Like it or not, you are a negotiator…..Everyone negotiates something every day (The quality of our life and business depends on our negotiation skills). Most of us negotiate throughout our personal and professional lives: negotiating your salary in a job interview, your product price with a prospect, fighting over discounts while purchasing a new air conditioner, even bargaining over petty amounts buying vegetables and even persuading your little child to eat his piece of cake.
If you are a salesperson you don’t just need to know how to negotiate, you need to master the science of negotiation skills and that my friend is non- negotiable.
Negotiation is a process of specialized problem solving when two groups or individuals start from opposite positions and attempt to reach a satisfactory middle ground (Win-Win is the key), with each side hoping to give up as little as possible.
Alternatively, negotiation can be seen as an attempt by two or more parties to reach an agreement where the following conditions are present:
- The resources being negotiated are scarce such as time, money, etc.
- Agreement and conflict exist simultaneously.
There is a mistaken notion that selling and negotiating are the same. While there is a number of similarities, there is one important difference. To negotiate, you must have authority to change something, such as price, delivery or contract terms. Secondly, you must use this authority very judiciously to get something of value to your company in return.
In practice, it is found that most people use negotiation too early in the selling process and fail to get commensurate value in return. In short, negotiation authority is used routinely to win sales.
Negotiation should not be used to create interest in buyer but to clinch the deal. Negotiating too soon is the commonest mistake of inexperienced negotiators or rookies. Giving things away prematurely create expectations that larger concessions will follow later.
Negotiation should never be a substitute for selling. Negotiate late and negotiate little, and be a successful salesperson.
Ashish Mathur
Sales Coach & Speaker
I help product based businesses fill their sales process leaks to create a flawless, result driven sales process. I also train sales professionals on mastering their sales skills and become sales superstars.