There are many sales skills that have impact on the value of a strong sales team within an organization:

• Account Management
• Value Selling
• Questioning
• Presentation skills
• as well as a number of others.

However, one of the things we love most about our work in helping B2B sales organizations improve negotiation skills is the immediate, tangible, return on investment. Unlike many sales skills, negotiation is a hard skill: meaning not only is it highly measurable, but it also delivers business results fast! The other great news is that together, we, the Think! team with the client stakeholders, can identify this potential ROI before any investment is made to build the internal business case for a negotiation improvement initiative.

Here are results from five (5) Fortune 1000 clients in these industries: logistics, packaging, energy solutions and services, information services, and healthcare.

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We recently conducted negotiation coaching for over $1b in revenue on over 100 renewal opportunities for a global client of ours. We weren’t training their new reps, but working with some of their most seasoned global account managers to help them be more strategic and successful. This consulting gave us the ability to confirm with a new level of conviction what we have been seeing in industries, cultures and companies for years.  It is this:

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We are happy to introduce you to the 5600blue e-book about Selling at The Speed of Change. Your value, competitors‘ value, customer needs and management priorities are all changing often. All of this effects the “real – time” knowledge salespeople need to lead customer conversations. It’s time to take back the power we lost due to the buyer B2B digital revolution. One of our clients said recently “a quarter is now equal to a year.” Her point was that annual planning now happens each quarter due to rapid shifts in the market and company strategy. Managing this turbulent environment holds real promise for those who realize that the rules have changed and many legacy sales support solutions are not having impact. 

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Yesterday, sustainable competitive product advantage lived happily alongside annual strategic planning, static customer needs and all the legacy sales enablement solutions designed for this same world. In today's market, your value is shifting constantly as is that of your competitors. Ditto for the needs of your customer. What Strategic Account Managers need is specific, customized and actionable data that helps them compete at every stage of the new buy/sell cycle with technology that houses the data all in one place.

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Both Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company) and the blog strategy+business point to the emergence of "little data," a phrase we began employing a few months ago.

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During the height of battle, a fighter pilot will have to assess and act upon up to 17 different pieces of information. If you start counting up all the tools, data and information a sales rep may have to deal with – CRM, Business Intelligence Analytics, dashboards, pipeline reports, the buy/sell cycle, marketing automation, discovery research, LinkedIn, networking, calls, appointments, emails, and presentations - it should not be a surprise that sales performance has been impacted negatively.

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