So often in selling we hear about “relationship” as the reason we win deals. I am curious about your opinion here. Would you buy an inferior solution from someone you like better than someone else? Conversely, if you find a great solution at a fair price, but don't really like the salesperson, would you buy that solution? As a "victim" of multiple back surgeries, I have had the opportunity to experience bedside manner on at least two occasions. When interviewing doctors and getting second opinions, I have always chosen the doctor I felt was most qualified, even if she was not a great communicator or someone I didn’t feel aligned with on a human level. That being said, all else being completely equal, I think we would choose the person we felt most comfortable with and would tip the scales in our way. This doesn't always happen in, say elections. Research shows that voters would choose that person they would “rather have a beer with.” Which could be another blog entirely!

Sales organizations spend a great deal of time and money on negotiation skills training. Much of that investment is sub-optimal and in essence, sales teams are being trained on how to execute your company negotiation strategy. The problem is there is still a prevalent view that negotiation is a “soft skill.” When we execute training without a broader organization strategy improvement, we are, in substance, automating a broken process.

We recently consulted with a global account organization where their customers in France were bypassing their local account teams and buying from the German account teams as the prices and terms were better! This type of incoherence not only lowers margin, it creates a lack of trust.

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:

Think! Inc.’s very own Carrie Welles has been published in SAMA’s new book: Customer Value Co-Creation, Powering the Future Through Strategic Relationship Management.

For 16 years, Carrie has been a Partner and Vice President at Think! building strategic negotiation skills and using her coaching and training talents to improve the effectiveness of salespeople across the globe.

A blog from Buyer/Seller Insights points out that there is bad buying just like there is bad selling. They go further to suggest that sellers who can help procurement buy better will achieve a competitive advantage. We couldn't agree more.

One of the core problems we see is that sellers don't understand the role of procurement professionals and therefore get anchored on the price conversation with buyers. Part of this misunderstanding is this: how procurement buyers articulate their role–and the reality of what their role is, are actually two different things.

POP QUIZ!

Revenue goals are up, the win rate of the sales team is down, way down. These amongst other reasons have created a need and filling it is a relatively new function that is starting to gain momentum: Sales Enablement.

We are pleased that our own Carrie Welles will be presenting as a part of the upcoming SAMA Annual Conference to be held in National Harbor, Maryland. May 23-25, 2017.  Carrie will be leading the session entitled, "A Case Study in Executing a Consumable Negotiation Process with Strategic Outcomes," among more than 50 other workshops during the three-day event. This session will be held twice, once on May 23rd and again on May 25th.

We’ve been selling to the business stakeholders and now hear the dreaded sentence…."I need to get procurement involved.” For most of us, this is viewed as a sales death sentence! IT IS NOT!

For years we’ve been taught to sell around procurement at all costs and focus on the business stakeholders. While this may be sound advice, the reality is that procurement involvement is on the rise and most likely here to stay. We believe it’s time to start focusing on professional buyers as legitimate stakeholders, not to be avoided but to understand their needs just as we would any other buying influence.

Recently, Milind Katti, CEO & Co-Founder of DemandFarm, interviewed Brian Dietmeyer. The conversation started out with this question. "Brian, tell us about your journey as a key account management professional and how do you help companies achieve growth through focusing on their strategic parternship with the key account?"