Nancy Nardin: Where do you think most sellers stumble when it comes to negotiation?

Jeanette Nyden: Most sellers stumble in making effective tradeoffs and counteroffers. When times were good and the selling was easy, sales people could easily agree to requests to add options without increasing price. And, many companies would tolerate reducing price without reducing the level of service because volumes more than made up for it.
Times are different now. Now, sellers have to engage in a tradeoff conversation, and that takes the form of making counteroffers. For example, a colleague of mine sells training to large corporations.  Her client asked, “I don’t have the budget so can we add another 5 people at no charge?” You need to have a tradeoff in mind and make a counteroffer. My colleague wanted a meeting with the executive vice-president before the training for many compelling reasons. She countered that she would add 5 people at no-charge IF, and this is crucial, IF the executive vice-president would schedule a one-hour meeting with her before the training sessions.
This is why it is a tradeoff: If the executive vice-president says no, my colleague can now rescind  the offer to add 5 people at no-charge. She might not, but the “IF” language has left the door open for more back-and-forth conversations. This is a crucial part of the economic recovery. It will take more back-and-forth conversations to seal the deal than in years past.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under General, Tradeoffs/Counteroffers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.