What salespeople really need is not more processes but more data, that is, more information concerning their customers’ needs and how they can meet those needs better than the customers’ alternatives. When salespeople have this additional data, they will be able to recognize that deals are not that different from each other. While it is true that customers all have different needs, and that both the solutions a supplier provides and its alternatives have wide ranges, when needs, solutions, and alternatives are viewed from a high enough level, it becomes obvious that the issues that must be dealt with fall into very specific areas, or follow patterns.  And while these areas may change with different customer verticals or solution types, they continue to be similar. These areas include:  

Sales & Marketing Management magazine and their community for networking and peak performance, SMM Connect,  announce a new webinar:

Business negotiation should never be approached as a fire sale, where, for example, there's always a deadline looming or some stubborn price point the customer must have:  "I want to close next week," "I want to close at this price point," or "I need this percentage."  These are not goals, but merely tactics.  In fact, closing by a certain date is a trade and perhaps an important one, and shouldn't be an overall end goal for the dealmaker.  Similarly, obtaining a certain price point is also a trade. 

The marketplace is flooded with aggressive, professional buyers, competitors are behaving more irrationally and giving away value, and there are fewer opportunities to make deals.  Plus, the deals that are made are longer term.  In the face of this, sellers report reasonable sophistication on sales strategy and process as well as account-specific sales strategy and process.  But they have virtually no negotiation strategy and process. 

Keep in mind three rules in regard to creating value in a business negotiation.  The first concerns the meaning of value itself, which is expressed as Value = Benefit - Cost.  We've all heard about sales processes that are supposed to add value but hardly ever succeed in creating real, measurable business value.  A process does succeed when it enables you to add "hard" value (value you can measure) rather than "soft" value.  If you can't put a potential trade through the equation above, you're not creating value.

One impediment to negotiating success comes from a disconnect between account management and opportunity management processes.  When properly integrated, these processes ensure that selling fundamentals (e.g., identification of key buying influences, the role played by buyers and value solutions for the client's business problems) are more consistently executed.

This is a good time to talk about for whom professional buyers actually work.  No doubt you have been taught to call on multiple buying influencers who play multiple roles in a customer organization.  The people you are calling on are the purchasing agent's internal customers, the people who give them the criteria for evaluating one supplier over another.

On this American Independence Day, take a look at a video entitled, Negotiating Freedom.  This film is about the negotiation process between brands, suppliers and unions in Indonesia.

Most buyers attempt to minimize the complexity of business negotiation by simply saying, "Well, the other side's price is lower."  this is like trying to make a decision with the majority of the criteria missing.  We all know that price is a function of many things:  how much volume is being purchased, what products and services are included, who is assuming more risk and so on.  So our job as professional negotiators is to get past a buyer's fixation on price and put all the moving parts on the table simultaneously, empowering both sides to make well-informed business decisions.