Our own Carrie Welles is presenting an enlightening webinar on Thursday, March 22, 2018 in association with the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA). This 11am ET session will provide empirical research, and street level examples, for how best to package and present your value. Find out more and register by clicking on link below.

A client asks us for a proposal. That’s a good thing, right? We do as they ask and provide a proposal. What’s next? We all know the first offer is likely not going to be the last. In fact, what many of us have done with that response is to give the client a price for products and services. The very natural inclination is for the customer to then begin the negotiations at this phase. We have DNA going back 1000 years saying that the buyer should never accept the first offer. We know what the conversation is going to be and where it’s headed, so how do we change that conversation and take control?

My friend and colleague, Jim Dickie (https://www.salesmastery.com) recently reported sales leaders stated their top barrier to achieving their 2018 revenue objectives is:

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.

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!

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.

There is a science and an art to sales.  The science is the research and analysis that goes into any potential deal – to qualify the deal, and developing the deal through the sales cycle.  The art is the creativity of the sales team to create good offers/options to present to the other side in order to maximize the probability of reaching an agreement.