Think! Inc. provides research-based training, responsive to the root causes of your unique situation to help your salespeople become more successful negotiators.  All the countermeasures, tactics, behaviors, tips, tricks and gimmicks typically taught by negotiation "training" or other "experts" aren't cures. In fact, they have few, if any, long-term, positive effects on the negotiating skills of an individual or the negotiating competency of an organization. A company training its salesforce in such a traditional soft skills approach to negotiation can expect a 2% bump in negotiation effectiveness.

How many times do you hear, "I can get the same thing cheaper..."? It's at the core of today's most pervasive problems in business-to-business sales:

• price pressure
• attempts at commoditization
• more professional buyer influence

How your salespeople respond to that statement from a prospective customer will determine if the fail -- or succeed. Just getting the sale is not a success if it's achieved at the cost of margin and brand equity. Think! teaches your salespeople how to deal objectively, factually and successfully with the "I can get it cheaper..." syndrome.

We are committed to identifying symptoms of a mal-functioning negotiation system within your organization and then determining its root causes.  The most common symptoms are:

• declining margins
• unending deal cycles
• giving away aspects of your value proposition
• reacting to irrational competitive behavior in the same way

Typical root causes include:

• salespeople selling the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong level
• marketing signaling the market incorrectly
• misaligned or non-existent internal cross-functional negotiation strategy
• value proposition not existing or being unclearly communicated
• distributed leadership

Think! helps you solve your problems because we define their root causes, rather than describe their symptoms - and then we prescribe a measurable solution that complements your existing sales organization.

We can redefine negotiation at the individual level.  Instead of training your sales staff to become tactical generalists, we help them achieve proficiency with the analytics that make a measurable and immediate impact on B2B negotiations. By design and intent, they start the sales and negotiation process better prepared than their customers and their competitors.

We know that 97% of verbal negotiating tactics can be anticipated and they belong in one of two categories.  Our system of comprehensive, targeted analysis within the two principal categories of negotiation allows dealmakers to use hard data and facts to solve the "I can get it cheaper" challenge.

Think! gives salespeople the courage to make better negotiating decisions by helping them prepare for effective negotiation and master the two primary categories of negotiation.

We will move identifiable and measurable metrics. We quantify return on investment; we do not use aggregated success stories from salespeople to create a qualitative "ROI." To have an immediate business impact and achieve a measurable return on investment, a negotiation initiative must:

• tie directly to corporate strategy
• be sponsored by senior management
• have coaches who measure and are measured

Many aspects of corporate growth strategy come alive at the deal level. We know how to integrate selling and negotiating to strategy level issues that are linked to deals.  Think! integrates our two analytical processes so selling and negotiating are seamless, to accelerate ROI on your investments in sales and negotiation methodologies.

We encourage you to get in touch with us.  We can provide you with more information, ranging from our proprietary research findings to case histories, published data and professional references. We can conduct a confidential assessment of your negotiating environment or prepare a comprehensive report which benchmarks your firm's performance against your peers. Or we will be happy to learn more about your unique situation and offer our perspective on how we can work together.

Think! can help you!  Send me an email at mdd@e-thinkinc.com.