Where is the future of selling, negotiating and the processes that support it going? We have spent a great deal of time and research answering that question. Selling has evolved from personal relationship skills to salesperson as a consultative or solution seller. Given the changes in the marketplace and the amount of readily available data on your products and services as well as the emergence of an even stronger, more prepared professional buyer, we believe the role of the next generation salesperson focuses on two key skills:

Creating value is, of course, something that has to work for both you and your customer, or it doesn't work for either of you.  Salespeople like yourself have two very good reasons to embrace the concept of value creation.  First, it makes it easier for you to negotiate with buyers because it's easier to divide a larger pie than a smaller one.  And, second, it enables you to make more money by providing you with the ability to make bigger deals, and over time bigger deals mean more money.  However, even though creating a larger pie and a bigger deal is ultimately beneficial to both sides in a negotiation, buyers don't necessarily see it that way.  Because, as a rule, buyers are primarily interested in lower prices, they're less likely than you to be concerned about value-creating trades.  And that's why it's often incumbent on you - the seller - to show the buyer how and why creating value is advantageous to both of you.

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:  

The sales representative's role is changing yet again!  It is the job of sales professionals to assist customers in understanding how they increase revenue, reduce expenses or improve processes by buying their products and services.  How will sales consultants need to evolve?  Brian J. Dietmeyer will be presenting on the subject of Breakthrough Selling and Negotiating Strategies at the upcoming TMI & TACK International Asia-Pacific Conference 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 28, 2012. 

In this session, Brian will review both strategic and tactical based changes salespeople must make to re-invent and re-establish themselves as consultants adding value to their clients.

Do you think of business negotiation as an art or a science?  If you said art, you're part of the majority.  If you said science, you're part of the future.  Are you willing to consider the advantages to learning and using a process?  Among the most important of these advantages are that the process:

Traditional classroom training is not the only way to learn.  Information Builders, a business intelligence and integration firm set out to install strategic negotiation competency into their firm to take pressure off margins and maintain customer relationships by negotiating based on business value.  They wanted to reduce the time for salespeople being out of pocket for traditional instructor-led training by 50% and, at the same time, actually improve the quality of the training solution.

Data isn't very sexy or glamorous, but when it comes to business negotiation, it is the ultimate equalizer.  Having data makes Davids out of Goliaths, and ignoring data makes Goliaths out of Davids.  So here's some data on the trends we've found in a recent study on the current state of business negotiation at hundreds of prominent Fortune 500 companies.

We find that one of the core problems to clarifying value is either there is a lack of a common definition of what a value proposition is and / or you have a value "statement" that is too high level, too static and out of touch with street level deal making. 

Selling value in an industry long steeped in precedents that focus on commoditization is tough enough. Getting credit for that value is even harder!  On Tuesday, May 8, 2012, Carrie Welles, Vice President, Global Customer Management at Think! Inc. will present a session at the 48th Annual Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) Conference in San Diego.  The session is entitled, "Best Practices in Preparing and Negotiating Solutions in a Commodity Market."

It's not only ineffective or nonexistent sales processes that cause negotiation problems. Other aspects of a deal, although not directly connected to negotiations, can have an impact on them.  For example, we've worked with many clients over the years who have products that are priced too high, quality that's too low, or technology that's out-of-date relative to their competitors.  Not surprisingly, these firms experience many sales and, subsequently, negotiation problems, which is why they turn to consultants for solutions.  But these aren't the kinds of problems that can be fixed with a training class on a negotiation process. These are value-proposition problems, and they can't be negotiated away.  Having to compete against a firm that has a better, faster, cheaper alternative to your product or service can only be rectified in the long term by correcting your own company's value proposition.