'm going to talk more about this in the section about things to not do. Number six, use empathy as power instead of other more traditional ideas of power. Give the prospect and decision makers autonomy in the process. Give them time to think through their decisions and weigh their options. Don't be pushy, again, no one wants to be told what to do. Number seven, show gratitude. In sales, there's a belief that you shouldn't say thank you. But by showing gratitude, it shows respect and develops trust. Thank the other person or people for taking the time to talk, getting the team together for a call. Or for doing the homework you assign to them, it'll go a long way. Number eight, be prepared to walk away. This doesn't mean that you'll walk away if a prospect forgets to sign your contract. It means making a judgement call when you realize the prospect actually isn't a good fit for your company. This might happen very late in the sales process, usually during a negotiation. For example, a prospect might put you through an extremely long due diligence process, keep asking you to adjust terms and conditions, or demand numerous extended security checks. Here's what not to do, first, don't close prematurely. When a discovery call goes really well, a sales person might think, this is great, a shortcut just came up. I'm going to move straight to the close. This approach often fails down the line when the customer realizes they don't need your product or service and ultimately cancels their contract. So don't rush the process unless your business is maybe new. And you're trying to get to early product market fit. If your company, on the other hand, is mature and already has product market fit with a repeatable sales process in place, remember that the company took a painful 1 to 4 years or more to build that sales process and ensure you get good fit customers. So follow that process, point out areas to improve, but stick to the process overall. Second, don't negotiate with people who aren't decision makers. Some people will insist that they're a decision maker, when they actually aren't. For example, some CEOs might consider themselves the sole decision maker, when in reality other team members also need to commit to make it happen. Don't negotiate until you have the full scope of the decision making process, what has to happen and who's involved. Number three, don't let price be the starting point for a negotiation. When sales people begin a negotiation, they often don't make sure the price is truly the very last factor standing between them and the close. If the price truly is the sole barrier to closing the deal, stand your ground when your prospect presents any objection. They might say, wow, that's expensive, or, is that really the best you can do? When they do this, your initial reaction will set the tone for the rest of the conversation. Make sure you don't react emotionally, instead ask what do you mean, or expensive compared to what? They'll either drop it or push you to negotiate. When they push to negotiate, again, confirm the price, the last thing standing between you both. And confirm that if you come to an agreement about price the next step is to move forward with a transaction. The follow up question that I've had the most success with is is this a budget issue, or a cash flow issue? This question gets them to prioritize whether the payment amount is the issue, which makes it a budget challenge. Or if the payment frequency is the issue, which makes it a cash flow challenge. This is where your leverage begins. Whatever their answer is, continue asking questions down that path. And also reinforce what the standard price or billing term is. Once they've explained their concerns, you can ask, well, what did you have in mind? Whatever they state, acknowledge it, but don't agree to it. Assess whether or not this is within your acceptable range of negotiation. And if it is, make a tradeoff, and close the deal. If not, then continue digging in with other options. Number four, do not negotiate with yourself. Earlier I mentioned that you should use silence to your advantage. I've seen sales professionals run a perfect sales process but then mess up when it comes down to discussing a contract. A sales person might say, our enterprise product, which you've agreed you're a good fit for is $30,000 annually. There's also a $5,000 fee for onboarding, so it's $35,000 total. But if you need to break that up or you need to bring the price down to, say, I don't know, $30,000, we could do that. The salesperson offers a discount without the prospect ever even asking for it. So here's what you should do instead. State the price and terms, that's it. Stop yourself from speaking any further. Do whatever it takes, just keep your mouth closed. And let the prospect break the silence. What they say will tell you what to ask next. Learn to be comfortable with silence, it's a source of power. Otherwise if the prospect is a good negotiator, you may end up offering them a deal they never even asked for. [MUSIC]
