"There's an abundance of sales knowledge in the marketplace, yet organizations still don't understand how to make the most of it, " says Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of SellingPower magazine.   And just the other day, a blog post in Forbes entitled, "To Increase Revenue Stop Selling."  What's going on out there?!?!

Things are evolving.  Now that may make us uncomfortable, but that's the nature of the beast.  Change, evolution, transformation... call it what you will.  Get comfortable with uncertainty.  I know, it's a whole lot easier said than done. 

Most people (especially tough, old-school buyers) think of business negotiation as a pie-eating contest; that is, they want to get as much as they can to win the prize and screw the other guy.  This is an extremely near-sighted strategy that may work in the short term, but these buyers will always be looking for new suppliers because they've burned so many bridges.

Conversely, real negotiation is about making the pie, and thus the pie peices, bigger.  You need to go in thinking about both the competitive and cooperative aspects of working together to create more value for both sides.

Would you like to know more?  Request our Negotiating Intelligently article.